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Educational Leadership

Article in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis · June 2004

DOI: 10.3102/01623737025004343 · Source: OAI

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American Educational Research Association

Educational Leadership
Author(s): James P. Spillane
Source: Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Vol. 25, No. 4, Special Issue on Educational
Leadership (Winter, 2003), pp. 343-346
Published by: American Educational Research Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3699581
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Educational Leadership
James P. Spillane
NorthwesternUniversity
Introduction
Leadershipis a centralthemein recentconver-
sations aboutimprovingK-12 education.This is
not surprising; over the past few decades re-
searchershave consistently reportedthat school
leadership, principal leadership in particular,
is critical in developing and sustaining those
school-level conditions believed essential for
instructional improvement (Rosenholtz, 1989;
Hallinger & Heck, 1996). While volumes have
been filled with discussions on education lead-
ership, many scholars and practitioners have
raised questions about research on leadership.
Indeed, scholarshave called for a re-focusing of
scholarshipin the field of educational adminis-
trationin general.
This special issue of EEPAis designed to con-
tributeto this on-going conversationaboutrefo-
cusing scholarshipin educationaladministration
in generaland educationleadershipin particular.
The firstthreearticlesaddressthe issue of leader-
shipfor instructionalimprovementfroma distrib-
uted perspective. Eric Cambur, Brian Rowan,
and James Taylor show that participationin a
ComprehensiveSchool Reform(CSR) model in-
fluences the distributionof leadershipfunctions
across positions in schools and impacts the ex-
tent to which particularleadershipfunctions get
activated.Cambur andcolleaguesalso show that
professional development can influence leader-
ship practice.
Continuingto look at how the performanceof
school leadershipfunctionsis distributed,the next
two articlestake a more in-depthlook at distrib-
utedleadershipon the ground.Througha multisite
case study of Bay Area School ReformCollabo-
rative (BASRC), Michael Coplandunderscores
EducationalEvaluationand Policy Analysis
Winter2003, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 343-346
thatthe distributionof leadershipin schools shifts
overtime as school leaders'roles change.Further,
Coplandshows thatwhile new structurescan be a
means of building leadershipcapacity, turnover
of key leaders coupled with limited preparation
for this turnover threaten sustainability of im-
provementinitiatives. JenniferGoldstein exam-
ines efforts to give teachers responsibility for
teacher evaluation through a case study of one
school district's implementationof Peer Assis-
tance and Review (PAR). Goldstein's article
identifies some core challenges involved in dis-
tributing leadership, especially for leadership
functions that have been strongly tied to the
school principal.
Mary Kay Stein and BarbaraNelson develop
the notion of Leadership Content Knowledge
(LCK)pressingus to considerwhat leadersneed
to know about the teaching and learning of par-
ticular school subjectsin orderto practice as in-
structionalleaders. Contendingthateducational
administrationscholars have neglected admin-
istrators' understandingof subject matter and
how it must be transformedfor the purposes of
leadership,Nelson and Stein explorethe subject-
matter-knowledge requirements of leadership
at different levels of the local school system.
David McGough's articlealso focuses on school
leaders' professional learning but situates that
learning in school principals' learning stories.
McGough's articleilluminateshow school prin-
cipals' professional learning is influenced by
the learning stories that guides how they appre-
hend novelty.
Througha case of a schooldistrictmovingfrom
court-ordereddesegregation to unitary status,
Ellen Goldring, Robert Crowson, David Laird,
343
Spillane
and RobertBerk examine how school principals
define leadershipin transition.Arguingthatpol-
icy implementationimplies a transitionfrom one
modus operandi to another, Goldring and her
