Abstract
Instructional leadership has long been hailed as one of the most significant responsibilities of school principals. Although there has been much advocacy for principal instructional leadership, there has been far less explicit conceptualization of what instructional leadership encompasses. This chapter reports on interviews with 40 principals from 11 states in which the principals talk about their work in this era of high stakes accountability. Specifically, in this chapter, we focus on their instructional leadership practice. Based on the analysis of the data, we propose a developmental framework of instructional leadership. We categorize instructional leadership into direct and indirect forms, with direct forms including linear, organic, and prophetic instructional leadership, and indirect forms being relational, empowering, and political instructional leadership.
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Notes
- 1.
For a critique of many of these practices, see Reitzug et al. (2008).
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Reitzug, U.C., West, D.L. (2011). A Developmental Framework for Instructional Leadership. In: Townsend, T., MacBeath, J. (eds) International Handbook of Leadership for Learning. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1350-5_12
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