Unlocking Elementary Students' Perspectives of Leadership

AbstractThis study examines whether and how principals take their lead from students, and use student voice, to create more responsive schools, and more responsible models of leadership. I consider issues of student agency and voice within four very different elementary school settings. Further, I consider the challenges students face, and the ways principals are preparing to address these challenges. In this study I address roadblocks to responsive leadership in urban, suburban, and rural schools using a cogenerative qualitative approach that principals and students can use to create new dialogue and shared theories that are focused on improving both administrative function and the instructional programs of their schools.This approach has revealed a new shared theory which includes students in models of school leadership. Central to this theory is a call for principals to use more student-driven approaches, so that young students can be empowered as learners and leaders in their own right.Keywords: Student Voice, Educational Leadership, Elementary Education, Student Agency, Cogenerative DialogueIntroductionThe need for principals to have the time and tools to focus on instruction and student learning has continued to intensify with the introduction of federal accountability mandates such as No Child LeftBehind (NCLB) and Race to The Top (RTT). At the same time, the incongruence between what principals want to do instructionally and have time to do, create dire consequences for school leaders and their work in making a difference in schools regarding staffand student improvement.Principals today are spending more time focusing on teaching and learning than ever before. This shiftaway from the office implies that more direct relationships between principals and the instructional program are necessary if new models of leadership are going to replace earlier models that limited contact with students to matters of discipline, and classroom visits to teacher feedback, supervision, and modeling (Waters et al., 2003). Research into issues of administration has emphasized reflective and inquiry-oriented approaches to working with teachers (Blase & Blase, 1999). As a result, principals now collaborate more with others before making decisions and many employ models of distributive leadership in which adults share in responsibilities that were typically overseen by the administrator (Spillane et al., 2001). Despite these efforts towards reorganization, schools have neglected to include students in more responsive models of leadership, and research has largely ignored the inherent possibilities.The purpose of this study is to discover how principals have performed in their role as instructional leaders, and to determine by what means their thinking or behaviors associated with this role have been shaped in part by elementary school students. In order to build on what is already known about how students perceive school, learning, and leadership, this study will attempt to answer the following questions:* What, from the perspective of elementary school students, are the most significant challenges faced in schools?* How do principals help these children cope with the challenges they face?OverviewMy study analyzes whether and how principals take their lead from students, and use student voice, to create more responsive schools, and a more responsible principalship. In order to describe and explain how principals have used students' perspectives to meaningfully structure their experiences of schools and learning, further investigation into how students can naturally inform the work being done by principals may help to bring students' attitudes and feelings about principals into the dominant discourse on effective leadership practice.Rather than focus on one aspect of educational leadership (e.g., visibility of the principal), I am focusing on the instructional behaviors of principals as seen through the eyes of the students, the administrators themselves, and my own observations of the interactions between these two often disparate members of the school community. …