colleagues explore school leadershipduringthis
process of transition.
Moving Forward: Some Directions
for Educational Leadership Research
Taken together,these articlesidentify a num-
ber of themes andin doing so suggest potentially
fruitful directions for research on educational
leadership.Threeof thesethemes-leadership for
teachingandlearning,distributedleadership,and
systemic leadership-suggest interestinglines of
inquiry.
Leadershipfor Teachingand Learning
These articlesare groundedin a concernwith
leadershipfor improvingteaching and learning.
Thisis no accident;as editorI intentionallyfocused
the special issue on relationsbetween education
leadershipandinstructionalimprovement.Forthe
most partinstructionandits improvementhas not
been a hot topic in research on educational ad-
ministration.As scholars of educationaladmin-
istration increasingly argue that the main re-
sponsibility of school leaders should be the
improvement of teaching and student learning
(Murphy,2002), this will undoubtedlychange.
Moreover, shifts in the policy environmentover
the past couple of decades that have attempted
to forge wide-rangingchanges in classroom in-
structionare likely to affordclassroom teaching
and student learning a central role in educa-
tional leadershipresearch.
A numberof the articles in this special issue
providerichillustrationsof ways in which schol-
arshipon educationleadershipcan put teaching
andlearningfrontand centerin studiesof educa-
tional leadership.A criticalissue here, suggested
by Stein and Nelson, is that it is not simply in-
structionbut instructionin particularschool sub-
jects thatneeds to featuremoreprominentlyin re-
searchon educationalleadership.Teachersdon't
just teach-they teach mathematics,reading,and
science andhow they enacttheirroles dependsin
parton the school subject.As one might expect,
then, leadershipfor instructionis subjectmatter
sensitive and researchon educationalleadership
must take this into account (Burch & Spillane,
2003; Spillane,Diamond,& Jita,2003).
344
Stein and Nelson show how investigations of
leadership expertise need to be subject matter
specific because it is inadequatefor administra-
tors to generalize from what they know about
instructionin one subjectareato anothersubject
area. Research on leadership content knowl-
edge suggests one line of inquiry.Otheraspects
of educationalleadershipmight also be studied
in ways that are sensitive to the subject matter
such as the distributionof leadership functions
across positions in schools and school districts
by subject area.
DistributedLeadership
Anotherthemeaddressedin manyof these arti-
cles is distributedleadershipincludingeverything
from the distribution of leadership functions
across positions to attemptsto unpack the com-
plexities involved when the work of leadershipis
"stretched over" (Rogoff, 1990) two or more
leaders.These articlesmakesa contributionto ad-
dressingwhatBennett,Wise, Woods, andHarvey
(2003) correctly identify as a limited empirical
knowledge base on distributedleadership and,
equallyimportant,suggest numerousavenuesfor
futureresearch.For example,Goldsteinsuggests
two models of distributedleadership,dividedre-
sponsibilityand sharedresponsibilityfor leader-
ship tasks, pointing us to one area where the
knowledgebase is thin on distributedleadership;
thatis, understandinghow leaderspracticesrelate
to one anotherwhen leadershipis distributed.
Recent workputs forthways of thinkingabout
this aspect of distributedleadership suggesting
potentiallyfruitfullines of inquiry.Work under-
taken by the Distributed Leadership Study,
suggests three ways in which leadership might
be stretched over the practice of leaders-
collaborateddistribution,collective distribution,
andcoordinateddistribution(Spillane,Diamond,
& Jita, 2000; Spillane, Diamond, Sherer, &
Coldren,in press).Collaborateddistributionrefers
to leadershippracticewhereleadersworktogether
to execute a particularleadershipfunctionwhere
one leader's practice becomes the basis for
anotherleader'spracticeandvisa-versa;thereis a
reciprocalinterdependency.Collective distribu-
tion refersto the practiceof two or more leaders
who work separatelybut interdependentlyin pur-
suit of a shared goal involving interdependent
activitiesthatproducea commonpractice.Coordi-
nated distribution denotes leadership practice

