The Instructional Leadership Toolbox: A Handbook for Improving Practice

"I applaud Gupton′s focus on the learner. This is the most important tenet for a school administrator′s decision making. Each chapter describes a portion of school leadership that the successful principal needs to master."
―Sharon Madsen Redfern, Principal
Highland Park Elementary School, Lewistown, MT

Use these powerful leadership tools to build teamwork and improve instruction!

Every school leader needs a toolbox of strategies for improving teaching and learning schoolwide. In this second edition of The Instructional Leadership Toolbox, Sandra Lee Gupton examines the role of principals in leading instruction and provides practical ways for leaders to reflect on and improve their practice.

Emphasizing a democratic approach that involves stakeholders in instructional leadership, this resource offers a compendium of helpful skills and strategies drawn from current research and theory in school administration. The book provides:

• Updated standards from NAESP and ISLLC
• New research that shows how a principal′s actions can affect student achievement
• Questions for reflective practice
• Quotes and examples of instructional leadership strategies by practicing principals and veteran educators
• Additional resources such as Web sites, workbooks, books, and articles

This valuable guide provides a blueprint that demonstrates how school leaders can focus on student learning, while using specific tools to empower others and build teams for a common goal: increased student achievement.

Sandra Lee Gupton, EdD, is Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida, where she has been serving for the past six years as Chairperson of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Before coming to UNF, she was Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Southern Mississippi for eleven years. Her experiences before coming to higher education include more than twenty years in various positions in PreK–12 public schools, including English and reading teacher, high school principal, director of instruction, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, and superintendent in Georgia and North Carolina schools.

Sandra’s professional interests are centered on leadership issues related to PreK–12 and higher education leadership effectiveness, gender equity, program reform, and school improvement. Her early research on gender equity in educational leadership led to many presentations, the publication of several articles, and the 1996 Corwin publication Highly Successful Women Administrators: The Inside Stories of How They Got There, offering advice to prospective women administrators in education. Her research and writing in recent years have been focused on the role of academic chairpersons and leadership in higher education.