Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ASSIGNMENT: FIRST
QUESTION: Explain in detail the developmental duties of managers in the high schools
There are many developmental duties of the manager that create and maintain a successful
learning environment which requires hard work and highly effective management. This
includes such tasks as: recruiting and hiring teachers who are learners, coordinating
professional development activities, making decisions on resources and school priorities,
scheduling time, spaces, and opportunities for teachers to work and learn together,
identifying resources and providing information to the staff, aligning available incentives
with professional development priorities, arranging for substitute teachers, visiting
classrooms, developing and implementing teacher evaluation practices that support growth
and improvement and acting as buffers against overly intrusive and debilitating external
forces that threaten the school’s learning environment. Manager who successfully deal with
these managerial tasks help create supportive school contexts for learning. Professional
Development: design, delivery and content When teachers are engaged in the design, delivery
and content of professional development, the outcomes are much more likely to meet
teachers’ needs, and have a significant influence on teacher thinking and classroom practices.
Other duties are includes: aligning professional development with school goals and teacher
needs, empowering teachers as decision makers, identifying needs, developing on-going
planning processes, supporting a variety of learning opportunities for teachers and keeping
the focus on student learning. The first and probably most important responsibility of the
principal focuses on the design of professional development. Schools and teachers are
continually barraged by a cottage industry of educational change specialists, consultants and
aggressive policy-makers, each wanting to improve the school. One way in which the
manager (headteacher) support their teachers is by making certain that professional
development resources and opportunities are aligned with teachers’ and student’s needs, and
school/district priorities. Many question ask, for example, in what way will this activity
support our school improvement plan? How will it contribute to better teaching and enhanced
student learning? Obviously, teachers need to ask these same questions. However, it is the
manager whose position allows him/her to see the big picture of teacher and student needs,
and school goals. Thus, developmental duties help the staff and school focus on their goals
and priorities, so that professional development opportunities for teachers do not become
fragmented, isolated and incoherent activities with little positive impact on teachers or
students. Obviously, all teacher needs are not necessarily professional development ones.
Stressed out teachers, for example, may need a break to recharge their personal and
professional batteries. Often operating outside the formal conditions of teacher contracts,
successful management find time, money and ways to support these individual teacher needs,
even when not directly related to student learning also help teachers become involved as
decision makers in their own learning. Because teachers have traditionally been passive
recipients of in-service training, the dominant professional development activity, need to
initiate creative and reflective dialogues among teachers about the structure, process, and
desired outcomes of teacher learning.
Bredeson (1999) indicates that “these conversations are opportunities for managers and
teachers to rethink, restructure, and reculture professional development in their school”.
These conversations might raise the following questions about the delivery of professional
development, Do the professional development activities provide multiple ways for teachers
to participate and learn? Are there sufficient resources of time, expertise, and money to meet
goals of the professional development design? Collaborative planning, joint work, curriculum
redesign, school based inquiry and deep conversations about teaching and learning represent
different delivery strategies for meeting teachers’ needs.
However teachers have a variety of needs, experiences and levels of professional expertise,
the manager can help individual teachers by working with them to design appropriate
activities with relevant content. The manager also helps teachers set goals and develop on-
going assessment processes for examining the connections between their own learning,
student learning, and school improvement goals. Regarding the content of professional
development, manager might ask, in what ways are the concepts and processes of activities
aligned with local goals and standards? Do the learning opportunities demonstrate and use
models of effective pedagogy? Thus, duty are not mere sponsors of teacher professional
development; they collaborate with teachers in the design, delivery and planning of content
for learning opportunities that align professional needs, with school goals, and student needs.
Loucks-Horsley et al, 1999), most evaluations of professional development are little more
than participant satisfaction surveys. In general, traditional evaluations of professional
development activities do not provide data rich, systematic assessments of the impact of the
professional development activity on teacher knowledge and beliefs,
Classroom practices, student outcomes and the overall contribution to school improvement
goals. Thus, when policy-makers want to know what effects the investment in teacher
professional development has had, there is little to report beyond accounts of impact. So how
might principals strengthen the assessment dimension of professional development in their
schools? First, the Manager regularly supervise and evaluate teachers. These supervisory
activities provide opportunities for headteacher to help teachers set professional learning and
improvement goals and to provide feedback on individual professional improvement plans.
Again, the goal is not perfection; it’s growth. Secondly, managers can help teachers identify
their needs and then collaboratively plan learning opportunities to meet those needs. These
challenges the development of a collaborative planning process that is sensitive to individual
teacher needs, and that balances individual teacher choices against student and school needs.
Finally, managers need to develop processes for the systematic collection and analysis of data
on professional development in their schools. nevertheless, managers can provide the
expertise and resources to use data to support teachers’ choices in professional development
design, delivery and content.