in which different leadership tasks that must
be performed in a particular sequence for the
executionof some leadershipfunction-the inter-
dependencyamong tasks and the leadersrespon-
sible for executingthese tasks,is sequential.Each
of these threetypes of distributionssuggests dif-
ferent interdependenciesamong the practicesof
school leadersthathave implicationsfor thinking
aboutand investigatinghow leadershipexpertise
might be distributed.
PeterGronn,develops a two dimensionaltax-
onomy of distributedleadershipstructures,differ-
entiatingarrangementsby the mode of conjoint
agency(coperformance orcollectiveperformance)
and the size of the concertively acting group
(Gronn,2003). Among other things, Gronn un-
packs examplesof co-performancewith intuitive
workingrelations,coperformancewithinstitution-
alizedpractices,collectiveperformancewith intu-
itive workingrelations,andcollectiveperformance
with institutionalizedpractices. This work pro-
vides a richconceptualmodel for framinginvesti-
gationsof distributedleadership.
EducationalLeadershipin
and Across the EducationSystem
Anothertheme that these articlesbring to the
fore is the importance of situating educational
leadershipat any one level of the education"sys-
tem" in the largersystem. As Elmore (2000) ar-
gues, a systems perspectiveis criticalin thinking
about educational leadership in the service of
large scale instructionalimprovement.Studiesof
educationalleadershipmore often thannot focus
on what happenswithin the schoolhouse or dis-
trict office. These articles suggest that studies
of educationalleadershipat any one level of the
system-department, school, anddistrictoffice-
must take account of how educational leader-
ship is both vertical and horizontaldistributed.
Education leadership can be orchestratedfrom
and across differentlevels of the school system
(e.g., districtoffice) and from, through,and with
agencies beyond the formal governmentsystem
(e.g., ComprehensiveSchool Reform models).
The challengein understandingeducationallead-
ershipis developing rich and robustunderstand-
ings of the phenomenaat one or more levels of
the system while simultaneouslyattendingto the
policies, programs,and structuresat variouslev-
els of the system that enable and constrainthat
practice.Goldringandher colleagues underscore
EducationalLeadership
this pointin theirattentionto leadershipin transi-
tion. Stein andNelson, illuminatethe importance
of this system perspectiveby illustratinghow the
form that leadership content knowledge takes
might differ depending on the leadershipfunc-
tion and proximityto the classroom.
Of course the "educationsystem" is complex
construct. The education system extends be-
yond the formal governmentsystem of schools,
school districts,and statedepartments.As Cam-
burnand colleagues illustratethe nonprofitsec-
tor and its engagement with the government
sector is critical in efforts to understandeduca-
tional leadership.Though not the focus of these
articles, the for-profit sector is an increasingly
importantplayer in education and its improve-
ment. A critical issue then, not addressed in
these articles, concerns the role of government,
nonprofit, and for-profit agencies in education
leadership and its development.
References
Bennett,N., Wise, C., Woods, P., & Harvey,J. (2003).
Distributed leadership (Full report). Oxford, UK:
NationalCollegeforSchoolLeadership.
Burch,P., & Spillane,J. P. (2003).Elementary
school
leadershipand subjectmatter:Reformingmathe-
matics literacy instruction:The ElementarySchool
Journal.103(5),519-35.
Elmore, R. F. (2000). Building a new structurefor
school leadership. Washington, DC: The Albert
ShankerInstitute.
Gronn,P. (2002). Distributedleadershipas a unit
of analysis. The LeadershipQuarterly,13(4),
423-451.
Hallinger,P., & Heck,R. H. (1996).Reassessingthe
principal's rolein schooleffectiveness:
A reviewof
the empiricalresearch.EducationalAdministration
32(1),27-31.
Quarterly,
Rosenholtz, S. J. (1989). Teachers' workplace: The
socialorganizationofschools.NewYork:Longman.
Murphy, J., & SeashoreL. K. (1999).Handbookof
SanFran-
researchon educationaladministration.
cisco, CA:Jossey-Bass.
Rogoff, B. M. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking:
Cognitive developmentinsocialcontext.NewYork:
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Spillane,J. P.,Diamond,J. B., &Jita,L. (2000,April).
Leadinginstruction:Thedistributionof leader-
ship for instruction.Paperpresentedat the annual
meetingof the AmericanEducationalResearch
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Spillane,J. Diamond,D. Sherer,J., & Coldren,A. (in
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Spillane
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Author
JAMES P. SPILLANE is Associate Professor of
Education and Social Policy, and a Faculty Fellow,
Institutefor Policy Research School of Education &
346
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Social Policy, NorthwesternUniversity, 2115 North
Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208; j-spillane@
northwester.edu. His areasof specializationare edu-
cationpolicy andintergovernmental relations,relations
between state policy, local governmentagencies, and
teachers' and school administrators'practice. James
P. Spillaneis the editorof EducationalEvaluationand
Policy Analysis.