Distributed School Leadership

Book excerpt: Tomorrow’s schools will need new forms of leadership. The old hierarchical models of leadership simply do not fit any longer. We need to develop new leaders at all levels of the system if we are serious about sustaining improvement and change. But, how do we go about this? The book focuses on the why, how and what of distributed leadership by offering a practical insight into what it looks like in schools. It argues that our new system leaders are already in schools and that the main challenge is to develop them and maximise their collective capacity to make a difference. Drawing on the ‘Developing Leaders Programme’, which aimed to develop young leaders in schools, it provides practical examples and case-study evidence of distributed leadership in action. The main aims of the book are to: provide a clear account of more widely distributed leadership offer evidence about its positive impact on organisational and individual learning give case-study exemplars and practical illustrations of how it works in practice. The book also considers the leadership of networks and the new forms of partnership schools are engaged in. It looks at how lateral capacity is built and the part distributed leadership plays in generating leadership capacity between schools. It will be of interest to headteachers, aspiring school leaders, teachers and educational professionals.