Effective Principal Development

The learning experiences and support that strengthen school leadership

Effective principal development cultivates professional judgment. It helps leaders interpret evidence, act with educational purpose, and enable colleagues to improve their practice. Its value is discernible in the questions a principal asks about learning, the quality of feedback teachers receive, and the school’s response when a child needs support.

In Developing Expert Principals, Linda Darling-Hammond and her colleagues identify elements that give this learning substance: opportunities to apply knowledge in practice; sustained attention to instruction, people, organisational learning, and change; mentoring or coaching; feedback and reflection; professional community; and proactive recruitment into preparation. Related research associates well-designed principal learning with stronger leadership practice and positive outcomes for teachers and students.[1, 2]

Educational purpose and ethical discernment

A development program needs a considered account of the principal’s educational responsibilities. The Professional Standards for Educational Leaders place student learning and wellbeing alongside ethics, equity, care, and professional responsibility. These commitments establish the purposes against which leadership decisions can be judged.[4]

Ethical deliberation becomes concrete through cases in which school values come under pressure. If a family requests preferential treatment that would disadvantage other children, participants can examine the competing interests, justify a response, and identify whose perspective has been overlooked. The exercise brings a general commitment to fairness into the particulars of a decision.

Inclusion also requires scrutiny of ordinary practice. When reviewing achievement, a principal should examine who is progressing, who encounters barriers, and whether support reaches those who need it. For a school committed to whole-child education, the scope includes academic learning, emotional growth, relationships, practical capabilities, and social responsibility.

Proactive recruitment of promising teacher leaders

Preparation begins with discerning selection. The recruitment element in Darling-Hammond and colleagues’ account calls for schools to identify instructionally capable teachers with the potential to lead adults. UNESCO’s global review likewise emphasises identifying, selecting, and preparing people with appropriate leadership capabilities.[1, 9]

Selection should draw on evidence of teaching quality, integrity, judgment, and contribution to colleagues’ learning. Accomplishment in the classroom provides a foundation; school leadership extends the responsibility to influencing practice across an organisation.

Candidates might facilitate a discussion of student work, analyse an instructional problem, and respond to feedback on their approach. Such tasks make aspects of leadership potential observable. Recruitment should also reach capable colleagues whose quietness, limited informal connections, or lack of previous opportunity may have obscured their contribution.

A coherent pathway matched to the leader

Preparation, appointment, induction, and continuing development should form a coherent pathway. RAND’s study of principal pipelines in six large United States districts found benefits from coordinating standards, preparation, selection, and support. The findings concern the system as a whole; they do not establish the independent contribution of each component.[8]

The pathway should reflect changing responsibilities. Aspiring principals need supervised opportunities to exercise judgment. Newly appointed principals need support in establishing sound routines, while experienced leaders may be ready to address more complex problems or prepare others for leadership. An initial appraisal of the individual’s strengths and the school’s needs should inform the learning priorities.

Differentiation also requires attention to context. A kindergarten principal needs a secure understanding of developmentally appropriate learning and family relationships. A junior high principal must attend to subject leadership and adolescent development. Whoever enters an unfamiliar school needs time to understand its community before deciding what should change. Common expectations can accommodate these differences without losing coherence.

Authentic learning through supervised practice

Authentic learning places participants in situations that require them to apply their developing leadership knowledge and skills. Research on principal preparation identifies school-based internships and work on real problems, guided by experienced practitioners, as valuable features of learning.[2]

An aspiring principal might investigate why students struggle to explain mathematical ideas. Examining student responses, observing lessons, and consulting teachers would inform a small improvement effort. Reviewing the subsequent evidence would then reveal what changed and what remained unresolved.

The responsibility must be consequential enough to require judgment and commensurate with the participant’s authority and supervision. Observing a meeting offers access to others’ practice; preparing its agenda, facilitating discussion, and following up decisions require the participant to act. The supervising leader retains oversight of the consequences for students and staff.

Study gives participants concepts with which to interpret experience. Rehearsal allows them to test a response before using it in a consequential encounter: they can practise a difficult feedback conversation, receive criticism, and revise their approach. Preparation, feedback, and another attempt make experience available for deliberate learning.

A sustained focus on leading instruction

Instructional leadership requires the ability to recognise worthwhile learning and help teachers strengthen it. Grissom, Egalite, and Lindsay’s research synthesis identifies an instructional focus in principals’ work with teachers as one of four central practices, alongside a productive school climate, collaboration, and effective management of people and resources.[3]

Development should cultivate assessment literacy and an understanding of curriculum coherence, the intellectual demands of learning tasks, and differing learner needs. Participants need to examine students’ thinking and work in relation to the intended learning. Knowledge of subject and age-group differences enables more discerning questions and helps leaders recognise when to draw on specialist expertise.

A principal and mentor could examine samples of student writing before visiting lessons, then compare their observations and identify a teaching question to explore with staff. This connects classroom evidence with professional dialogue about how learning might improve.

