Publications

Strong Schools, Strong Leaders

For more information about the book click here. Or to check out a book review click here.

“Educators thinking about starting professional learning communities or other collaborative groups will find Strong Schools, Strong Leaders a must-read. As someone with years of experience building teams and people, I found the tenets of the four key foundations contained in this book compelling. Those key foundations–listening to the people, building agreements, co-creating purpose, and fostering effective teams–are the hallmark of today’s successful leaders.

—Dr. Bonita Drolet, coauthor, Building Teams, Building People

There are four glaring reasons to get your hands on a copy of Strong Schools, Strong Leaders:

1. For one, you will learn about inventive tools that will help you build a more committed (rather than compliant) staff.
2. Secondly, you will learn more effective ways to overcome dysfunctional staff behaviors that unfortunately damage interpersonal relationships.
3. Next, you will learn how to better create a collective vision and purpose by tapping into everyone’s individual ideals and aspirations.
4. Lastly, you will learn a systematic approach that will assist you in teaching team leaders how to build highly effective teams.

It is important to note that many of the concepts parallel business leadership models because raising student achievement is not that far removed from improving profit margins; in both contexts, people have to work together to meet common goals. Leaders in the educational and business fields have no more and no less than the organized efforts of people with which to work, and the behavioral dynamics they face are remarkably similar.

Wiseman, P. (2009). Strong schools, strong leaders: What matters most in times of change. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

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Growth Index:

A powerful tool for school improvement

 

The article titled, Growth Index, was featured in the January/February 2011 Issue of Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) Leadership Magazine. Click here to view the article in it’s entirety.

Bob Noyes, ACSA President, writes:

This issue of Leadership magazine takes a look at how schools can track individual student growth over time, a process that has educators ‘eagerly crunching the numbers to adjust instructional practices…taking dialogue about data analysis and best practices to the next level,’ write authors Perry Wiseman and Kimberly Thomas.

This value-added analysis of individual student learning gains has several advantages over reliance on API and AYP scores, which often mislabel schools that serve at-risk populations as underperforming. Examining individual student growth over time–rather than comparing a student to other students nationwide–gives schools more data with which to evaluate instructional programs. As you will read in the following pages, it can lead to accelerated learning efforts that re-engage students.”

Wiseman, P. & Thomas, K. (2011). Growth index: A powerful tool for school improvement. Association of California School Administrators Leadership Magazine, January/February Issue, 18-21.

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The Foundational School Leader

The article titled, The Foundational School Leader, was featured in the September/October 2009 Issue of Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) Leadership Magazine. Click here to view the article in it’s entirety.

Charles Weis, ACSA President, writes:

In this issue, author Perry Wiseman writes that our revolutionary times call for “a type of leadership whose goals should be not only to grow resilient schools, but to make them thrive in the face of distinctly new challenges.” The skills Wiseman describes help leaders build “an organizational, not just individual, capacity for change.” The result is schools that are almost like self-cleaning ovens. “Their people have the capacity to respond effectively to messes because they have created a culture that wants to sparkle in the midst of chaos.”

This article serves as a springboard for the aforementioned book, Strong Schools, Strong Leaders. The ideas outlined in the article summarize each of the four foundational practices specific to the book.

Wiseman, P. (2009). The foundational school leader. Association of California School Administrators Leadership Magazine, September/October Issue, 8-11.

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Professional learning communities and the effectiveness of the teams within those communities

Click here to view a pdf copy of the dissertation.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a difference in the degree of teamness in middle school teams whose schools have strong evidence of the five dimensions of a Professional Learning Community, compared to middle school teams that do not have strong evidence of the five dimensions of a Professional Learning Community.

Methodology: The researcher employed a descriptive and ex post facto study, which included middle school principals and their respective teachers in the County of San Bernardino, California. The two survey instruments utilized for data collection consisted of Huffman and Hipp’s (2003) “Professional Learning Community Questionnaire” and Harvey and Drolet’s (2003) “Characteristics of Effective Teams Survey.”

Findings: This study found that the aggregate of teacher responses rendered a significant difference in each of Harvey and Drolet’s 17 Characteristics of Effective Teams. Additionally, this study found that the means of the school means displayed a significant difference in 15 of the 17 Characteristics of Effective Teams. The data also revealed that both the schools with strong evidence of a Professional Learning Community and those schools without strong evidence of a Professional Learning Community had a substantial degree of teamness.

Conclusions: Although each group had a considerable degree of teamness, the significant differences in means put forth the conclusion that schools attempting to build a Professional Learning Community should attend to each of the 17 Characteristics of Effective Teams. It was also concluded that schools without strong evidence of a Professional Learning Community ought to spend additional time on teambuilding activities that nurture collegial relationships.

Implications for Action: Recommendations were made to assist practitioners in the charge of building a Professional Learning Community. Specific teambuilding processes were suggested. Furthermore, the researcher proposed that school principals should designate time to properly train, develop, and empower individuals who will be leading teams.

Wiseman, P. (2008). Professional learning communities and the effectiveness of the teams within those communities. (Doctoral dissertation, University of La Verne, 2008). (UMI No. 3322850).