If you have ever wondered how efficient you are as a leader at school, then this book is just for you. Leadership draws a blank if it’s not effective and being efficient can be practised. In fact, leadership is not confined to the single chair on the top of the chain, it is a characteristic required at all levels. Young or old, as you may be, a Principal, a teacher or aspiring to be the Head of School, the difference between the ordinary and a leader is the way you think and act, the roles you adopt and the way you treat your team. It is not about what you have, it is all about what you do with what you have. To yourself, you may be anyone, but to the world, you always have to be the hero. But how do you get there? What if you were told that it only needs the Chanakya in you to discover the leader in you and train your mind and heart? Don’t believe it. Try going through the 104 traits, carefully picked and documented for you to imbibe and groom along, towards becoming the leader people would love to follow and get inspired by!

Increase your own effectiveness with the help of the built-in facilitator's guide, ideas, reflections, behaviors, habits, and inspiring stories.

"This book is filled with strategies to assist school leaders in assessing and monitoring many of the important elements that must be in place for kids to be successful. There are excellent tools that savvy leaders have been searching for—tools that will help them achieve their strategic vision of continuous improvement." —Gina Marx, Assistant Superintendent USD 262 Valley Center Schools, KS Increase your school′s effectiveness and ensure academic excellence for all students! Written by best-selling author Elaine K. McEwan, this invaluable resource identifies the distinguishing qualities and unique characteristics of schools that help all students make outstanding gains in performance. Each chapter offers a comprehensive description of a research-based trait and examines its impact on student achievement. Featuring a "10 Traits Audit" for use by schools or districts, this book provides principals and administrators with: Tools and processes to facilitate the development of each trait Snapshots of each trait in actual schools and districts Reflections from teachers and administrators who have helped create effective schools Observations on the school improvement process from noted thinkers, theorists, and scholars Examples of documents, forms, and resources used in effective schools By nurturing these traits in their schools, educational leaders can build coherent instructional programs and create schools of equity and excellence.

Looking for effective strategies and best practices to break the cycle of ineffective school reform implementation? The author takes a sobering look at the state of high school reform and identifies the elements that keep us "running in place", rather than making progress on a road to success. This research-based resource-with built-in book study and facilitator’s guide-arms readers with the skills to establish and sustain the critical elements for schools' success: Demonstrating high expectations and a vision that matches it Building capacity for ultimate success Thinking small, dreaming big Engaging in legitimate community support Strong, sustained, and shared leadership

This work represents a publishing event in education research. Genuinely groundbreaking, it is the result of longitudinal research from five nations over five years. The authors set themselves an unprecedented task: to analyze how it is that successful school principals sustain positive outcomes over a significant period of time. To find out, they initiated the International Successful School Principal Project (ISSPP) assembling 30 multinational case histories and numerous comparative analyses. In doing so, they recorded fresh perspectives on the influence school principals can have on their schools, the quality of teaching in their classrooms, and student outcomes. Revisiting the subject schools in 2007, they found many principals still in place, having steered their organizations through various minefields of political, governance and educational reform. As the most penetrating longitudinal investigation of the subject, this research has unearthed fascinating new insights into school leadership that add real substance to the sum of our knowledge. It incorporates data from educational systems in Australia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, England and the USA. One key finding is that while all principals delegate a range of leadership tasks, successful ones distribute responsibility on a case-by-case basis founded on personal assessments of their staff as well as on organizational and policy contexts. The research also demonstrates that successful principals maintain close communication with their staff and the wider school environment, and that they are adaptive, maximizing the opportunities presented by new political contexts and expectations, yet without losing sight of their school’s core moral and ethical principles. The volume’s international thematic analysis has allowed comparative conclusions to be drawn on what the principals do to sustain and foster pedagogical and institutional success.

With five new case studies, this revised edition shows principals and staff developers how to collaborate with teachers in fostering, developing, and supporting teacher leadership.

Great leaders create stronger foundations by building Instructional Capacity Technology and the age of information have forced educators to rethink how they can create a supportive culture and build academic press. School leaders who learn how to balance these ideas will build successful teams to meet today’s standards. In this companion to Creating Productive Cultures in Schools, Joe Murphy unpacks essential elements of building instructional capacity-Academic Press- through effective management of instruction, curriculum, and assessment. Leaders and change facilitators who read this will: Be reminded how effective instruction works and what forces shape it Understand how powerful assessment ideas can guide successful change Discover secrets to hiring and developing capacity-rich talent Know how to approach and manage curriculum for 21st century outcomes "Over the past decade increasing emphasis has been given by scholars, policymakers and practitioners to the role leaders play in building the capacity of schools to improve teaching and learning. This volume provides a sound foundation for thinking about the meaning of ′capacity′ as well as the tools leaders can use for productive impact." Dr. Philip Hallinger Professor of Educational Management, Chulalongkorn University (Thailand) "This book is a practical synthesis of what we know about fostering instructional improvement that should be a required read for every principal. Murphy goes to the heart of leadership by focusing on what can be done in any school or community to strengthen teachers’ capacity to serve all students. There are no simple checklists, but a wise distillation of core ideas that will work in complex settings." Karen Seashore Louis, Regents Professor University of Minnesota