Increasing principals’ time on instructional leadership: exploring the SAM® process
| Published date | 20 August 2019 |
| Pages | 19-37 |
| Date | 20 August 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-07-2018-0131 |
| Author | Ellen Goldring,Jason Grissom,Christine M. Neumerski,Richard Blissett,Joseph Murphy,Andrew Porter |
| Subject Matter | Education,Administration & policy in education,School administration/policy,Educational administration,Leadership in education |
Increasing principals’time on
instructional leadership:
exploring the SAM® process
Ellen Goldring
Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Jason Grissom
Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations,
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Christine M. Neumerski
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Richard Blissett
College of Education and Human Services,
Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey, USA
Joseph Murphy
Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA, and
Andrew Porter
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
Purpose –Despite increased focus on the importance of the time principals spend on instructional
leadership, there is little research on practical ways to help principals manage their time to achieve this goal.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the implementation of the school administration manager (SAM)
process: a unique program designed to help principals orient their time toward instructional activities.
Design/methodology/approach –This mixed-methods study combines data from multiple sources
including: case studies of four districts that involved interviews with principals and program staff in 16
schools; interviews with network-level staff and administrators; a survey of 387 principals and 378 program
staff; and time use data collected by shadowers as well as a time-tracking calendar system for 373 principals.
Findings –Principals and their teams implemented the SAM process with relatively high fidelity. In
addition, most participated in the program to increase time spent on instructional tasks. Indeed, principals’
time use shifted from managerial to instructional tasks as they implemented the program. However, there
were important challenges related to the time and personnel resources required to implement the program as
well as questions about the quality of the instructional leadership time spent.
Originality/value –This studydescribes not only timeallocation, but also a processthrough which principals
intentionallysought to shift their time toward instructional leadershipactivities. The insights gainedfrom the
implementation and outcomes of this process provide concrete direction for policymakers, practitioners and
researchers lookingfor ways to change the time principals spend on instructional leadership.
Keywords Principals, Instructional leadership, Principal time use
Paper type Research paper
Research over the past 35 years consistently demonstrates that principals spend minimal
amounts of time on instructional leadership activities (Murphy, 1990; Grissom et al., 2013;
Horng et al., 2010; May and Supovitz, 2011; May et al., 2012). This regularity persists in the
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 58 No. 1, 2020
pp. 19-37
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/JEA-07-2018-0131
Received 15 August 2018
Revised 19 February 2019
12 June 2019
11 July 2019
Accepted 17 July 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
This study was commissioned by The Wallace Foundation. It was conducted by researchers at
Vanderbilt University and the University of Pennsylvania. The contents expressed in this paper are
those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the sponsor.
19
Instructional
leadership
face of a large body of scholarship in educational administration that argues that principal
instructional leadership is a key factor in school success (e.g. Leithwood and Jantzi, 2006;
Hallinger, 2005; Neumerski, 2013; Spillane et al., 2003; Supovitz et al., 2010). Implicit in much
of this literature is the idea that increasing the time principals spend on instructional
leadership will improve the school’s culture, teaching and, ultimately, student outcomes.
Although there is no consensus in the field that increasing principals’time on instruction is
necessarily worthwhile (e.g. Horng et al., 2010), scholarship in educational administration
generally has coalesced around an expectation that effective principals find ways to devote
substantial time to instructional leadership (Neumerski, 2013; Murphy et al., 2016).
Administered by the National SAM Innovation Project (NSIP), the SAM® process, or school
administrator management process, was designed to address this disconnect between
expectations that principals invest heavily in instructional leadership and the time they
typically do invest in practice. According to the NSIP website, the SAM process is a
“professional development process using a unique set of tools to change a principal’sfocus
from school management tasks to instructional leadership activities directly connected to
improving teaching and learning”[1]. To this end, the principal is trained and supported to
employ a specific set of strategies to reorient the workday toward instructional engagement.
These strategies include setting ambitious goals for instructional time allocation, detailed time
tracking via a calendar system, daily meetings with a support person (called a school
administration manager (SAM)) to analyze time and strategize about time use, and the
establishment of a “first responder”system for handling administrative tasks that might
otherwise supersede principals’instructional time. As of August 2015, NSIP provided support
to over 700 schools and principal supervisors across 21 states to implement the SAM process[2].
Evidence from an earlier study suggests that the SAM process can substantially increase
principals’time spent on instructional leadership (Turnbull et al., 2009). This study,
however, was based on a less developed iteration of SAM and occurred prior to the
widespread adoption of rigorous teacher evaluation systems in the USA that have
dramatically altered the time demands on school principals (Neumerski et al., 2018; Grissom
and Youngs, 2015). The expansion of SAM and the promise of the intervention for
influencing principal practice in the area of instruction warrant a new investigation.
Employing mixed methods, we characterize the current state of the SAM process and
examine quantitative evidence of its impact on principal time use while also providing a
deep look at implementation. To achieve these goals, we engaged in a multi-step research
process that paired analysis of large-scale data from principal surveys administered to all
SAM principals in the USA and proprietary time-log data and calendar data from those
principals with interviews of leadership teams’experiences with SAM in 16 schools in four
urban districts.
We address the following research questions:
RQ1. What are principals’experiences with implementation? How closely do they adhere
to the SAM process, and what challenges do they face to this implementation?
RQ2. What are principals’motivations for implementing SAM?
RQ3. What benefits do principals perceive from the SAM process?
RQ4. To what degree do SAM principals change their time allocation, particularly
toward the area of instructional leadership?
We begin by grounding our investigation in a review of the research on principals’
instructional leadership time allocation. We then describe the SAM process in detail before
turning to our data and methods. Next, we present the results of our interviews, survey and
time use analysis. The final section concludes with a discussion of implications of this study
for principal practice and future research in the field.
20
JEA
58,1
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