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The Brain and Strengths Based School Leadership

By: Sheryl G. Feinstein, Robert W. Kiner

Foreword by Jerry D. Weast

The authors connect current cognitive research with the challenges of educational leadership, outline four leadership styles, and demonstrate how to capitalize on your strengths.

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Product Details

Grade Level: K-12
ISBN: 9781412988452
Published By: Corwin
Year: 2011
Page Count: 224
Publication date: May 30, 2012

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Description

Build on individual strengths for optimized leadership

Best-selling author Sheryl G. Feinstein demonstrates how educational leaders can apply a popular business prototype of leadership strengths and the latest brain research to lead effectively. Her new book, co-authored by veteran administrator and instructional leader Robert W. Kiner, outlines four leadership styles—executer, relationship builder, influencer, and strategic thinker—and shows how to recognize and capitalize on these styles in order to:

Create a positive school culture
Mentor and supervise teachers
Keep track of standardized testing
Foster community partnerships
Use data to inform curriculum and instruction

The authors connect current cognitive research with the challenges of educational leadership, using vignettes and discussion questions to make clear the links between neural wiring, learning, and leading. Learn how to make the most of your own talents and also play to the strengths of everyone on your team.

Key features

Features and Benefits:

Begins with a quiz to help the reader determine his/her leadership style
Explains how leaders can use brain-compatible strategies while addressing hot topics such as school safety, violence, diversity, gender differences, and role modeling
Incorporates interviews, quotes, and actual scenarios involving superintendents, vice principals, curriculum specialists, teachers, and students
Presents quick reference Pertinent Points in each chapter to highlight key concepts
Devotes an entire chapter to discussing issues of concern for specific grade levels, including topics such as the need for developmentally appropriate kindergarten programs that focus on social and emotional development, the need to explore and have integrated subjects in middle school, and the need to encourage autonomy and a positive identity in high school
Provides a chapter on how to use the book in a book club setting, with discussion and reflection questions correlated to each chapter

Author(s)

Sheryl G. Feinstein

Learn more about Sheryl Feinstein's PD offerings

Sheryl Feinstein is an Associate Professor at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD where she teaches in the Education Department. She is the author of a number of books, including Secrets of the Teenage Brain 2nd Ed (2009), Corwin Press; The Praeger Handbook of Learning and the Brain 2 vol. (2006), Praeger Publisher; Parenting the Teenage Brain: Understanding a Work in Progress, Teaching the At Risk Teenage Brain, and Inside the Teenage Brain: Understanding a Work in Progress (2009), Rowman & Littlefield Publisher; 101 Insights and Strategies for Parenting Teenagers (Fall, 2009), Healthy Learning Publishers; and Tanzanian Women in Their Own Words: Stories of Chronic Illness and Disability, (2009), Lexington Press.

In addition to teaching at Augustana College, Feinstein consults at a correctional facility for adolescent boys and at a separate site for Emotionally/Behaviorally Disturbed (EBD) adolescents in Minnesota. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2007-2008 to Tanzania where she taught at Tumaini University in Iringa and conducted research involving the adolescent. In 2006 she was a fellow at Oxford, UK.

Prior to joining Augustana College, Feinstein was an administrator for a K-12 school district in Minnesota and taught in the public schools in South Dakota and a private school in Missouri.

Robert W. Kiner

For nearly three decades, Dr. Robert Kiner was a K-12 public school administrator and instructional leader. He served as a middle school and high school assistant principal, middle school and high school principal, and held key central office positions including Superintendent to the Sioux Falls, SD school district. He has several journal publications and has spoken extensively at local, state and regional conferences and workshops.
During his K-12 experience, Dr. Kiner was a student and teacher advocate who always looked for new and different ways to help students achieve success in school. He was an educational entrepreneur who has been recognized for his work with at-risk and special needs students. He has a unique ability to create collegial relationships within schools and maximize academic success for individual students.
Dr. Kiner concluded his career as the Education Department Chair and subsequently the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD. He currently holds the rank of Professor Emeritus in the Education Department at Augustana College.

Dedication

Foreword by Jerry D. Weast

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Introduction

1. With the Leader's Brain in Mind

Strength-Based Leadership

The Workings of the Human Brain

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

2. Using Leaders' Strengths to Create and Maintain a Positive School Climate

What's the Point?

The Brain and School Climate

Putting It Into Practice

Instruction and Learning

Physical Environment

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

3. Mind Matters: What Leaders Need to Know About Students

The Elementary Student's Brain

The Secondary Students' Brain

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

4. Best of Class: Leading Teachers

Curriculum and Instruction

Assessment 101

Instruction

Technology: Your Brain On-Line

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

5. The Rubber Meets the Road: Supervision and Evaluation

Extreme School Make-Over

Empowerment Supervision

Evaluation

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

6. Shared Leadership and Leading Teacher's Strengths

The Human Brain

Strength-Based Shared Leadership

Leading Teacher's Strengths

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

Appendix I: Stress, Teachers, and Students

Appendix II: Family and Community School Partnerships

References

Index

Reviews

"The authors help fill a void in recent work at the intersection of the brain sciences and education. The potential for neuro- and cognitive sciences to inform educators remains largely untapped. Principals and other school leaders should take a keen interest in the ideas set forth in this unique volume."

Mariale Hardiman, Assistant Dean and Dept. Chair, Neuro-Education Initiative
Johns Hopkins University School of Education