Introduction

In today’s era of heightened expectations, school leaders are in the hot seat to ensure
effective and excellent educational outcomes. The multi-levelled pedagogic school
leaders highly determine the mode of teaching students in schools and the effective
application of the learning process.

Not only are they curriculum leaders but they are also educational futurists,
disciplinarians, instructors, assessors, analysts, field experts and society builders (Davies
2005). They are involved in the core running of the school and act as a go-between in
case of any arising conflicts between the parents, students, teachers, education
participants such as unions and the society itself.

This requires them to not only be sensitive when meeting student’s demands and needs
but to also be critical thinkers so as to deliver valid judgments based on logic. School
leadership is currently a complex concept with most leaders failing to balance their roles.

It is evident that they are heavily inclined towards school management and accountability
hence disregarding the effective mode of impacting knowledge to students to ensure
quality teaching and learning.

The outcome greatly reflects the quality of the school leaders’ pedagogy and their ability
to give credible teaching instructions to improve learning in schools. Teachers need to
have adequate knowledge of how to teach students and be able to implement and design
the school curriculum.

The following paper will therefore discuss the current change in pedagogical and
instructional roles that seem to create imbalance in their competing roles and how the
same can be reclaimed.

School Leadership
Previous studies have attempted to define the concepts, models and practices that
characterize the effect of leadership in educational outcomes. Several contemporary
leadership theories have come up as a result. According to Davies and Ellison (2001), the
distributional and transformational leadership theories are examples of such theories.

These two theories have been discussed by many scholars in an attempt to draw an
understanding on the nature of school leadership and how it affects learning and teaching
in schools. They also create a link between the leaders and the teachers themselves with
an attempt of establishing the student outcomes that is derived from this relationship.

Though the study on effective leadership based on this theories have not been concluded,
it is evident that school leaders have a big role to play. Student performance is therefore
attributed to the influence impacted through effective leadership.

Successful school leaders give support and knowledgeable instructions to the teachers, a
practice that develops their inner intellectual powers. In addition, they also implement an
effective organization model that helps them strike a balance in their competitive roles.

The studies on educational leadership draws a clear conclusion that school leaders
requires to be actively involved in the institution’s learning and instructional programs.
Principals need to balance the instructional and pedagogical roles together with their
managerial roles to ensure exemplary student performance.

The main goal in any learning institution is assuring parents and the society in general
that their children are receiving quality education. Though managerial and compliance
accountability roles play a big role in running a school, student performance should be
made the core business, a concept that is ignored by many school leaders.

Conclusion

In order for school leaders to strike a balance between being both administrative and
instructional/pedagogical leaders, they need first to focus on effective mode of leadership
rather than the bureaucratic approach.
The school head should then apply the dimensions in order to effectively get involved in
the teaching and learning process on one hand and the managerial role on the other. This
makes the heads partake the student’s performance as their core business hence meeting
the ultimate requirement as an instructional or pedagogical leader.