Towards a theory of leadership practice: a distributed perspective

@article{Spillane2004TowardsAT,
  title={Towards a theory of leadership practice: a distributed perspective},
  author={James P. Spillane and Richard Halverson and Jonathan Diamond},
  journal={Journal of Curriculum Studies},
  year={2004},
  volume={36},
  pages={3 - 34}
}
School‐level conditions and school leadership, in particular, are key issues in efforts to change instruction. While new organizational structures and new leadership roles matter to instructional innovation, what seems most critical is how leadership practice is undertaken. Yet, the practice of school leadership has received limited attention in the research literature. Building on activity theory and theories of distributed cognition, this paper develops a distributed perspective on school… 
View on Taylor & Francis
dm.education.wisc.edu
1,617 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
165
Background Citations
604
Methods Citations
67
Results Citations
21

1,617 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Distributed leadership practices in science education
Distributed leadership has become an increasingly accepted alternative perspective in the study of school leadership; it counters previous individualized leadership discourses that valorize the…
Distributed Leadership and Comprehensive School Reform: Using the Distributed Perspective to Investigate the Distribution of Teacher Leadership
Introduction While school leadership is often cited as being paramount to the success of individual schools, the distributed leadership perspective affirms that school leadership is more than just…
Distributed Leadership and School Improvement
This article considers the relationship between distributed leadership and school improvement. Drawing upon empirical evidence from two contemporary studies of successful school leadership and recent…
Distributed leadership: developing theory from practice
Hopes that the transformation of schools lies with exceptional leaders have proved both unrealistic and unsustainable. The idea of leadership as distributed across multiple people and situations has…
School leadership: constitution and distribution
Leadership is currently viewed as a guarantee for educational quality and reforms, as a crucial component for schools’ capacity building and as a major contributor to the transformation of practices.…
Improving leadership in Higher Education institutions: a distributed perspective
This paper reports on a qualitative study exploring how distributed patterns of leadership manifest themselves in project teams within a Higher Education institution. The emphasis is on both the…
Distributed Leadership and Organizational Change: Implementation of a Teaching Performance Measure
This article explores leadership practice and change as evidenced in multiple data sources gathered during a self-study implementation of a teaching performance assessment. It offers promising models…
Distributed Leadership in Schools: Leading or misleading?
This paper takes a distributed perspective on leadership practice in schools. Drawing upon empirical evidence from two contemporary studies of successful school leadership and the international…
Combining Institutional and Distributed Frameworks in Studies of School Leadership
ABSTRACT The premise of this article is that studies of distributed leadership could benefit from further incorporation of institutional approaches to better understand complex reform demands facing…
School leadership in context: Narratives of practice and possibility
In this paper, we critique the study of school leadership for its normative, singular, and evolutionary tendencies. Through an empirical study of leadership we offer an approach that suggests new…
...
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 209 REFERENCES
Leadership as an Organizational Quality
In this article, leadership is conceptualized as an organizational quality. Adopting a perspective on organizations offered by institutional theory, the authors offer a view of leadership that builds…
Leadership for School Restructuring
School restructuring creates new expectations of those who offer leadership to schools, expectations not well captured in images of instructional leadership. This article describes a 4-year program…
Teacher Leadership: Tensions and Ambiguities in Organizational Perspective
This article presents the findings of an exploratory study of teacher leadership roles in a metropolitan K-8 school district. These findings suggest that the development and performance of these…
Leadership as an Organization-Wide Phenomena: Its Impact on School Performance
This article reports the results of a study guided by a conceptualization of leadership as an organizational quality. The study examines the relationship between the leadership exerted by principals,…
Leadership: Roles or Functions?
One recurring debate in education concerns the importance of leaders. In the late 1970s, the effective schools literature suggested that strong administrative leadership is ‘one of the most tangible…
The Constructivist Leader.
The Constructivist Leader provides educational leaders at all levels with a conceptual framework for leadership defined as reciprocal, purposeful learning in community. The updated Second Edition of…
The Ambiguity of Leadership
Problems with the concept of leadership are addressed: (a) the ambiguity of its definition and measurement, (b) the issue of whether leadership affects organizational performance, and (c) the process…
Exploring the Transformational Nature of Instructional Leadership
The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between instructional leadership and selected school-level characteristics essential to the development of successful schools. Data were…
Bass & Stogdill's handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and managerial applications, 3rd ed.
Bernard M.Bass has incorporated a decade of new findings on the newest theories and models of leadership; intellectual and interpersonal competence; motivation; the nature of power and…
기독교 사역과 Leadership
Building Leadership Effectiveness This program encourages leaders to develop practices that transform values into action, vision into realities, obstacles into innovations, and risks into rewards.…
...
...