Abstract
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 leadership as a frame for studying leadership practice, arguing that leadership practice is constituted in the interaction of school leaders, followers, and the situation.
Original language | French |
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Pages (from-to) | 121-149 |
Number of pages | 29 |
Journal | Education et Societes |
Volume | 21 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2008 |
Funding
The writing of this paper was supported by the ‘Distributed leadership project’, funded by research grants from the US National Science Foundation (REC–9873583) and the Spencer Foundation (200000039). Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy and Institute for Policy Research also supported work on the paper. All opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funding agency.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education
- Sociology and Political Science