Ensuring Teachers’ Job Suitability: A Missing Component of Instructional Leadership

Abstract

Instructional leadership can be defined as an educational leadership approach whereby the school principal is involved in a wide range of activities aiming to improve teaching and learning for all students. Surprisingly, the literature about instructional leadership practices has not mentioned school leaders’ practices for hiring appropriate teachers and for determining whether existing teachers are the “right people” for the job. This suggests that instructional leaders are not necessarily expected to ensure that the right people are on board. The current study’s goal was to explore principals’ perceptions regarding their role in ensuring teachers’ job suitability and its relation to instructional leadership. Data collection included interviews with a diverse sample of 59 Israeli principals. Data analysis revealed that school principals perceived the issue of teacher hiring/firing as complicated. Therefore, they often regarded related tasks—such as deciding which attributes are most important for effective teachers, determining how such effective teachers can be proficiently screened for hire, and executing dismissal of ineffective teachers—as impossible or impractical. The current study suggests that this perception led principals to refrain from considering the activities involved in ensuring teacher suitability as means to improve teaching and learning. Practical implications and further research are discussed.

School Leaders’ Perceptions on Barriers for Creating Inclusive Intercultural Environments and Potential Generative Ai Benefits

“…Participants' accounts are in line with previous works in different contexts that also found school leaders are unwilling to interfere and remove ineffective teachers and report various barriers as restraints (Coleman, et al, 2005;Range et al, 2012;Shaked, 2019). Within the Greek context, findings from works exploring conflict and accountability in state schools, suggest that similarly to the participants of the current work, Greek school leaders tend to prefer compromising or avoidance strategies and constantly try to be pleasant and sympathetic among all teachers and other stuff even in cases they are aware that teachers for example neglect their duties or create problems with students and colleagues (Saiti, 2015).…”