You Can Bring in an Expert. You Can’t Outsource the Leadership.

22 hours ago

13 min read

Alicia Peletz is facilitating a workshop for ACP — Alicia Peletz facilitating a workshop for ACP

In my last blog, I looked at Linda Darling-Hammond’s research on effective professional learning. The conclusion I kept coming back to was pretty simple: A great workshop is only the beginning. Professional learning sticks when educators have sustained support and when the conditions surrounding them make implementation possible.

One of those conditions kept standing out to me: leadership.

But saying that leaders need to support professional learning is easy. Figuring out what that actually looks like is much harder, especially when the realities of their roles constantly pull them in other directions.

I Have Been on Both Sides of Professional Learning

When I first started consulting, I was still in the classroom. I could never understand, and honestly, I was so frustrated that I could sometimes go an entire day without seeing or talking to a school leader. I knew they were being pulled in a hundred different directions, but I still found myself thinking, Why am I even here? Yeah, I was pretty judgy.

Then I became an instructional coach and often had to step into the administrative role when an issue came up, and all hands had to be on deck.

Suddenly, I was the instructional coach who knew how important it was to stay engaged in professional learning, but I was also the person stepping out because I had been radioed about a student issue, a missing substitute, or something else that couldn’t wait.

Yeah, I slowly had to eat every bit of that judgment.

Now, with all of those experiences, I can safely say that most leaders don’t want to miss professional learning. I know it was the last thing I wanted to do. They aren’t choosing discipline, staffing shortages, parent concerns, or operational emergencies because they believe those things are more important than teaching and learning. They are responding to what cannot wait.

The problem is that instructional leadership is often the work that can wait. We can move it to the next meeting or reschedule that classroom visit. The professional learning community can meet without the principal. Someone else can attend the workshop. The follow-up conversation can happen later. Despite the best intentions, everything ends up becoming “later.”

But when instructional work is postponed often enough, it can quietly disappear into the background, not only for leaders but for teachers too.

That left me with a question:

How can leaders meaningfully participate in professional learning when the realities of their roles make it impossible to be present for every part of it?

That question led me to Viviane Robinson’s research.

What Kind of Leadership Makes the Greatest Difference?

Viviane Robinson’s research changed the way I think about this question. In 2008, Robinson, Claire Lloyd, and Kenneth Rowe published an analysis of 27 studies examining the relationship between different types of school leadership and learner outcomes.

Their first analysis compared two broad approaches to leadership: transformational leadership and instructional leadership.

If effect sizes aren’t part of your everyday vocabulary, they are a standardized way of describing the strength of a relationship. In this analysis, a larger number indicates a stronger relationship between leadership type and learner outcomes.

Transformational leadership emphasized vision, inspiration, relationships, motivation, and building commitment. Its average effect size was 0.11.

Instructional or pedagogical leadership stayed closer to the actual work of teaching and learning. It included attention to educational goals, curriculum, teaching quality, and professional learning. Its average effect size was 0.42.

In other words, the relationship between instructional leadership and learner outcomes was three to four times greater than the relationship found for transformational leadership.

That was honestly a profound result for me because while I was getting my leadership CAS, I always identified with transformational leadership. I think that was because of my role as an instructional coach.

As an instructional coach, I always identified as a transformational coach because, while yes, I did help with instruction, I felt that if you were always doing that as a coach, you were trying to “fix that teacher,” and teachers do not need fixing. It can also be frustrating because it can seem like nothing they do is good enough.

Robinson’s study was about school leadership, not coaching, but it made me reflect on how I approached that role too. It also made me think about all the papers I wrote for my CAS, advocating that everyone needed to be a transformational leader first. This made me rethink my stance. When I think of the leaders I respected and loved the most, they were always instructional leaders first.

