Empowering Teachers : What Successful Principals Do

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Summary: It's a great reference tool of strategies and practices.
Review: Empowering Teachers: What Successful Principals Do

Blasé, J. & Blasé, J.R.. (1994). Empowering Teachers: What Successful Principals Do. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc. ISBN 0-8039-6092-1

The Objective of Empowering Teachers is to clearly explain what successful principals do to empower teachers, ultimately improving learning. The book is based on data collected from 285 teachers in 11 schools that participated in a study associated with Carl Glickman's League of Professional Schools. The authors have based their book on shared governance, which they suggest is the foundation necessary for empowerment to occur. Therefore Blasé & Blasé wrote about common strategies and practices of successful principals who implemented shared governance. Only those principals described as successful were studied; success was measured based on League Criteria, annual reports, on site visitations, teacher reports and facilitator reports. The book, Empowering Teachers, is broken into ten easy to read chapters: 1) Shared Governance 2) Trusting the Experts: Why do we need trust 3) Creating Structures that help Teachers do Their Best 4) Supportive Resources 5) Encouraging Autonomy and Innovation 6) Modeling Personal Dimensions 7) About Risk and Threat 8) Valuing and Rewarding Good Work 9) Helping Solve Problems 10) Providing Leadership That is Facilitative and Democratic Each chapter describes a strategy, discusses its importance, and provides a break down of specific practices that are effective in implementing the strategy. An abundance of teacher feedback is also provided which describes how teachers felt about principals' techniques. The strategies the principals used affected the "three dimensions of teacher empowerment" to improve learning: · "The affective dimension: teacher satisfaction, motivation, esteem, confidence, security, sense of inclusion, identification with the group and its work (sense of "we") · The classroom dimension: innovation, creativity, reflection, autonomy, individualization of instruction, professional growth, classroom efficacy. · The schoolwide dimension: expression, ownership, commitment, sense of team, and schoolwide efficacy" Empowering Teachers could be utilized as a reference tool throughout a principal's career because it provides essential strategies for success.