Expretation Of Instructional Leadership Theories

. There are as many interpretations of Instructional leadership as there are people who have written on the subject, since Hallinger and Murphy (1988) coined the phrase in the 1980’s. Blase and Blase (1998) are oft quoted in literature as being at the forefront of what exactly instructional leadership has meant over the years. Their definition can be cited as ‘the teaching and learning processes in schools, including teacher professional development, curriculum development, and teacher supervision’. Of course academics are always looking for new ways of describing what instructional leadership is, or moulding it to fit the current educational environments that are developing in education systems across the globe. DuFour (2002) talks about the

Spillane (2006) interprets the word leadership thus: ‘Leadership refers to activities tied to the core work of the organization that are designed by organizational members to influence the motivation, knowledge, affect, or practices of other organizational members.’

. The choice of the word ‘inherent’ in the context used here will be interpreted as ‘intrinsic’ – meaning at the centre of – in this case, a leadership theory.

. Can one identify a theory that is inherent in Instructional / curriculum leadership? Rather, is it not more appropriate to ask whether Instructional Leadership / Curriculum Leadership is ‘inherent’ in one of the Leadership Theories?

. Curriculum Leadership is a subset of Instructional Leadership. On top of the emphasis on all matters related to the curriculum, the Instructional leader should be a good communicator, have a visible presence, be as well read as possible on up to date educational issues – not only restricted to the curriculum – but also on assessment and different strategies to help students learn, ie methods of instruction. (Jenkins,

Many theories of leadership are at the nucleus of Instructional and or Curriculum leadership. Theories of leadership are many. One might however pick out the Great Man Theory, Trait Theory, Behavioural Theories, Contingency Theories, Transactional Theory and Transformational Theories as being the most commonly quoted. The first two are the forerunners of those that follow, and mostly discredited as having been developed before the era of psychology and understanding developed in the field of behavioural sciences. Participative or Distributed Leadership Theory, as recognized by Likert (1961), has only recently – in the last 10 or so years - been adopted as one that seriously ranks amongst the major theories thus far mentioned. Spillane is one of the major proponents and writes extensively on the subject, his major work being the book of the same name ‘Distributed Leadership’ (ibid.). Some aspects of this theory are as