Learning Leadership Model That Is Preferred

PAPER LEARNING LEADERSHIP MODEL THAT IS PREFERRED A. Background The professional ability of the principal as an educational leader is responsible for creating a conducive teaching and learning situation, so that teachers can carry out learning well and students can learn calmly. Schools as educational institutions are containers or places for the educational process that have a complex and dynamic system. Internally, schools have devices, namely the principal, teachers, students, curriculum, facilities and infrastructure. Externally, schools have and are related to other agencies both vertically and horizontally. All of that cannot be separated from the arrangement of education in schools. The principal is the manager of education in schools as a whole, and the principal is the formal leader of education in their schools. In an educational environment in schools, the principal is fully responsible for managing and empowering teachers to continue to improve their work abilities. The leadership of the principal is very important in managing the institution he leads. A principal must be able to guide teachers in terms of learning, the principal must be wise in making decisions, the principal must be able to be a good role model for his subordinates. For that, it is not easy to be a truly ideal leader for his subordinates. One aspect that must be mastered by the principal is instructional leadership. Eggen and Kauchak (2012:52) stated that instructional leadership is an action taken by the principal to develop a productive and satisfying work environment for teachers which ultimately can create better student learning conditions. Instructional leadership is important to implement in schools because of its ability to build a learning community for its citizens and even make their school a learning school. B. Concept of Learning Leadership Learning leadership is leadership that focuses/emphasizes learning by paying attention to the components of learning leadership including curriculum, teaching and learning process, assessment, teacher development, excellent service in learning, and building a learning community in schools. Southworth (in Purba, et al. 2021, p. 88) states that learning leadership is closely related to teaching and learning, including professional learning by teachers according to the development of their students. This means that learning leadership is leadership that focuses on the quality of the process and learning outcomes of students through teacher empowerment. Learning leadership according to Eggen and Kauchak (in Abdillah, 2020, p. 49) is an action taken by the principal to develop a productive and satisfying work environment for educators, and ultimately be able to create good learning conditions for students. Bush and Glover (in Purba, et al. 2021, p. 88) emphasize the concept of learning leadership in the direction of the influence process. The focus of this leadership is teaching, learning, and teacher behavior in interacting with their students. From several definitions of learning leadership above, it can be concluded that learning leadership is basically the principal's action that leads to the creation of a superior and comfortable school climate for students to encourage an increase in the internal quality of the school by creating a learning process that can stimulate students to achieve high learning achievement. C. Effective Learning Leadership Learning leadership has a central role in creating school conditions and environments that can encourage optimal student achievement. The policy of improving the quality of education cannot be separated from several main factors such as the student learning process, the teacher teaching process and leadership at the school level. How leaders implement and teachers teach and students learn will affect the quality of education. The principal is not only a leader at the school level, but the principal can also determine teacher performance and influence school conditions, namely the school climate (Rathana, 2013). Hellinger (in Wardani, & Indriayu, 2015, p. 686) defines effective learning leadership as follows: 1) The meaning of the school's vision through sharing opinions with the school community and striving for the school's vision and mission to thrive in its implementation; 2) The principal involves stakeholders in school management (participatory management); 3) The principal provides support for learning; 4) The principal monitors the teaching and learning process to understand more deeply and be aware of what is going on in the school; 5) The principal acts as a facilitator so that in various ways he can identify learning difficulties and can help teachers overcome these learning difficulties. According to Southworth (2002), there are three strategies for learning leadership to improve learning effectively, namely: (1) modeling; (2) monitoring; and (3) professional dialogue and discussion. Modeling means that the principal's exemplary behavior becomes an example or model that is imitated by teachers in the school he leads. Monitoring means monitoring teacher performance in class when teachers carry out the learning process in class and utilizing the results of the monitoring for further coaching. Professional dialogue and discussion means discussing actively, interactively, effectively, aspirationally, inspiringly, productively, democratically and scientifically about the results of performance assessments and follow-up plans to improve the quality of the process and student learning outcomes. Practical ways to implement learning leadership carried out by Levin (2012:177), namely the principal: (1) determines the vision and learning goals (referring to graduate competency standards); (2) builds a strong work team (including assessing and improving teacher performance); (3) realizes and supports a conducive school culture; (4) communicates the learning vision, directs how to achieve it; (5) recruits, develops, and retrains the principal