40 INVITED CHAPTERS
confronted with unexpected situations, this approach focuses instead on achieving reliability
through strategies that increase mindfulness and resilience: stimulating development of a
variety of alternative responses to challenging situations, resilient engagement with local
circumstances as they develop, responding rapidly to problems and anomalies, monitoring
results, and making adjustments as needed (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001).
Implications for university programs. How do university programs support reliability of
practice that is based on mindfulness and resilience rather than on prescribed practices? A
starting point is to develop and organize a knowledge base that is rich with possibilities and
which draws broadly from craft knowledge and case studies as well as traditional research.
Such a knowledge base would be purposefully eclectic, even to the point of including
contradictory practices, as Donmoyer (2001) suggested. Drawing on this knowledge,
preparation programs would emphasize helping candidates learn to use a broad repertoire of
strategies that might be useful in different school situations. As Weick and Sutcliffe (2001)
emphasize, this variety of approaches is valuable, not only because it offers alternatives for
responding, but also because it helps people in the situation notice more quickly when
existing procedures are not sufficient.
Of course, a knowledge base of possibilities, by itself, doesn’t instill much public
confidence in the profession or in the reliability of local practice. Thus, an essential
complement is to prepare principals to constantly monitor the results of their leadership
practices. Regular feedback allows principals to approach their work as a creative, ongoing
process. Frequent measures of organizational processes have been widely described as
essential in such different contexts as quality improvement programs (Deming, 1986),
cultures supporting learning (Shepard, 2000), and self-managing work teams (Rehm, 1999).
As the popular slogan, “Ready, fire, aim” implies, failures are sometimes best avoided by
repeated cycles of trial, feedback, correction, and re-trial, rather than by efforts to ensure
exactly the right leadership practice on the first attempt. Experience suggests that principals
can almost always count on one thing: whatever they try initially, it will not work with
everyone involved. Adjustments are needed to extend the impact of leadership actions, and
time is usually available for iterative improvements as long as school leaders have ongoing
information on results of leadership actions.
In schools, timely feedback on leadership practices means measuring more than just
student achievement, because a leader’s actions often have delayed and indirect effects on
learning. More immediate measures focus on aspects of the school itself that leaders can
influence and that are associated with learning. The school leadership frameworks that I
outlined earlier offer one approach. We have recommended that principals develop regular
feedback on the level of engagement that school conditions are intended to stimulate in
students, staff, and families, and to supplement this with regular monitoring of the nine school
conditions. Before a knowledge base of possibilities can serve as a trusted basis for
professional practice, feedback on school leadership will need to be as ubiquitous as the
automobile dashboards that provide essential information while we drive. For this to happen,
we need to develop practical measures that principals can use to monitor how their actions
affect the conditions that contribute to student learning and school character.
SHARE RESPONSIBILITY FOR PRINCIPAL PREPARATION
The first two recommendations for reframing school leadership’s professional public
contract highlight a long-standing dilemma facing university principal preparation programs.
On the one hand, the capabilities needed to lead civic dialog about school purposes and then