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Principals amplify teachers' outstanding practices

Principals as leaders of learning
#8 in a series

By Dennis Sparks

Results, May 2005

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2005. All rights reserved.

"Members of the local school community are made to believe, or have internalized the belief, that educational change is the province of others. ... External programs, materials, consultants, and research can and should be considered and possibly used when a school makes it own decisions, but a school should look first for resources within."
- Carl Glickman

Successful principals understand that schools that systematically identify, deeply appreciate, and spread the outstanding practices that already exist within them are also more effective in tapping external sources of expertise. Likewise, they understand that schools whose cultures are contrary to such appreciative and collaborative methods will derive few lasting benefits from most external resources because they lack the means through which more effective teaching methods become part of a school's routine practice.

Successful principals know the quality of teaching and student learning in their schools can be significantly improved with the professional expertise that is already present within them. They also know that unleashing that expertise requires creating cultures where effective methods are appreciated and regularly shared.

In a May 2004 Educational Leadership article, Martin Haberman uses the term "star teachers" to describe individuals "who are so effective that the adverse conditions of working in failing schools or school districts do not prevent them from being successful teachers." He estimates that 8% of teachers in such schools are "star teachers."

In a Winter 2004 JSD interview (see www.nsdc.org/library/publications/jsd/sternin251.cfm), Jerry Sternin told me he believes there are individuals in virtually every school - he calls them "positive deviants" - who get better than average results and who offer pathways to success for other teachers. "Positive deviants," Sternin told me, "are people whose behavior and practices produce solutions to problems that others in the group who have access to exactly the same resources have not been able to solve. We want to identify these people because they provide demonstrable evidence that solutions to the problem already exist within the community." Effective principals create school cultures that "amplify positive deviance" as a way to continuously improve teaching and learning and retain competent teachers.

The physical presence of the positive deviant in the community is important. In our JSD interview, Sternin said, "It's natural for people to resist when someone tells them what to do. That's part of human nature. It's like the human immune system's rejection of anything it senses as foreign. It's the same thing at the psychological and emotional levels when an external solution is imposed on us. When the solution comes from within the system, the immune response isn't activated."

At the same time that they are "amplifying positive deviance," successful principals ensure that teachers experience the benefits of interacting with teachers from other schools and with research or other sources of outside knowledge and skills. Teachers study the professional literature related to their goals, attend appropriate workshops and conferences, participate in networks, and invite consultants to their schools to help solve tenacious problems.

Successful principals demonstrate a deep appreciation of the talents that already reside in their schools and initiate cultural changes that spread effective practices. They understand that when their schools honor and effectively use internal expertise, teachers will more actively reach out to various sources of external guidance and motivation. Schools in which both adults and students thrive consistently draw on the talents that reside within them and pull toward them the sources of support that surround them.