CALL Project Director
Mark BlitzCALL Project Director Mark Blitz has contributed a chapter to the edited volume, Research-based Instructional Practices of Effective Principals. This collection of research and instructional leadership strategies is useful for aspiring and practicing school leaders.

From Information Age Publishing: “Each author builds on research-based instructional practice in schools and districts in which they have worked, either as principals or as school-university or service-provider partners. They provide examples, action plans, frameworks, lessons learned, and strategies to successfully develop and implement research- based instruction and supporting structures in schools and classrooms.”

Dr. Blitz’s chapter, Working With Actionable Data by Assessing Distributed Instructional Leadership, references the CALL Assessment and Feedback System as an example of how to collect practice-oriented data to develop leadership in schools. The CALL System begins with an online survey that measures key instructional leadership tasks in a school or district. To do this, CALL does not focus on a specific person (i.e. principal). Rather, the CALL approach to survey design and inquiry involves a Distributed Leadership lens in order to measure key practices, activities, and routines in a school. By doing so, schools are able to focus on the work that needs to be done rather than spend counter-productive energy assessing a specific person. And, given that leadership practice is usually distributed by nature, focusing on the who rather than the what is ineffective given that we do not know who engages in what specific practice in a particular school.

Other chapters in this volume include:

Helping Best Practices Win: How School Leaders Can Impact Instruction

High Octane Instructional Leadership: The Attributes of Turnaround Leaders

Bringing the “Good”: The Urgency of Remarkable School Leadership in Disruptive Times