Mapping Leadership: The Tasks That Matter for Improving Teaching and Learning in Schools, July/2017

Drawing on twenty years of research in school effectiveness, this book presents a distributed model of task-based school leadership that leads to continuous school improvement. The book outlines the tasks school leadership teams must focus on to improve teaching and learning, grouped into the following five domains:

1. Focus on Learning
2. Monitoring Teaching and Learning
3. Building Nested Learning Communities
4. Acquiring and Allocating Resources
5. Maintaining a Safe and Effective Learning Environment

Recognizing that the principal is a single actor in a complex web of activity influencing student learning, the focus is not only on the principal’s role but on a range of leadership and instructional practices to be shared across the leadership team (including APs, counselors, teachers, and support personnel). These tasks, organized into 21 subdomains, have been demonstrated through extensive research to contribute to improved student learning.

About the Authors:

Richard Halverson is a Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education. Rich co-directs the Wisconsin Collaborative Education Research Network and the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning project, and was a co-founder and co-director of the Games + Learning + Society Research Center. He is a former high school teacher and administrator. He is co-author (with Allan Collins) of Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology.

Carolyn Kelley is Senior Associate Dean for Academic Programs in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Jim and Georgia Thompson Distinguished Professor of Education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. She co-directs the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning project, and is co-author (with Jim Shaw) of Learning First!.