and teacher PKB; (6) builds internal and external school support; (7) maintains and remains focused on learning (carries out academic supervision in class). D. Principal's Learning Leadership Model The principal needs to play a role in improving teaching and learning in schools by always providing direction, providing resources, and most importantly providing assistance to teachers. By developing a more operational concept of learning leadership, here are the indicators of the learning leadership model that should be carried out so that it is liked by teachers and students: a) The principal acts as a facilitator, namely as a provider of facilities. The provider of facilities is not someone who provides infrastructure for teachers but rather provides facilities in developing the professional abilities of teachers with the following steps (McEwan, 2002 in Wibowo, 2014): • Making schedules, plans, or facilities for various meetings (planning, problem solving, decision making, or in-service training) for teachers who discuss learning issues; • Giving teachers the opportunity to take part in training on collaboration, making joint decisions, coaching, mentoring, curriculum development and presentations • Providing motivation and resources for teachers to participate in professional development activities. b) Providing a good example in preparing, implementing, and assessing learning, namely as follows: • Designing learning by involving teachers so that they can jointly develop and implement the learning goals and targets that the school wants to achieve (Yaumi, 2013); • Learning designs that are carried out together must refer to the curriculum that has been set by the government or education system in developing learning programs (McEwan (2002) in Wibowo, 2014); • Analyzing learning whether school and class activities are consistent with learning objectives. The formulation of learning objectives refers to the competency standards (SK) and basic competencies (KD) which are nationally formulated through the Regulation of the Minister of National Education Number 23 of 2006 dated May 23, 2006 concerning Graduate Competency Standards (SKL) (Yaumi, 2013); • Evaluating learning objectives. To help evaluate Gagne and Briggs (1979) in Yaumi (2013) provide several questions that include: (1) To what extent do the developed learning objectives meet the criteria?; (2) In what ways and to what extent is the developed learning product or system better than other existing products?; (3) What additional, unanticipated impacts may arise during implementation and to what extent is the product better or worse than other available products? c) Building a school culture. The culture that is built is cultural behaviors that refer to the cultural aspects of leadership. The cultural behaviors referred to in this case are creating a school culture and climate that is conducive to learning, namely by: • Creating a classroom atmosphere that is suitable for students to learn; • Encouraging teachers to behave positively in the classroom so as to create a good and orderly learning climate in the classroom; • Delivering messages that motivate students to succeed; • Making policies related to student learning progress (homework, assessments, monitoring learning progress, remedial, learning outcome reports, promotion/repeated grades) including: (1) Determining student achievement targets that will be communicated directly with students, teachers and parents; (2) Establishing clear rules regarding the time of use of the classroom for learning and monitoring the effective time of its use; (3) Establishing, implementing, and evaluating procedures and rules for handling and enforcing disciplinary problems, together with teachers and students. d) Becoming a motivator. As a motivator, the principal must have the right strategy to motivate teachers. The steps to foster motivation are: • Arranging a conducive (comfortable and pleasant) physical environment (workspace, study room, library, laboratory, workshop); • Arranging a calm and pleasant working atmosphere. For example, the principal must be able to create harmonious working relationships between teachers; • The principal instills discipline in all subordinates. To realize this disciplined attitude, the principal should (1) help teachers develop their behavior patterns; (2) help teachers improve their behavioral standards; (3) implement all rules that have been agreed upon together; • The principal encourages teachers to work harder if the activities carried out by the teacher are interesting and enjoyable; • Giving awards to teachers to improve teacher professionalism. e) Supervising teachers. One of the principal's duties is to be a supervisor, namely supervising the work carried out by educational staff. Supervision is a process specifically designed to help teachers and supervisors learn daily tasks at school; in order to use their knowledge and abilities to provide better services to parents of students and schools, and to strive to make schools a more effective learning community (Sergiovani and Starrat, 1993 in Mulyasa, 2007). One of the academic supervisions used is clinical supervision. The characteristics of this supervision are as follows: • The supervision given is in the form of assistance, not orders, so that the initiative is expected to remain with the teacher; • The aspects supervised are based on suggestions from the teacher, which are reviewed together with the principal as supervisor to be agreed upon; • Observation instruments and methods are developed jointly by the teacher and the principal; • Discussing and interpreting observation results by prioritizing teacher interpretation; • Supervision is carried out in an open atmosphere, face to face, and the supervisor listens and answers teacher questions more than giving advice and direction; • Clinical supervision has three stages, namely initial meetings, observation and feedback; • Supervision is carried out continuously to improve a situation and solve a problem. f) With