Principal leadership : enhancing academic success for students in high-poverty elementary schools

The role of the principal has evolved over the past few decades from a managerial role to an instructional leader. The type of setting, environment or conditions of the school may impact the everyday practices of the elementary principal as a result the day to day tasks can vary depending on their school environment and context. Schools faced with issues of high-poverty, high-minority demographics, high mobility and low student achievement may be conflicted on prioritizing their daily practices. Depending on the school contexts in which they work, principals face very different sets of challenges. Thus, there is a need to continue to examine instructional leadership particularly in schools that serve a high number of economically disadvantage students. The study followed a qualitative approach with grounded theory. Participants included three principals, three teachers and three instructional leadership members, purposefully selected in each of the three schools focus of the study. Data was collected through individual interviews, observations and a document review. The findings revealed that principals in these high-poverty schools used the following instructional practices; creating an instructional plan with expectations, building a system of collaboration and support, implementing a support system for students and designing a system to monitor students and teachers. Furthermore, the study found the following contextual challenges, poverty, high mobility, how parent involvement, student mental health, parent concerns, high number of English Language Learners and Refugee students and community affairs. The contexts resulted in a variation of practices from each school. The practices were not all instructional but also social emotional learning practices that demonstrated a great focus on the whole child. Based on these practices, a set of strategies was revealed. These five strategies were frequently used in all three schools. They included allocating funds for additional support positions, building collaboration and accountability, creating systems and developing community outreach and partnerships