When School Leaders Bask in Reflected Glory: What BIRGing can teach us about instructional leadership
A school’s reading results improve. At the board meeting, the principal says, “Our leadership team’s instructional plan is working.” The teachers who studied student work, adjusted their lessons, and provided extra support are sitting in the audience. They are pleased with the results, but the story of how students improved has disappeared.
This may be a case of basking in reflected glory, or BIRGing: publicly emphasizing an association with someone else’s success to enhance one’s own standing. A principal has every reason to celebrate the school. The question is whether the celebration accurately names the people and practices that produced the improvement.
Where the idea came from
Psychologist Robert Cialdini and five colleagues published “Basking in Reflected Glory: Three (Football) Field Studies” in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1976. Their first study took place during the 1973 college football season. Researchers observed students in introductory psychology classes at Arizona State University, Louisiana State University, Ohio State University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Michigan, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Southern California. Students were more likely to wear clothing identifying their university on Mondays following a football victory than following a nonvictory (Cialdini et al., 1976).
In two later telephone studies, conducted with undergraduates at two large U.S. state universities during or after the 1974 football season, students were more likely to use “we” when describing a win than a loss. In one study, this pattern was especially pronounced after participants were told they had performed poorly on a separate task. The authors interpreted the results as evidence that public affiliation with success can help protect or enhance one’s image. The paper does not name the universities used for these two telephone studies (Cialdini et al., 1976).
These studies examined college students’ connections to football teams. They did not test principals, teachers, or school improvement initiatives. The education examples that follow are applications of the concept, not findings from that original research.
What BIRGing can look like in schools
A result becomes a leadership story. A grade-level team makes a series of careful instructional adjustments. When scores rise, a district presentation attributes the gains to “our leadership initiative” without describing the teachers’ decisions or the evidence they used. The initiative may have helped; the claim still needs to reflect what happened.
“We” appears for success, “they” for difficulty. A principal says, “We raised achievement,” but, when results dip, says, “The teachers need to address those learning gaps.” The shift in language can reveal a shift in ownership. It also closes off an important question: What conditions or support should leaders change?
Visibility replaces contribution. A leader posts a photo from a successful classroom and describes it as evidence of the school’s vision. Yet the teacher’s planning, the students’ thinking, and the next instructional step remain invisible. The post celebrates proximity to success more clearly than it explains learning.
A single metric becomes the whole story. A school celebrates a higher overall pass rate while overlooking students who are still struggling with the targeted skill. Leaders can be proud of improvement and still ask who benefited, who did not, and what teachers need next.
There is an important distinction: shared pride is not automatically BIRGing. Leaders often make real contributions by setting a clear direction, protecting time, developing teacher expertise, and removing obstacles. A 2004 research synthesis by Leithwood and colleagues describes these as central leadership practices. A 2021 synthesis by Grissom, Egalite, and Lindsay likewise identifies engagement with instruction, a productive climate, collaboration, and strategic use of resources as important principal behaviors. The issue is whether a leader’s account of success matches the actual contributions and learning evidence (Leithwood et al., 2004; Grissom et al., 2021).
Six habits that keep recognition honest and useful
1. Name the instructional move. Instead of “Our initiative raised scores,” say what teachers tried: “Fourth-grade teachers compared exit tickets weekly, revised their models of fraction equivalence, and checked whether students could explain their reasoning.” Describe the evidence without claiming that one action alone caused the result.
2. Credit people precisely and with their consent. Name the team, teacher, coach, students, and support staff whose work is being described. Ask before sharing classroom images, student work, or a teacher’s story publicly. Avoid making one person stand in for work that was genuinely collective.
3. Explain your own contribution accurately. “I protected collaborative planning time and arranged a learning lab” is more informative than “I transformed instruction.” Leaders should be able to say what they did, what teachers did, and what evidence is still needed.
4. Use the same pronouns when results disappoint. If “we” earned the gain, “we” should also investigate the gap. Ask: “What did we expect students to learn? What actually happened? Which leadership decision or condition should we adjust?”
5. Check who is missing from the success story. Disaggregate learning evidence where appropriate. A strong average can conceal uneven access or progress. Ask whose work was overlooked and whose learning still needs a different response.
6. Turn celebration into the next cycle of learning. After recognizing progress, identify the practice worth studying, the teacher learning needed to strengthen it, and the student work that will show whether the next adjustment helped. This keeps recognition tied to instructional improvement rather than reputation.
Before the next newsletter, board report, or conference presentation, a leader might pause over three questions: Who did the work? What changed in instruction? What evidence shows students learned more? If the answers are specific, the story gives credit where it belongs and helps others learn from the success.
The strongest instructional leaders can take pride in a school’s accomplishments without placing themselves at the center of every achievement. Their role is to make effective teaching more possible, notice its impact, and tell the story truthfully.
References
Cialdini, R. B., Borden, R. J., Thorne, A., Walker, M. R., Freeman, S., & Sloan, L. R. (1976). Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies (https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/528Readings/Cialdini1976.pdf). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34(3), 366–375. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.34.3.366
Grissom, J. A., Egalite, A. J., & Lindsay, C. A. (2021). *How principals affect students and schools: A systematic synthesis of two decades of research* (https://wallacefoundation.org/resource/articles/insights-how-principals-can-affect-teachers-students-and-schools). The Wallace Foundation.
Leithwood, K., Louis, K. S., Anderson, S., & Wahlstrom, K. (2004). *How leadership influences student learning* (https://wallacefoundation.org/report/how-leadership-influences-student-learning). The Wallace Foundation.