in-class and out-of-class learning. The learning process not only involves exploration, elaboration, and confirmation but also improves student competence in observing (listening, seeing, reading, hearing), asking, associating, concluding, communicating both verbally, in writing, and body language) (Public Test Materials for the 2013 Curriculum). The methods used by the principal through teachers or the principal directly teaching in the classroom, in creating creative, professional and enjoyable learning are as follows (Mulyasa, 2007): • Using questioning skills to students; • Providing responses to students who respond to questions from the teacher; • Provide a variety of teaching methods so that learning does not seem monotonous; • Guide small and large group discussions; • Manage the class well. g) Understand the school's vision and mission. The principal has an important role in compiling and communicating the school's vision and mission to related parties. According to Archilles in Davis and Thomas (1989) in Kusmintardjo. (2015) the school's vision can be developed by reading literature on effective schools and visiting effective schools and learning from them. The following are steps to understand the school's vision: • Have a clear vision of what the school wants to achieve together; • Can establish and convey the vision and targets to the school community; • Have the ability to continuously monitor school progress in accordance with the school's vision; • Have a sporty and corrective attitude if there are deviations in the implementation of activities that do not lead to the school's vision h) Involve stakeholders in school management in this case the education council and school committee. The roles of the education council and school committee are as follows (Mulyasa, 2007): • Provide consideration in empowering the community and school environment, as well as determining and implementing education policies; • Support cooperation between schools and the community, both financially and non-financially; • Control cooperation between schools and the community; • Mediator between schools, government, regional representative councils (DPRD) and the community; • Encourage the growth of community attention and commitment to the provision of quality education; • Cooperate with the community and the world of work, government and DPRD in order to provide quality education; • Accommodate and analyze aspirations, ideas, demands and various community needs for education; • Provide input, considerations and recommendations to the regional government and DPRD regarding education policies and programs, criteria for education performance in their areas, criteria for teachers including principals, and criteria for facilities and infrastructure as well as education policies; • Encourage parents and the community to actively participate in education; • Conduct evaluations and supervision of planning, implementation of policies, programs and education output. i) Have a dialogue and discuss with teachers regarding learning quality problems and efforts to resolve them. CLOSING A. Conclusion Learning Leadership is a leadership that focuses/emphasizes learning whose components include curriculum, teaching and learning process, assessment (assessment of learning outcomes), assessment and development of teachers, excellent service in learning and development of school learning communication. Learning leadership is basically the principal's action that leads to the creation of a superior and comfortable school climate for students to encourage an increase in the internal quality of the school by creating a learning process that can stimulate students to achieve high learning achievement. In order for learning leadership to run effectively, there are 3 strategies, including: (1) modeling; (2) monitoring; and (3) professional dialogue and discussion. Modeling means the principal's exemplary behavior becomes an example or model that is imitated by teachers in the school he leads. Monitoring means monitoring teacher performance in class when teachers carry out the learning process in class and utilizing the results of the monitoring for further coaching. Professional dialogue and discussion means discussing actively, interactively, effectively, aspirationally, inspiringly, productively, democratically and scientifically about the results of performance assessments and follow-up plans to improve the quality of the process and student learning outcomes. The Principal's learning leadership model that teachers and students like includes: a) The principal acts as a facilitator, namely as a provider of facilities; b) Giving a good example in preparing, implementing, and assessing learning; c) Building a school culture. The culture that is built is cultural behavior or (cultural behaviors) which refers to the cultural aspects of leadership; d) Building a school culture. The culture that is built is cultural behavior or (cultural behaviors) which refers to the cultural aspects of leadership. e) Supervising teachers. One of the duties of the principal is to be a supervisor, namely supervising the work carried out by education personnel; With in-class and out-of-class learning. The learning process not only involves exploration, elaboration, and confirmation but also improves student competence in conducting observations; g) Interpreting the school's vision and mission; h) Involving stakeholders in school management in this case the education council and school committee; i) Dialogue and discuss with teachers regarding learning quality problems and efforts to resolve them. B. Suggestions Our group suggests that the principal in implementing learning leadership needs to pay attention to all aspects and components related to all school devices. This is intended so that the principal as a leader can create a comfortable school climate for all school residents, so that the learning leadership carried out by the principal can run effectively and encourage the school to improve its internal quality.