Rose Ylimaki and NAU Team Study Principals’ Leadership in Arizona
The International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP), the largest and most long-standing research network in the field of educational leadership worldwide, has named Professor Rose Ylimaki, Del & Jewell Lewis Endowed Chair in Educational Leadership, as co-leader of the network for her empirical and theoretical expertise in leadership and her record of scholarship The ISSPP has identified principal leadership practices that contribute to student achievement in schools situated in traditionally marginalized communities around the world, and findings have been published in over 150 top-tier journals (e.g., Educational Administration Quarterly, Journal of School Leadership, Journal of Educational Administration) and volumes (e.g. Springer). Findings of successful principal practices include a positive school culture, quality teaching with culturally responsive practices, collaborative leadership capacity, wellness, quality of life, equity, and teacher job satisfaction. Teacher job satisfaction has been linked to teacher retention.
Ylimaki is a long-standing member of the network from the United States, and she now co-leads the ISSPP with Professor Qing Gu from the University College-London. When Christopher Day initiated the ISSPP project twenty years ago with seven countries, research methods were multi-perspective qualitative case studies. Under Ylimaki and Gu’s leadership, the ISSPP has expanded to include an interdisciplinary framework, an internationally validated survey, and updated qualitative interviews in a comparative, mixed methods approach.
Since assuming the position of Del and Jewell Lewis Endowed Chair at NAU, Ylimaki has expanded ISSPP in Arizona with a team of faculty at NAU (Donna Lewis, Robyn Conrad-Hansen, Michael Schwanenberger, Mary Dereshiwsky, Joe Martin, and Lynnette Brunderman) as well as doctoral students working on ISSPP for their dissertations. The Arizona team is part of a U.S. team with other scholars conducting case studies in Massachusetts, Alabama, Texas, Idaho, and (potentially) Hawaii. The ISSPP now includes 27 countries, including Mexico, Chile, England, Spain, Australia, Norway, and China among others. With this project, Ylimaki, NAU colleagues, and doctoral students contribute to the NAU strategic plan for research and discovery, including particularly objectives to increase nationally and internationally recognized research, scholarship, and creative endeavors. Further, NAU doctoral students in PK-12 Leadership apply ISSPP research about how leadership contributes to student achievement, wellness, and equity to their own practices.
To date, the NAU research team has developed Arizona case studies that include a school near the U.S.-Mexico border and a school in a Navajo reservation community. The principal of the school in the Navajo reservation community is one of six ISSPP cases selected from over 200 cases for a UNESCO video to accompany a GEM Report that features the ISSPP. Research on Arizona schools will appear in an upcoming issue of Journal of School Leadership among other journals as well as a volume.
Drawing on the ISSPP research, Ylimaki has also constructed a school development project (AZiLDR) with Lynnette Brunderman, Faculty Emerita, UofA. Ylimaki and Brunderman work with cohorts of schools and help principals develop leadership teams with teacher leaders, assistant principals, counselors, and a district representative for three years. Content features ISSPP research findings and data as sources of reflection as well as topics or issues needed by particular schools. A tested delivery system features school visits, virtual network meetings, and an in-person summer institute. To date, AZiLDR has served over 100 schools across Arizona, yielding promising results with over 87% of participating schools improving student achievement by one to two letter grades and qualitative data indicating the ways in which AZiLDR transformed school cultures and fostered teacher leadership for sustainable change.