Where student ownership is an educational commitment, the inquiry should include whether students understand learning goals, exercise meaningful choice, and use feedback to improve. A completed activity or attractive display offers limited evidence unless the principal examines the understanding it represents.

Developing people and sharing leadership

Developing colleagues requires sensitivity to how adults learn and to differences in knowledge, confidence, and experience. A beginning teacher may need modelling and frequent follow-up. An experienced teacher confronting an instructional difficulty may benefit from collaborative inquiry. Someone preparing to lead a team needs practice in facilitating adult learning, accompanied by feedback on that responsibility.

Principals must also learn to conduct candid conversations about performance. Describing evidence, listening to an explanation, agreeing a specific next step, and reviewing progress give the conversation direction. Care for the colleague and responsibility for students remain obligations throughout.

Shared leadership depends on a workable distribution of authority and support. A grade leader charged with improving collaborative planning needs time and the authority to organise it. The principal remains engaged in the leader’s development and in examining whether the arrangement benefits teaching and students. Delegation therefore becomes an opportunity to develop professional agency within clear responsibilities.

Creating a collaborative learning organisation

A collaborative learning organisation establishes ways for staff to investigate practice together and retain what they learn. Kools and Stoll’s OECD framework connects this with a shared focus on students, continuing staff learning, inquiry, knowledge exchange, and engagement with the wider environment.[5]

Principals need practice in facilitating these processes. A meeting can give teachers space to examine a learning problem, test an approach, and return with evidence. The leader’s work includes eliciting quieter voices, questioning assumptions respectfully, and sustaining the group’s attention to the inquiry.

A grade team investigating students’ difficulty explaining their reasoning might agree a teaching adjustment and examine fresh responses at its next meeting. The principal supports the investigation without supplying every answer. Recording the findings preserves institutional memory and makes the learning available to colleagues beyond the team.

This work calls for relational trust and professional candour. Staff need to be able to discuss an unsuccessful lesson honestly while remaining accountable for improvement. Principals can model that disposition by allowing colleagues to examine their own unresolved leadership questions.

Leading change through disciplined implementation

Leading change involves carrying an educational intention into sustained practice. The Education Endowment Foundation’s implementation guidance describes four flexible phases: exploring an approach, preparing for it, supporting delivery, and sustaining it.[6]

A principal learning to introduce a change in assessment feedback could begin by defining the learning problem, consulting teachers, examining relevant evidence, and assessing whether staff have the requisite time and knowledge. The plan would identify the essential practices, the support available, and the evidence that will inform adjustments.

A limited trial can expose difficulties before wider adoption. Deciding which existing work can stop also belongs within implementation planning, so that the proposed change is manageable.

Principals should learn to interpret resistance with discernment. A teacher’s objection may disclose a practical impediment, disagreement about the evidence, or a learning need that has not been addressed. The response should follow the diagnosis. Examining implementation alongside outcomes helps distinguish an unsuitable approach from one that has received insufficient support.

Skilled mentoring and coaching

Mentoring and coaching give principals access to an experienced person who can help them interpret difficult situations and refine their decisions. Research on principal learning identifies these as valuable supports, particularly when connected to applied learning.[2]

Mentoring may orient a leader to the role, its responsibilities, and the local context. Coaching may focus more closely on an aspect of practice through observation, questioning, rehearsal, and feedback. The functions may overlap, so programs should clarify what support is intended.

A coach needs an informed understanding of schools, the ability to recognise effective leadership, and the capacity to challenge respectfully. Agendas, observation notes, and recent decisions give the work an evidential basis. Before a difficult staff meeting, the principal and coach might rehearse the opening and anticipate responses; afterwards, they can examine what happened.

Agreements about confidentiality, evaluation, and matters requiring escalation establish the boundaries within which the relationship can be dependable.

Specific feedback and disciplined reflection

Feedback identifies a change in practice; reflection examines the reasoning that makes the change necessary. EEF guidance on professional development highlights goal setting, feedback, and revisiting learning. These provide useful design principles for leadership development, although the guidance does not directly test a principal program.[7]

A coach might observe that a principal answered most questions in a team meeting before colleagues had time to respond. They could agree that the principal will allow a longer pause and invite alternative explanations at the next meeting. The feedback now has a specific action through which it can be tested.

Reflection would examine the assumptions behind the original conduct: whether the principal expected quick answers to reassure staff, or whether discomfort with uncertainty curtailed participation. Reviewing the next meeting would help establish a better balance between guidance and shared thinking.

A concise record of the situation, response, consequences, and next step can sustain this inquiry. Feedback from teachers, students, and families can broaden the account when gathered respectfully and interpreted in context. The purpose is a more accurate understanding of practice that informs the next decision.

Cohorts and professional networks with a learning purpose

Cohorts offer principals a continuing professional community in which to examine problems and test their thinking. The structures described by Darling-Hammond and colleagues acquire substance through sustained relationships and responsibility for one another’s learning.[1]

One meeting might examine a member’s difficulty improving teacher collaboration. Colleagues would clarify the problem, scrutinise the evidence, and consider alternative interpretations. The principal would choose a response and report back at the next meeting. A facilitator sustains the distinction between informed challenge and judgment of the person.