There is little doubt that school managers exercise significant developmental duties that
influence on teacher professional development. Knowing that managers are busy and often
overloaded with administrative tasks in their daily work, we believe it is important to identify
specific and highly effective ways in which they can maximise their impact on teacher
professional development. We identified four areas where managers have the opportunity to
have substantial impact on teacher learning in schools: as an instructional leader and learner,
the creation of a learning environment, direct involvement in the design, delivery and content
of professional development, and the assessment of professional development outcomes. We
realise many of the tasks and responsibilities we described in the article overlap and are
integral parts of other key administrative responsibilities. Our listing of roles and tasks for
managers in the area of teacher professional is in no way meant to be a prescriptive job
description. We believe our findings and discussion are most helpful when used as a
framework to build understanding about the important and mutually beneficial connections
between managers’ leadership, teacher growth and development, and the creation of
authentic, professional learning cultures in schools.
When, for example, school violence, racial conflicts and falling test scores call for legislative
action, teacher training is a quick and ready solution. The reality is that teacher training is
only one part of a much larger approach to critical problems in education. Secondly, as
important as professional development is to school improvement, it should not be considered
a substitute for clear and measurable education goals, adequate resources to meet children’s
needs, and supportive structures and affirming learning cultures. Though our discussion
centres primarily on the manager’s duties in teacher professional development, we do have
several general observations on professional development. First, professional development is
not an event, nor is it a set of activities in schools. It is a professional responsibility and an
integral part of teachers. Secondly, though managers play a significant duty in teacher
professional development, teachers themselves are responsible for their own professional
growth. The traditional, hierarchical governance processes around staff development have
generally silenced teachers’ voices in decisions about the design, delivery, and content of
their own learning and professional improvement. In many schools, this silencing has resulted
in a type of debilitating dependency for many teachers. Stifled and feeling powerless over
time many teachers can not even begin to imagine what it might be like to be responsible for
planning, implementing, and evaluating their own professional development. Thus, a major
duty of school managers in the area of teacher professional development is to build leadership
capacity among staff in their schools to create, nurture, and maintain over time a vital, self-
renewing and authentic learning community.
Furthermore, These include: the principal as an instructional leader and learner, the creation
of a learning environment, direct involvement in the design, delivery and content of
professional development; and the assessment of professional development outcomes. The
most important responsibility of every educator is to provide the conditions under which
people’s learning curves go off the chart. Whether one is called a manager, a teacher, a
professor, a foundation official, or a parent, our most vital work is promoting human learning
and above all our own learning. (Barth, 1996)
However, it seems trite to assert that teacher professional development is critically important
to school improvement focused on enhanced student learning outcomes. Nevertheless, there
continues to be a need to communicate the importance of continuous learning and
development for educators, individually and collectively, to people in and out of schools.
Without clearly articulated and documented evidence of its overall contribution to school
success, professional development can easily become the victim of capricious budget cutting
or, worse, be relegated to the scrap heap of educational fads and ephemeral educational
elixirs. Developing lists of design manager is important, but identifying them is generally
much easier than implementing them effectively. The hard work comes in putting the design
manager into practice with real people in the dynamic and complex environments of schools.
Within schools, the manager is in a unique position to influence the implementation of these
guiding duties and to affect the overall quality of teacher professional development. One of
the secondary duties of school manager is to create and maintain positive and healthy
teaching and learning environments for everyone in the school, including the professional
staff. The purpose of this is to examine the ways in which manager influence teachers’
learning and development in their schools. The school manager’s roles and responsibilities in
teacher professional development, and their impact on the nature of manager’ work, the
growth and development of teachers, and impact on the school and its environment.
This wills involves teachers identifying their own needs and developing learning experiences
to meet those needs. The school based and embedded in teachers’ daily work. organized
around collaborative problem-solving, continuous and on-going with follow-up and support
for further learning, Incorporates evaluation of multiple sources of data detailing student
learning and teacher instructional practices, Provides opportunities for teacher to link the
theory that underlies knowledge and skills they are learning, connected to a comprehensive
change process focused on improved student learning. (NPEAT, 1998) School managers’
Influence on Teacher Professional Development School duties’ ability to influence the
structure, culture and mission of the school is well documented in the literature. Creating a
vibrant and successful learning community is a collaborative venture among all staff in any
school. School manager’ leadership in the area of teacher professional development is critical
to the creation and success of a school learning community.
In the description of how these standards will be implemented in schools, managers are cited
as key players who provide strong leadership in staff development through their advocacy,
support, and ability to influence others (NSDC, 1995). Similarly, the Standards for School
Leaders articulate knowledge, dispositions, and performance competencies that principals
need to ‘promote the success of all students by advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school
culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff development .