It doesn’t mean vision, trust, relationships, or inspiration don’t matter. They absolutely do. It just means they can’t substitute for the core work of schools: teaching and learning. We need both. Robinson and her colleagues also cautioned against treating the two approaches as opposites. Instructional leadership still depends on relationships, trust, and shared goals.

Which Leadership Practice Stood Out?

The researchers then conducted a second, separate analysis examining five specific dimensions of leadership.

Leadership dimension	Mean effect size
Establishing goals and expectations	0.42
Resourcing strategically	0.31
Planning, coordinating, and evaluating teaching and the curriculum	0.42
Promoting and participating in teacher learning and development	0.84
Ensuring an orderly and supportive environment	0.27

You can see that every dimension matters. It is not an either/or. It is a “yes, and.”

But one finding stands out.

Promoting and participating in teacher learning and development had an average effect size of 0.84, twice that of any other dimension.

It wasn’t simply setting the goal. It wasn’t only paying for the professional learning. It wasn’t hiring the right outside expert. It wasn’t even creating a supportive environment around the work.

The strongest relationship with learner outcomes was found when leaders promoted and participated in the learning. And that was the one thing I became guilty of missing more and more as I moved higher up in a school system.

We Need to Be Careful With the 0.84

Before going any further, I don’t want to take one exciting number and make it say more than the research actually allows us to claim.

The 0.84 effect size was calculated from 17 effect sizes across six studies. Much of the evidence was correlational and cross-sectional. In other words, the studies could identify relationships, but they could not prove that one thing caused the other. The researchers acknowledged that the evidence base was relatively small and that the study could not fully explain the processes behind the results.

This does not mean that a principal sitting through a workshop automatically produces a 0.84 increase in learner achievement.

The more responsible conclusion is this:

Across the studies Robinson and her colleagues examined, promoting and participating in teacher learning and development had the strongest association with learner outcomes of the five leadership dimensions they studied.

More recent research reinforces the larger idea. In their 2021 synthesis of two decades of research, Jason Grissom, Anna Egalite, and Constance Lindsay reviewed 219 studies and identified four important areas of effective principal practice: engaging in instructionally focused interactions with educators, building a productive school climate, facilitating collaboration and professional learning communities, and managing people and resources strategically.

The evidence does not tell us that leaders have to do everything themselves. It tells us that leaders need to remain meaningfully connected to teaching, learning, and the professional growth of the educators they lead.

The Most Important Word Might Be “Participating”

The wording matters. The dimension was not just “promoting teacher learning and development.” It was “promoting and participating.”

Supporting professional learning is important. Sponsoring it is important. Neither is the same as participating in it.

In the research, leaders participated in professional learning as leaders, learners, or both. That participation occurred in formal settings, such as workshops and staff meetings, and informal settings, such as conversations about a specific teaching challenge.

I believe that also demonstrates to teachers just how serious you are about your vision because you are taking the time to invest in it alongside the ones carrying it out.

Most importantly, their participation helped them develop a deeper understanding of what educators needed to implement and sustain change. Because they understood the work, they were better positioned to make decisions about schedules, resources, classroom organization, assessment, and other system conditions.

This is not about sitting in the back of the room answering emails while a consultant leads a workshop, something I also see far too often. It is also not about monitoring whether educators are paying attention or complying with a new initiative.

Meaningful participation means leaders are learning enough to ask better questions, understand the challenges educators are encountering, recognize evidence of progress, and address the conditions that may be getting in the way.

I will never forget returning to a school and asking a new teacher how PBL was going. She broke down in tears. She had received a bad write-up after an observation because her administrator did not understand PBL and took issue with several practices we would consider signs of high-quality PBL.

The author, Alicia Peletz, coaching teachers

PBL had been reduced to a term the school used, but leadership didn’t understand it well enough to recognize it in practice. She told me she was going to stick to the curriculum she had been given and never try PBL again. Honestly, I didn’t blame her.

