Leading with Inquiry and Action: How Principals Improve Teaching and Learning

‘This essential guide for educational leaders skillfully blends scholarship with practice and integrates theory with real-world examples. Through case studies, the authors show the reader how to develop, support, and improve a collaborative, inquiry-action process for improving teaching and learning. If we are going to have schools that successfully educate all students to high standards, then we need principals who translate the lessons of this book into practice’ - Andrew Lachman, Executive Director, Connecticut Center for School Change Enhance learning with a collaborative, inquiry-based system of leadership! With socio political forces prompting calls for school improvement, school leaders look for ways to expand their expertise in instructional leadership and strengthen their role in shaping classroom practice. Leading with Inquiry and Action presents a systematic, ongoing process for collecting information, making decisions, and taking action to improve instruction and raise student achievement. The authors illustrate this collaborative inquiry-action cycle with a running vignette of an experienced principal and offer questions and exercises to guide individual reflection and group discussion. Thoroughly grounded in research, this book helps administrators: identify areas for instructional improvement; determine community-supported solutions and build stakeholder commitment; articulate an action plan based on multiple data sources; take steps that support teacher development; and, systematically evaluate program results. Educational improvement requires informed leadership. This practical guide provides an efficient and functional framework for transforming current or aspiring principals into inquiry-minded, action-oriented instructional leaders.