Fostering Distributed Instructional Leadership: A Sociocultural Perspective of Leadership Development in Urban High Schools

To meet accountability demands, principals are being encouraged to enhance schools' organizational capacities by distributing leadership and initiating professional communities. Yet, relatively little attention has focused on how to develop the capabilities of potential co-leaders, and professi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Leadership and policy in schools 2012-10, Vol.11 (4), p.365-390
Main Author: Klar, Hans W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Administrator Effectiveness
Communities of Practice
Culture
Department Heads
Educational Environment
Educational leadership
High Schools
Instructional Leadership
Leadership Effectiveness
Principals
School principals
Secondary schools
Skill Development
Sociocultural Patterns
Teacher Collaboration
Urban Schools
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Summary:To meet accountability demands, principals are being encouraged to enhance schools' organizational capacities by distributing leadership and initiating professional communities. Yet, relatively little attention has focused on how to develop the capabilities of potential co-leaders, and professional communities can be difficult to initiate and sustain. In this article, I examine how principals in three urban high schools fostered their department chairs' instructional leadership capabilities through professional communities. An interesting finding was the extent to which modeling, collaboration with peers, and skill-building activities enculturated department chairs into authentic communities of instructional leaders. The article concludes with implications for practice and research.
ISSN:1570-0763
1744-5043
DOI:10.1080/15700763.2012.654886