That moment has always stayed with me because the school had technically supported the learning by spending money on the workshops, teachers bought in, but when the practice appeared in a classroom, the person observing and evaluating her skills misread it as poor teaching.

The write-up was not only about that one lesson on that one day. That teacher learned from that observation that trying a new practice was indeed not safe if she wanted to remain at that school.

I always wondered what happened to her. Did she stay at that school? Is she even still a teacher? I feel a big sense of guilt that I didn't do more in that moment for her.

This is why when I read the findings, it really stuck with me that participation matters. Leaders do not have to become experts in every instructional approach. But they need enough understanding to recognize the practices they are asking educators to try and avoid creating conditions that punish the very change they said they wanted.

What Does Meaningful Participation Actually Look Like?

When I put Robinson’s research next to the realities of school leadership, I think meaningful participation comes down to three things: understanding the learning, reconnecting when something pulls you away, and acting on what educators need.

Understand the Learning

Leaders need to understand what educators are learning and what it might look like in practice. To some degree, they have already answered why it matters, because they wouldn’t bring in that professional learning if they didn’t believe it would help in some way.

That does not mean they have to become experts or facilitate every session. It means they know enough to recognize the work and make sure their expectations don’t conflict with what educators have been asked to try.

Leaders can start by defining the purpose of the professional learning and the desired learner outcomes before it begins.

Reconnect When Something Pulls You Away

Sometimes a leader really does have to leave a workshop because something more pressing requires them to be there. A serious student situation cannot always wait. A staffing concern can impact the entire day. A million things can come up, so we shouldn’t interpret every absence as a lack of commitment.

At the same time, leaders need structures that help them reconnect with the work when something pulls them away, because otherwise it can all fall apart.

A leader might miss part of a workshop and still participate meaningfully by:

Debriefing with the facilitator and leadership team afterward
Asking educators what they tried, where they struggled, and what they need next
Teaming up with some educators in the room
Examining evidence of how learners are responding
Continuing the conversation during existing meetings, walkthroughs, and coaching

The reverse can also be true. A leader can be physically present throughout an entire workshop without meaningfully engaging in the learning.

Presence is not necessarily participation. But participation is difficult to sustain from a distance, and it sends a powerful message to the teachers in the room,

which can land both positively and negatively depending on how it is handled.

Act on What Educators Need

Leaders have the authority to protect time, align resources, address competing expectations, and remove structural barriers to implementation.

A coach, teacher leader, or outside partner may be able to identify what is getting in the way. They cannot always change it. I like to talk a lot about spheres of control. It can be frustrating for educators and coaches because what impacts the work most is sometimes completely outside their control, and the person who can help may appear unavailable or uninterested, even when that is not their intention.

I have also watched a district that once invested deeply in professional learning slowly pull away from that commitment as the district office has slowly turned over.

Recently, a coach I am still close to called me, frustrated, because they asked for substitute coverage so a group of teachers could work together to build a new unit. The request was denied, and they all just felt devastated.

There may have been real staffing or budget constraints behind that decision. There usually are. But the result was the same: The educators were willing to collaborate, and the coach was ready to support them, but the system didn’t protect the time the work required, and now they will think twice before investing their time and energy in something new.

An outside partner could have provided tools, expertise, and feedback. None of those things could create the time the system was unwilling or unable to provide.

That story also reminds me why we should not read the 0.84 as permission to ignore the rest of Robinson’s table.

Meaningful participation depends on clear goals, strategic resourcing, coordination, and a supportive environment. A system can say yes to professional learning while its daily decisions still make implementation almost impossible.

Leaders Cannot and Should Not Do This Alone

Robinson’s research should not be interpreted as another demand for principals to add to an already impossible job. We hear a lot about not having enough teachers, and rightfully so. But school leadership is under real strain too. RAND’s 2022 survey found that principals reported worse well-being than other working adults, so the answer is not expecting the principal to be everywhere and do all the things.

