Instructional Leadership

Instructional Leadership
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Challenges and benefits of collaboration
Challenges: The main challenges to collaboration include the following: first, decision-making could become complex and at times more prostrated because all members of the group have to agree on a particular decision. If some members are disagreeing, then it could take some time for a decision to be made. As such, a coherent decision-making process and overt communication would be vital (McKenna, 2011). Secondly, there is loss of decision-making autonomy and instructional autonomy. Third limitation is role shifts and confusion regarding how to share instructional time. For instance, who will lead and who will follow. How to co-teach – and how responsibilities will be shared, for instance reporting and assessment (Treslan, 2013). Benefits: The benefits of collaboration include the following: first, the group members are able to explore alternate problem solutions from the various group members hence a better decision would likely be reached when people work together than an individual working singlehandedly. Secondly, collaboration ensures that there is more learning with and from colleagues regarding learning and teaching, and about student, and increased feeling of being valued, increased support as well as decreased teacher isolation (McKenna, 2011).
Issues of developmental supervision/leadership
On of the issues of developmental supervision is to determine the best approach that the supervisor could employ as the most appropriate for that particular instructor. The effective way of approaching this issue is that the supervisor can utilize each situation in determining the method most appropriate with that specific teacher (Glickman, Gordon & Ross-Gordon, 2009). In essence, there are four supervisory approaches: directive control; directive informational; collaborative; and nondirective. Basically, the best way that the supervisor can use to determine whether to utilize any of the aforesaid approaches is simply to combine observation of the educator with discussions. If the educator appears to work well with fellow educators and he/she has excellent ideas and classroom strategies, although might be reluctant to initiate ideas on his/her own, then collaborative method may be the most fitted (Wolfgang & Glickman, 2009). If the educator has difficulties with classroom management, is predisposed to depend upon the same strategies repeatedly with little regards to his/her success, and keeps on demonstrating inconsistent performance within the classroom, then directive informational method may be the most beneficial. If the educator has solid classroom management, detailed and properly carried out plans, is always prepared, applies various methods of teaching with little guidance and has good ideas and excellent relationships with students, then non-directive approach is the solution (Wolfgang & Glickman, 2009).
The second issue in developmental supervision is the supervisor – who may be the school principal – lacking the know-how and expertise to effectively use and apply the right method of supervision. This issue can be effectively addressed by ensuring that the supervisors themselves are conversant with all the approaches to supervision so that they properly use them. The third issue is knowing whether or not the development supervision approach used is working. A number of supervisory behaviors are used in developmental supervision. As time goes on, the supervisor should assess the method be used to determine if it is actually working as it should, and if it is effective (Treslan, 2013).
Issues involved in evaluating teacher/trainer performance
The first issue in evaluating teacher performance is that in most cases, the mechanisms for evaluation are only tangentially linked to any such definition of quality teaching and they are rather based upon criteria which specify various inputs such as institutional pedigrees, test scores attained, and courses taken rather than the actual performance of the teacher (Abdulla, 2011). It is not right to evaluate teachers basing only or mainly on the outcomes of their students’ scores on standardized tests. This is because a system that punishes or rewards a teacher is flawed considering that based on ...