Learning is what schools are all about and the school manager must understand the ways in
which teacher learning and growth is connected to student learning and development.
Manager work to embed life-long learning into the everyday life of students and teachers
knowing that, ‘it enriches the ambience of the school and makes it into a place of excitement,
energy, and direction’ (Golde, 1998, p. 2). However, traditional school structures and norms
often mitigate against the development of learning communities where all staff are committed
to continuous learning. Part of the manager’s role is to help people inside and outside of the
school unfreeze current values, expectations, structures and processes so new ways of
thinking about teaching, learning, and schooling can be considered. Within the school,
managers understand that successful school change and school improvement requires a focus
on teacher professional development. Focusing on people is the most effective way to change
any organisation.). Their central premise is that by focusing first on people and their needs,
manager ‘help create conditions which enable staff to develop so that the school can achieve
its goals more effectively. Dufour & Berkey (1995)
Manager can protect teachers from competing demands and premature expectations for
success. Headteacher can positively influence the learning environments in their schools
through leadership in the area of teacher professional development. Notwithstanding the
importance of the manager’ efforts to support teacher learning and growth, we believe it is
important to state at the outset that teachers are autonomous professionals responsible for and
in control of their own learning. Thus, the role of the school manager is to encourage, nurture
and support teacher learning, not to be the gatekeepers or governors of teacher professional
development. Teachers begin to reflect upon, and transform their own conceptions of
professional learning and continuous growth in their work in schools, manager
correspondingly needs to engage in practices that support teachers’ professional
development. as educational leaders managers are responsible for creating, nurturing, and
maintaining a healthy and productive learning environment in their schools. Thirdly, manager
can directly influence the design, delivery and content of teacher professional development in
their schools. Fourthly, in collaboration with others, evaluate the outcomes of development.
Furthermore, duties which school managers exert influence on teacher learning in their
schools also are stewards, models, experts and instructional leaders. Stewards manager are
stewards of learning who value learning and commit themselves to it in their daily work.
They understand the connections among teacher professional development, student learning,
and school quality. Believing that teacher learning is an integral part of school improvement,
they communicate its value and purposes consistently to staff, students, parents, school board
members, and other policy makers. Schools and the professionals who work in them are
buffeted by various political and social external forces. The focus on student learning can
easily become lost in a sea of organisational changes that focus more on institutional
responsiveness and meeting the needs of adults than children’s learning. Managers help keep
the focus and goals of teacher professional development on student learning. It also serve the
needs of students and their school through their commitment to the fair and ethical treatment
of all learners recognising that equity and justice require an understanding and responsiveness
to diversity of learner needs and styles. Mulford, B. (1984)
Models Scholars of organisational culture and leadership tell us that if you want to know
what’s important in a school, watch what the headteacher does. Without a doubt, school
manager have much more influence on the beliefs and practices of their teachers as models of
life-long learning than as mere spokespersons. They establish learning as the core of their
practice and they set the tone, direction, and expectations for learning in the school by what
they pay attention to, what they do, and what they reward. manager as learners set individual
learning goals for themselves. They also model what they espouse by participating actively in
staff development in their school.Emphasising the importance of modeling by using a
negative example. For instance, manager who warmly welcome teachers to a staff
development day and then quickly excuse themselves to do more important administrator
work undercut teacher development and the learning culture of their school in several ways.
First, such cavalier administrator behaviour suggests that other tasks in school are more
important than the learning that will occur in this session. This type of modeling, it should
come as no surprise to manager that teachers bring articles to grade and other work with them
to staff meetings, and in-service sessions. Second, this negative example of modeling also
underscores the traditional power differential between teachers and manager, especially in the
area of professional autonomy. Teachers are required to attend, while manager can choose
whether or not the activity meet their needs. Manager as learners have significant influence
on the attitudes and behaviors of teachers as learners. Expert The ISLLC Standards for
School Leaders (1996) indicate that successful school leadership is anchored in professional
expertise in teaching, learning, and schooling. What principals know and can do establishes
their credibility as educational leaders.Experts, specialised knowledge and skills in such areas
as cognition and learning theory, models of teaching, human growth and development,
motivation theory, school change, applications of technology, assessment, and adult learning.
Expert knowledge is important, but it is not enough. Manager need to put their professional
knowledge into actions to create, support, and improve the learning environment for everyone
in their schools.
The instructional leaders’ managers need to be willing to confront problems and help
teachers deal with the contradictions that inevitably accompany teacher professional
development and school change. Creating a Learning Environment: communicators,
supporters and managers Creating a supportive environment in which teachers can continue
to grow and improve their professional practice is the second area where manager exert
significant influence on teacher learning and development in schools.
