A School Leader's Guide to VITAL Collaboration

Use this indispensable guide to elevate your leadership practices and improve your school’s teaching and learning.

Designed to empower today’s K–12 school leaders, this book will help you develop and implement a robust, systemwide approach to fostering structured and impactful Professional Learning Communities (PLCs).

Grounded in extensive research, the VITAL (Visibly Improving Teaching and Learning) Collaboration methodology offers school leaders a structured, data-driven framework for fostering collaborative inquiry to improve collective teacher efficacy. It equips leaders with strategies to build transformational leadership capacity, promote visible improvements in teaching practice, and ensure that all PLC sessions collectively lead to meaningful growth for both teachers and students. By embedding feedback loops into collaborative routines and focusing on evidence-driven inquiry, this innovative approach ensures that every PLC session contributes to making teachers more effective, ultimately improving student outcomes.

The text includes field-tested strategies, practical tools and guidance, and actionable steps for implementation. This guide is an essential companion to Kevin Perks’s A Teacher’s Guide to VITAL Collaboration.

Book Features:

• Innovative Approach: Introduces the VITAL methodology, which pioneers a systematic way for school leaders to foster a culture of collaboration that leverages evidence of teacher practice and student learning within PLCs to help ensure improved outcomes for students.
• Research-Based Strategies: Built on a solid foundation of school improvement science, professional learning communities, and evidence-based leadership practices, the VITAL framework offers actionable strategies that drive both teacher development and student achievement.
• Practical Tools and Frameworks: Provides a practical framework with abundant tools and resources for school leaders to develop and sustain structured PLCs, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and instructional excellence.
• Leadership Capacity Building: Focuses on building transformational leadership capacity, equipping school leaders with skills to effectively support and lead transformative professional development initiatives.
• Comprehensive Resource: Serves as an indispensable resource with clear steps for implementing systemwide changes that elevate teaching and learning outcomes across a school.

Kevin Perks is the senior managing director for WestEd’s Quality Schools and Districts program, providing coaching, training, and technical assistance support to schools, districts, and state departments of education. He is the editor of Transformational Leadership for Rapid School Improvement.

“Kevin Perks’ companion books—one for school leaders, the other for teachers—contain magnificent, powerful, and clear ideas for transforming learning in schools. The fourfold framework is comprehensive and instantly inspiring. In our current work on deep change, we look for ‘specificity without imposition,’ ‘proximity to practice,’ ‘leader-teacher-student collaboration,’ and clear, measurable outcomes. These two books have it all: a clear pathway for principals, teachers, and students to work together and get results. Readers will benefit immeasurably by immersing their work in these inspiring companion books. VITAL Collaboration, indeed!”
—Michael Fullan, professor emeritus, University of Toronto, and author of The New Meaning of Educational Change, Sixth Edition

“A School Leader's Guide to VITAL Collaboration offers a practical, results-driven systems approach to school transformation, providing strategies that enhance professional learning, strengthen school culture, and improve student outcomes. Whether read individually or as a team, this book can serve as the catalyst school leaders need for meaningful change and sustained improvement.”
—Michael Middleton, provost and vice president for teaching, learning, and growth, Ramapo College

“I have served as a school administrator and a district administrator, and I can affirm that Kevin Perks’s collaborative model offers an approach to school improvement that is as good as I have ever seen. In A School Leader’s Guide to VITAL Collaboration, Perks assures the reader that the overall model is simple. The model is simple only in that there are few components. Each component has levels of complexity. But that’s all right. Perks supports leaders in navigating through the complexities, including anticipating challenges and equipping the reader with means for overcoming those challenges. Each component builds on earlier foundational steps, and the Guide provides brief case studies to illustrate practices. Perks’s book not only has a research base, but it will also strike the reader as grounded in common sense. I can almost guarantee that if school leaders follow the principles and steps in this Guide, they will see marked improvements in the quality of instruction and advances in student learning. With those improvements, leaders are likely to see growth in teachers’ and students’ satisfaction with their classroom experiences.”
—Thomas McCann, professor emeritus, Northern Illinois University

“A School Leader’s Guide to VITAL Collaboration is a powerful resource for current and aspiring school leaders who want to strengthen human and organizational capacity in schools to improve instruction. With visual frameworks, case studies, guiding questions, and many useful tools, this excellent guide will help school leaders exercise transformative leadership for system-wide instructional improvement.”
—Motoko Akiba, professor, Florida State University, editor-in-chief of American Educational Research Journal

“A School Leader's Guide to VITAL Collaboration offers a practical framework and actionable strategies that empower leaders and educators to work together toward a shared vision for school success. Perks's insights and practical advice are valuable for any school leader looking to foster a culture of continuous improvement through school-wide collaboration.”
—Christopher Hudson, lecturer in education, Federation University, Australia