In fact, the original research specifically cautioned against a heroic model of school leadership. Many of the studies measured leadership practices across multiple people and roles, not only the principal. What mattered was that the instructional leadership practices occurred, not that one particular person performed all of them.

The answer is building a system in which instructional leadership in a school does not disappear whenever the principal is called somewhere else. Depending on the school or district, that shared leadership might include many people, such as assistant principals, instructional coaches, department or grade-level leaders, curriculum directors, teacher leaders, district administrators, and outside partners.

What Should an Outside Partner Actually Carry?

This is where I think educational consulting companies need to examine their own role.

Dr. Jacqueline Arce reconnecting with staff after a PL experience at her school

Dr. Jacqueline Arce made a related argument in her blog, Professional Development for Teachers: A School Leader’s Roadmap to Sustainable Programs. She challenged leaders to stop planning isolated professional development days and start planning professional learning as a sustained program.

She also offered concrete ways to connect an outside expert’s work to that larger plan. Leaders can prepare educators for the learning beforehand, collect their key takeaways and remaining questions afterward, and intentionally decide whether the next stage of support should be carried internally or by the consultant.

An outside partner can bring specialized knowledge, and I encourage you to bring one in. People, for whatever reason, receive the work differently and more seriously when someone from the outside comes in. Outside experts can do much of the heavy lifting, such as facilitating workshops, coaching educators, supporting professional learning communities, providing feedback, conducting implementation visits, and helping a school examine evidence.

Those supports can make instructional leadership more possible. They can reduce the amount of design, facilitation, coordination, and evidence gathering that internal leaders have to carry alone because, if it is left to them, it isn’t possible to get done. There is far too much in the day-to-day to do it all.

But here is what an outside partner cannot do all on their own:

Decide which priorities matter most to the school
Provide collaborative time once the workshop ends to further the work
Resolve conflicts between competing initiatives
Change staffing, schedules, or internal expectations
Build relational trust on behalf of the leader
Determine what should become part of the school’s long-term way of working

The best outside partner should not make leaders less necessary. The partner should make it easier for leaders to stay connected to the work only they can lead.

How This Research Shaped ACP

ACP does not conduct research in a way that would make our findings valid in peer-reviewed journals.

ACP Roadmap to Sustainable Implementation

We leave that to the experts to gather such meaningful information. What we can do is highlight its impact and be clear about how we use that information. In a way, this research helps explain how ACP became ACP.

This is one of the reasons we developed ACP’s Roadmap to Sustainable Implementation.

The roadmap does not assume that leaders have unlimited time. It helps us identify what an outside partner can carry, what needs to remain inside the system, and where leaders need deliberate opportunities to reconnect with the work.

The goal is not to replace internal leadership. It is to make meaningful participation possible even when leaders cannot be physically present for every part of the learning.

We cannot prevent the student crisis that pulls a principal out of a workshop. We cannot create more hours in a leader’s day.

What we can do is design a partnership in which one interrupted day does not sever the leader from the learning.

Leadership Has to Remain in the Learning

So, after all my research, how would I answer my original question of how leaders can participate meaningfully when the realities of their roles make it impossible to be present for every part of professional learning?

They need to understand the learning well enough to recognize and support it. They need structures that help them reconnect when something pulls them away, and they need to act on what educators need to put the learning into practice.

Linda Darling-Hammond’s research helped me understand what professional learning needs in order to stick. Robinson’s research helped me understand the role leaders play in making those conditions possible.

It comes down to this: we need both high-quality professional learning and leadership that stays connected to it.

Leaders may not be able to remain physically present for every minute of professional learning. They do need to remain present in the work.

Yes, an outside partner can facilitate professional learning, but good leadership cannot be outsourced.

Kristy Lathrop facilitates an ACP professional learning workshop with educators working in groups. — Kristy Lathrop facilitates an ACP workshop designed to make learning active, collaborative, and connected to practice.

Taking the Next Step

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