There are three primary roles in which manager help shape the structural, political and
cultural context, so that teacher professional development flourishes: communicator,
supporter and manager. The school manager accomplish much of their daily work through
verbal interactions and interpersonal communications, that is, talk ( Hart & Bredeson, 1996).
In their daily interactions with teachers, manager help create a collective view of professional
self-efficacy emphasising how teacher learning and improved classroom practices affect
student learning. manager set high expectations for learning and for professional practices.
Helping teachers individually and collectively believe in themselves as professionals is
particularly important in a reform era in which the media, aggressive policy makers, and the
public often portray teachers as part of the problem in education, rather than the promise for
school improvement. Managers are in a unique organisational position that provides multiple
opportunities for them to articulate messages about the purpose, structure, and impact of
teacher professional development to parents, students, school board members, and the general
public. Talk is an important part of manager’ work, but so is listening. By listening manager
empower teachers – acknowledging their experiences, expertise, and professional autonomy –
all of which are essential to a healthy professional learning community. As communicators,
managers also provide teachers opportunities to foster meaningful dialogue around
professional development. In these dialogues he give voice to teacher autonomy and
professional decision-making in ways that build collective leadership capacity in the school
to strengthen teacher learning and classroom practices.
According to Cole (1995) management is not an activity that exists in its own right. It is
rather a description of a variety of activities carries out by those members of the school
whose role is that of a manager. There are four basic principles of management named as
planning, organising, directing and supervising. These are the stages that can help the head
teacher to work effectively in the school.
Moreover, planning as leader is a person who has all powers to rule and plan and able to
welcome the ideas of others and acting with understanding towards even wild suggestions. A
leader is also one who has initiative to start things and keep them alive. This simply that once
you plan a project you must see to it that it goes end or it is completed. Nevertheless, as a
teacher in this case when you are put in a position of management, one of your first tasks is to
work with your colleagues, parents and students to identify the mission of the institution and
set the objectives. Your next step will then be identifying different strategies by which to
achieve the agreed mission and objectives. You do this in your school development process.
Through planning process your aim is to manage an efficient and effective organization,
which in this case would be a school. However, efficient means using minimum resources to
get maximum results on time. Effective, on the other hand, refers to the achievement of the
set objectives. Therefore, planning means deciding what needs to happened in the future
(today, next week, next month, next year, etc.) and generating new plan for action depending
on arising situations (Riley & Louis, 2000). Also as the head teacher is there to plan things
effectively because he have qualities to qualify as a leader or someone who is principled who
can lead the followers in the school
Secondly, organising involves putting in order of priorities and preference the resources
which are available. Also plans should put into operation using the available resources.
Similarly, organising is therefore entails making optimum use of the resources required to
enable the successful carrying out of the school plans. As the head teacher is therefore to
organise things properly, because he has sound of education and love work. Also a head is
able to organise things effectively by motivating both the learners and the teachers.
Therefore, a head must be responsibility to everything that is concerned in the school Sidhu,
(1996).
Thirdly, directing as a teacher you must be involved in ensuring that at the level of your
responsibility the plans you make are well implemented. You provide leadership by sharing
duties and responsibilities with your colleagues and by motivating them to participate in the
implementation activities. Also directing process involved co-ordinating and controlling the
supply and use of the available resources in order to achieve optimum success. As the leader
he/she must be a director to direct the other teachers to do well things effectively in all
various things to be in order. According to Haimann, (1991) leadership means working with
and through people to achieve results.
Lastly, supervising as a teacher you will be a manager at different levels until you became a
head teacher. At any level of management that you will be one of your responsibilities to
supervise and coordinate the daily work entrusted to you within the school. As a supervisor
therefore you will be expected to show that you understand and support the various roles and
responsibilities of those put under your charge Farrant, (1980).
Additionally, effective leadership also requires structural change. According to Barth (2001)
state that ‘’to capture the potential of the leaders, the profession needs to invert, expand and
honour a variety of opportunities for teacher leadership so that there will be more choices
than being either a headteacher or a teacher.
In nutshell, it has been stated that management is not an activity that exists in its own right. It
is rather a description of a variety of activities carried by those members of the school whose
duties is that of a manager. Also as the head teacher it can also be said to be the act of
influencing people to act in order to account specific objectives in the school.
REFERENCES
8.Riley, K. &Louis, K. (2000). Leadership for change and school reform: International
perspectives. London: Routledge Falmer.
9.Sidhu, K.S. (1996). School Organisation and Administration. New Delhi: Sterling
Publishers Private Limited.