James Spillane, the leading expert in Distributed Leadership, shows how leadership happens in everyday practices in schools, through formal routines and informal interactions. He examines the distribution of leadership among administrators, specialists, and teachers in the school, and explains the ways in which leadership practice is stretched over leaders, followers, and aspects of the situation, including routines and tools of various sorts in the organization such as memos, scheduling procedures, and evaluation protocols. This book is a volume in the Jossey-Bass Leadership Library in Education—a series designed to meet the demand for new ideas and insights about leadership in schools.
Building on best practices and lessons learned, Distributed Leadership in Schools shows educators how to design and implement distributed leadership to effectively address challenges in their schools. Grounded in case studies and full of practical tools, this book lays out a framework for building strategic, collaborative, and instructionally-focused teams. Supported by voices of practitioners and based upon original research, this comprehensive resource shares concrete strategies, tips, and tools for creating teams that are skilled at using data to plan and monitor their work, and successful in facilitating change to improve student learning. This innovative method will aid leader development and facilitate reflection, and will reshape leadership practice in a way that benefits teachers, leaders, schools, and students.
Tomorrow’s schools will need new forms of leadership. The old hierarchical models of leadership simply do not fit any longer. We need to develop new leaders at all levels of the system if we are serious about sustaining improvement and change. But, how do we go about this? The book focuses on the why, how and what of distributed leadership by offering a practical insight into what it looks like in schools. It argues that our new system leaders are already in schools and that the main challenge is to develop them and maximise their collective capacity to make a difference. Drawing on the ‘Developing Leaders Programme’, which aimed to develop young leaders in schools, it provides practical examples and case-study evidence of distributed leadership in action. The main aims of the book are to: provide a clear account of more widely distributed leadership offer evidence about its positive impact on organisational and individual learning give case-study exemplars and practical illustrations of how it works in practice. The book also considers the leadership of networks and the new forms of partnership schools are engaged in. It looks at how lateral capacity is built and the part distributed leadership plays in generating leadership capacity between schools. It will be of interest to headteachers, aspiring school leaders, teachers and educational professionals.
Alma Harris The ?eld of school leadership is currently preoccupied with the idea of distributed leadership. Few ideas, it seems, have provoked as much attention, debate and c- troversy. Whatever your position on distributed leadership, and you cannot fail to have one, it is irrefutable that distributed leadership has become the leadership idea of the moment. Yet, it is an idea that can be traced back as far as the mid 20s and possibly earlier. So why the interest? Part of the answer can be found in a move away from theorizing and empirical enquiry focused on the single leader. This shift has undoubtedly been fuelled by structural changes, within schools and across school systems that have resulted in - ternative models or forms of leadership practice. Evidence highlights how those - cupying formal leadership positions are increasingly recognizing the limitations of existing structural arrangements to secure organizational growth and transformation (Fullan et al. , 2007; Harris et al. , 2008; Chapman et al. , 2008). As a consequence, many heads and principals are actively restructuring, realigning and redesigning leadership practice in their school (Harris, 2008). While the terminology to describe such changes varies, the core principle is one of extending or sharing leadership practice. While scholars have long argued for the need to move beyond those at the top of organizations in order to examine leadership (Barnard, 1968; Katz and Kahn, 1966) until relatively recently, much of the school leadership literature has tended tofocusupontheheadortheprincipal.
Distributed leadership has become an important term for educational policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in the United States and around the world, but there is much diversity in how the term is understood. Some use it as a synonym for democratic or participative leadership. This book examines what it means to take a distributed perspective based on extensive research and a rich theoretical perspective developed by experts in the field. Including numerous case studies of individual schools and providing empirically based accounts of school settings using a distributed perspective, this thorough volume: Explores how a distributed perspective is different from other frameworks for thinking about leadership. Provides clear examples of how taking a distributed perspective can help researchers understand and connect more directly to leadership practice. Illustrates how the day-to-day practice of leadership is an important line of inquiry for scholars and for those interested in improving school leadership.
Focusing on the ways in which leadership can be fostered and enhanced, this text argues that teacher leadership is an instrinsic and important part of school and classroom improvement, as well as considering the roles, responsibilities and influences of teachers who lead.
This text explores the practical application of distributed school leadership, combining theory and practice to demonstrate how this approach can result in better learner outcomes.
Fully revised and thoroughly updated, this Second Edition of this classic book brings together many leading international authors on educational leadership, with brand new chapters from leaders in the field – Ken Leithwood, Paul Begley, Allan Walker and Alma Harris. Providing an overview of essential topics within the field, this book adopts an international perspective and offers conceptual and empirical insights.
The first International Handbook of Educational Leadership and Administration (Leithwood et al.) was published in 1996 and quickly became something of a best seller for reference works within education. Such success, we suggest, was at least partly due to the unprecedented global waves of concern for improving schools launched in the mid 1980's, combined with a widespread belief in leadership as the single most powerful contribution to such improvement. The roots of this belief can be found in evidence produced by the early "effective schools" research, although there is a "romance" with leadership! as an explanation for success in many non-school enterprises, as well. During the two-year period during which this current handbook was being written, activity in the realms of school leadership, school improvement, and leadership development gained further momentum. The English government created its new National College of School Leadership, and several Asian nations announced new initiatives in leadership selection, preparation, and development.
`This is a book packed with ideas and insights. It is informed by evidence from school leaders and provides a valuable overview of many important theories and research findings. A strength of the book is the way it pulls together empirical research the authors have conducted over the last 20 years. Such a long term view offers a new and needed long term perspective on school leadership and enables the authors to show how trends in leaders′ careers, thinking and practice have emerged and unfolded. Researchers and practitioners alike will find something of value in this book′ - Professor Geoff Southworth, Director of Research, National College for School Leadership ′[A]n excellent, well-written, extensively referenced, empirically based contribution to school leadership thinking... Earley and Weindling offer valuable insights for all of us: serving headteachers/principles, advisory and distinct-wide policy makers and aspiring headteachers′ - Journal of Educational Administration By giving a detailed picture of the rapidly developing field of educational leadership, this book focuses on how to become a more effective manager and on understanding the vital importance of the manager′s role in school improvement. Written in a clear and readable style, it contains an extensive exploration of leadership models and management strategies and is based on the latest research. The text is supplemented with case studies of leadership in action. Understanding School Leadership is indispensable reading for those who have a managerial role within their school and for students of educational management.