Visits to other schools can extend this inquiry when participants bring a clear question and examine what they observe. An approach encountered elsewhere needs appraisal against local learners, staffing, and resources. Confidentiality and regular participation help the network become a dependable source of collegial learning.

Learning with students and the wider community

Principals must learn to listen beyond the leadership team. The Professional Standards for Educational Leaders explicitly include meaningful engagement with families and communities.[4]

A development assignment could investigate how different families experience school communication. Comparing participation patterns and speaking with families whose views are seldom heard would inform a more accessible approach. The principal would then test it and examine the response.

Students’ accounts also belong within educational deliberation. A principal reviewing homework or assessment can ask what helps students learn, where they encounter difficulty, and what support is missing. The conversations need to be accessible to younger children and to students with different communication needs. Explaining which decisions followed, and why some suggestions could not be adopted, gives participation an intelligible consequence.

Organisational competence and the responsibilities of governance

Principals need competence in staffing, timetabling, and resource allocation to protect learning time. UNESCO’s global report draws attention to the operational demands on leaders and their preparation needs in areas such as financial management and data use.[9]

Development can connect these responsibilities to an educational decision. A proposal for additional learning support requires the principal to examine need, compare staffing options, estimate costs, and justify a recommendation to the appropriate decision maker. Preparation must also encompass the school’s safeguarding procedures and the limits of the principal’s authority.

Boards, foundations, and supervising leaders bear responsibility for the conditions in which development can be used. Protected time, appropriate coaching, manageable priorities, and clear decision rights give principals scope to apply their learning. Competing administrative demands can otherwise consume the time required for instructional leadership.

Supervising leaders should therefore scrutinise their own arrangements. Meeting schedules, reporting requirements, and approval processes may support educational priorities or repeatedly interrupt them. Improving those conditions forms part of the organisation’s responsibility for principal development.

Evaluating development through changes in practice and school experience

Evaluation begins with specifying what a principal will learn to do and what would count as progress. Observations, staff feedback, and relevant school evidence can establish the starting point and a manageable set of priorities.

For a principal developing coaching skills, the evidence might include the quality of feedback conversations, teachers’ understanding of their next steps, and subsequent changes in teaching. An attendance project would require a different evidential basis, including patterns across student groups and families’ explanations of barriers.

Where appropriate, review should extend to students’ learning, participation, belonging, and access to support. Measures need a defensible relationship to the purpose of the work and should be interpreted alongside evidence about implementation and context.

Because school outcomes have many influences, improvement following training does not by itself establish causation. The immediate inquiry concerns changes in leadership practice; a longer review can examine their contribution to teaching and students’ experience.

Bringing the elements into a manageable program

A school or foundation could organise these elements around one significant improvement priority over a year, adapting the program to the leader’s experience and the school’s capacity.

An initial review of leadership practice and school needs would establish one or two learning goals. Focused study would inform a supervised project, with regular coaching and recurring cohort meetings in which the principal examines evidence from the work. Termly reviews would consider progress, workload, and the support required. The year-end review would establish what changed, what should continue, and the next development priority.

For an aspiring principal, the project belongs within supervised preparation. For a serving principal, it should form part of the school’s improvement work. In either case, a defined educational purpose gives direction to repeated opportunities for application and revision.

Principal development should enable leaders to make better educational decisions and develop others’ capacity to contribute. Its consequences should become discernible in the quality of teaching and in the daily experience of the children and adults entrusted to the school’s care.

Sources

1. Darling-Hammond, L., Wechsler, M. E., Levin, S., Leung-Gagné, M., Tozer, S., & Kee Campoli, A. (2024). Developing expert principals: Professional learning that matters. Routledge.
2. Darling-Hammond, L., Wechsler, M. E., Levin, S., Leung-Gagné, M., & Tozer, S. (2022). Developing effective principals: What kind of learning matters? Learning Policy Institute.
3. Grissom, J. A., Egalite, A. J., & Lindsay, C. A. (2021). How principals affect students and schools: A systematic synthesis of two decades of research. The Wallace Foundation.
4. National Policy Board for Educational Administration. (2015). Professional standards for educational leaders 2015.
5. Kools, M., & Stoll, L. (2016). What makes a school a learning organisation? OECD Education Working Papers, No. 137. OECD Publishing.
6. Education Endowment Foundation. (2024). A school’s guide to implementation. Third edition.
7. Education Endowment Foundation. (2021). Effective professional development.
8. Gates, S. M., Baird, M. D., Master, B. K., & Chavez-Herrerias, E. R. (2019). Principal pipelines: A feasible, affordable, and effective way for districts to improve schools. RAND Corporation.
9. UNESCO. (2024). Global education monitoring report 2024/5: Leadership in education: Lead for learning.