Critical review of instructional leadership in literature curriculum

Curriculum and Instructional Leadership:

A commitment to life-long and self-directed learning is essential for effective learning-centered curriculum and instructional leaders. These leaders need to have a deeper understanding of the way students learn and their level of learning. In most cases, effective instructional leaders are extremely committed and involved in both curricular and instructional issues that have a direct impact on student accomplishment ("What is Instructional Leadership?" 2005). Currently, efficient school leadership must combine the traditional leadership duties like evaluation, scheduling, maintenance of facilities, and budgeting with an increased engagement with particular teaching and learning aspects. The creation of a professional learning environment in which students constantly improve their knowledge and skills requires an understanding of how they learn. Consequently, curriculum and instructional leadership plays a critical role in the process because leaders must put curriculum and instruction first ("Leadership Professional Development Policy," 2009).

History of Curriculum and Instructional Leadership:

Since curriculum and instructional leadership is basically referred to as instructional leadership, it's a concept with a long history that can be traced back to the 19th Century. This concept emerged through the inspection systems in England, North America, and Australia. The model gained popularity in America during the 1970s because of the increased emphasis of the instructional dimension as the role of the principal. While the concept doesn't have a clear definition, it has continued to evolve since then. The main role and responsibility of the principal during the emergence of this model was instructional leadership and improvement of curriculum (Gurr & Drysdale, n.d.). Due to the confusing definitions, the concept remains complex because of numerous interpretations on what a curriculum and instructional leader does.

Components of Curriculum and Instructional Leadership:

The current approach towards instructional leadership involves the direct engagement in curricular and instructional issues or delegating these responsibilities to principals, institutional directors, and teachers by superintendents. Superintendents involved in delegating such responsibilities need to obtain a greater understanding of the necessary instructional strategies and the use of data to guide decision-making.

Some of the major components of the model include curriculum, instruction, staff development, and foundations (Morton, Burke & Rice, 2008). The curriculum component include the knowledge and theory that is most worth and how the knowledge can be developed, structured and taught to achieve learning outcomes. While instruction entails the delivery system of the curriculum, staff development is the continual improvement of employee performance. On the other hand, foundations component incorporates the impact of culture, value and beliefs, needs of the learner, information about learning, and social trends.

Strengths of the Curriculum and Instructional Leadership:

Curriculum and instructional leadership has two major strengths brought by its benefits within and outside the classroom environment. First, the result of the model is that it promotes a collaborative learning environment in which the learning process is not limited to the classroom environment and is an objective of every educator ("Instructional Leadership," n.d.). Curriculum and instructional leaders know what is happening in the classrooms, develop staff capacities, and try to maintain improvement and change. Secondly, Sharma (2012) states that this leadership promotes student satisfaction with outcome, high self-esteem and self-actualization, high morale of teachers, and students high recognition. Instructional leaders achieve this by leading the curricular basis of instructions and learning within and outside the classroom environment.

Weaknesses of Curriculum and Instructional Leadership:

Despite of its strengths and increased prominence, curriculum and instructional leadership also has some weaknesses. One of these weaknesses is that there are little or no provision for improving and supporting the development of new skills in the instructional leadership domain. Actually, this domain lacks policies, technical assistance, and changes in role expectations to support the use of new knowledge and skills (Chell, n.d.). The other weakness is that this model requires an increased focus on teaching and learning to become the main aim of the principal in order to be effective. Without such focus, the efficiency of focus on results, student achievement, and students learning at high levels is nearly impossible (Lunenberg & Irby, n.d.).

Limitation of Curriculum and Instructional Leadership:

While this leadership approach seems to be a suitable model because of the learning-centered principle, its main limitation is that it doesn't promote administrative leadership. Consequently, the approach is ineffective in combining and maintaining the disparate elements of good schooling (DuFour, 2002). This limitation has contributed to the emergence of claims in several sectors that the leadership approach is flawed. The other limitation is that the approach tends to be ineffective in helping teachers in their professional development because of the need for teachers to be resource providers (Orozco, 2001).

Conclusion:

Curriculum and instructional leadership is an appropriate model within the educational context because it promotes student development within and outside the classroom environment. This approach is quite effective in the educational context because it helps schools to develop the needed leadership from principals who focus on advancing staff and student learning.