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 sociopolitical 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:

1. Identify areas for instructional improvement
2. Determine community-supported solutions and build stakeholder commitment
3. Articulate an action plan based on multiple data sources
4. Take steps that support teacher development
5. 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.

About The Authors:
Matthew Militello is an assistant professor in the Educational Policy and Leadership Studies Department at North Carolina State University. He held a similar position at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he was also the educational administration program coordinator. Prior to his academic career, Militello was a middle and high school teacher, assistant principal, and principal. His research focuses on developing principals’ knowledge and skills in the areas of school law, school data, and collective leadership. Militello has more than 30 publications including articles in Education Policy, Education and Urban Society, Harvard Educational Review, Journal of School Leadership, Leadership Quarterly, Principal Leadership, and Teachers College Record. Militello also co-authored another Corwin book, “Leading with inquiry and action: How principals improve teaching and learning” (2009). He received his undergraduate degree and teaching certification from the University of Michigan and his MEd and PhD from Michigan State University.

Sharon F. Rallis is Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor of Education Policy and Reform at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where she is also director of the Center for Education Policy. A past-president of the American Evaluation Association, Rallis has been involved with education and evaluation for over three decades. She has been a teacher, counselor, principal, researcher, program evaluator, director of a major federal school reform initiative, and an elected school board member. She has also been professor of education at the University of Connecticut; lecturer on education at Harvard; and associate professor of educational leadership at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. Currently, her teaching includes courses on inquiry, program evaluation, qualitative methodology, and organizational theory. Her research has focused on the local implementation of programs driven by federal, state, or district policies. She is currently studying alternative training and professional development programs for leaders. Her doctorate is from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Other Corwin books she has coauthored include: Principals of Dynamic Schools: Taking Charge of Change; Dynamic Teachers: Leaders of Change; and Leading Dynamic Schools: How to create and Implement Ethical Policies.

Ellen B. Goldring is professor of education policy and leadership at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, where she won the Alexander Heard Distinguished Professor award. Her areas of expertise and research focus on improving schools, with particular attention to educational leadership and access and equity in schools of choice. She is the immediate past coeditor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. She serves on numerous editorial boards, technical panels, and policy forums, and is the coauthor of three books, including Principals of Dynamic Schools (Corwin Press), as well as hundreds of book chapters and articles. Goldring is currently working on a project funded by the Wallace Foundation to develop and field-test an education leadership assessment system and establish its psychometric properties. She is also conducting experiments to study professional development and performance feedback for school leaders. She is an investigator at the National Center on School Choice and the Learning Sciences Institute at Vanderbilt. Goldring received her PhD from the University of Chicago.