Virtuous Educational Leadership
Doing the Right Work the Right Way
- Viviane Robinson - University of Auckland, New Zealand
Excellent leadership matters
Without excellent leadership, school improvement is impossible, or at least impossible to sustain. But what are the characteristics of an excellent leader? Is general leadership experience and knowledge enough? And how do you practically grow and develop leadership in yourself and others so you can all have a bigger impact on student outcomes?
This integrated, holistic resource explores the virtues that are integral to achieving excellence in educational leadership, while offering practical guidance on how to do the right work in the right way—no matter what challenges you face or student inequities you’re trying to overcome. Features include:
- Practical, research-based applications of virtue theory
- Examples of school leaders’ thinking and actions
- In-depth yet accessible theoretical analysis
- Detailed analysis showing theoretical concepts in practice
- Summaries and reflection questions
The success of your students and teachers is directly linked to your influence, your knowledge and ideas, your personal character, and your ability to focus on the proper purposes of education.
Free resources
Figure 3.1 Leaders’ Inquiry About the Quality of Teaching
"Leaders can evaluate the quality of teaching by asking the four sets of questions implied by this definition. The questions focus on (1) intended learning outcomes, (2) alignment, (3) student engagement, and (4) student success."
Chapter 1: Three Proper Purposes of Education
"In a world where the responsibilities of educational leaders are constantly expanding, where today’s to-do list is displaced by unanticipated crises, interruptions, and new external demands, it is easy for educational leaders to lose sight of what, among all the important things they could be doing, is more important than the rest."
Preface: Education Leadership Matters
"Until we solve the problem of developing and retaining more excellent educational leaders, we will struggle to reduce the long-standing disparities in student outcomes that plague many Western education systems."