Distributed Instructional Leadership in High Schools

Abstract

This article explores the idea of distributed instructional leadership as a way to understand instructional leadership practice in comprehensive high schools. Our argument is that distributed leadership analyses allow researchers to uncover and explain how instructional improvement in high schools occurs through the efforts of multiple individuals working to simultaneously influence the contexts of leadership and the contexts of instruction. The distributed instructional leadership model draws on the full potential of distributed leadership to describe not only who is involved with high school reforms but also what situated tools, tasks, and routines are required to change and maintain improved teaching. The first part of the article develops an account of distributed instructional leadership as an approach to studying how leaders create high school learning environments, by drawing on research in distributed cognition. The second part provides an illustration of how the ideas of distributed instructional leadership were applied to the analysis of a curriculum-based reform in a comprehensive high school.

Drivers for Change: A Study of Distributed Leadership and Performance Adaptation During Policy Innovation Implementation

“…Distributed instructional leadership requires leaders to develop strategies that impact what happens in the classroom to scale up innovations (Elmore, 2004;Halverson & Clifford, 2013). This work advances as the tighter coupling of leadership and instructional practices occurs, and especially as leaders stretch their practices into the classroom (Spillane & Burch, 2006;Spillane et al, 2004;Weick, 1976).…”

“…District and school leaders, along with instructional coaches and teacher leaders, play key roles in translating policy changes and supporting instructional change (Coburn, 2001(Coburn, , 2003Coburn & Russell, 2008;Neumerski, 2013;Coburn & Woulfin, 2012). Additionally, distributed instructional leadership emphasizes the sharing of leadership activities that specifically affect the learning environment for teachers and students among formal and informal roles (Camburn et al, 2003;Halverson & Clifford, 2013). Instructional leadership is the "intentional effort at all levels of an educational system to guide, direct, or support teachers as they seek to increase their repertoire of skills, gain professional knowledge, and ultimately improve their students' success" (Knapp, Copland, Honig, Plecki, & Portin, 2010).…”

“…In order to affect the learning environment, leaders need to serve as boundary spanners. They do so by crossing between the leadership plane and the instructional plane to impact the instructional core (Coldren & Spillane, 2007;Halverson & Clifford, 2013;Wenger, 1998). These boundary-spanning leadership roles are spread across a variety of actors, including principals, instructional coaches, and department chairs, along with informal teacher leaders (Neumerski, 2013;Spillane & Diamond, 2007;Spillane, Diamond, & Jita, 2003).…”

“…Over time, such routines become part of the organizational culture (Halverson & Clifford, 2013). The routines are the situations of practice (Clifford, 2009;Halverson, 2003) and provide opportunities for distributed cognition to take place between actors in various roles (Halverson & Clifford, 2013). To support change, leaders use new tools and tasks to provide structures for new routines to develop.…”

“…For domain-specific changes, such as instructional change, performance adaptation requires a goal orientation, opportunities for guided learning, and adaptive feedback (Baard et al, 2013). These dimensions map onto concepts of distributed instructional leadership, particularly the idea of boundary-crossing leaders who engage in tasks with teachers to develop distributed cognition about teaching and learning (Halverson & Clifford, 2013;Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond, 2001).…”