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Leading from the Chalk-face: An Overview of School Leadership

Alma Harris Leadership 2005 1: 73 DOI: 10.1177/1742715005049352 The online version of this article can be found at: http://lea.sagepub.com/content/1/1/73

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Leading from the Chalk-face: An Overview of School Leadership

Alma Harris, University of Warwick, UK

Abstract This article offers an overview of the school leadership literature by outlining the main theoretical perspectives that currently dominate much of the writing and research in this area. Its main purpose is to provide a commentary on the dominant theoretical positions that characterize the contemporary leadership eld and to explore the empirical foundation of these different theoretical traditions. The article does not claim to be the denitive word on school leadership; instead it aims to provide an overview of the main theoretical perspectives on school leadership that, rstly, have a theoretical and empirical base and, secondly, offer some insight into the relationship between leadership practice and organizational change and improvement. Keywords change; organizational improvement; school leadership School leadership has recently established a new primacy. It has emerged from several decades of being in the shadows of educational administration and management to enjoy its own time in the sun. The current educational landscape is one in which the limitations of standards-based reform to secure higher student achievement have become increasingly apparent in many Western countries (Elmore, 2000). System level accountability has simply not delivered the transformation of educational performance anticipated. As a consequence educational policy, particularly in England, has shifted its sights fairly quickly to collaboration rather than competition between schools, emphasizing greater choice and diversity within the school system and identifying improved school leadership as a central lever in school transformation. In the US, Canada and Australia there has been renewed interest in school leadership chiey fuelled by a widespread belief in the potential of headteachers or principals to deliver improved educational outcomes. In England, the establishment of a National College for School Leadership in 2001 not only signalled a major and unprecedented investment in leadership development and training but also subsequently generated a leadership epidemic across the school system. Leadership and leadership development have retained a consistently high prole in education in recent years despite the rise and fall of other initiatives, developments and policy imperatives. While other countries have not pursued school leadership with quite the
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same degree of investment or fervour, leadership and leadership development feature both prominently and centrally in their educational policy agendas. In the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries there is widespread belief in the ability of leaders to make a positive difference to schools and to improve student learning outcomes. Indeed, there is some foundation for this optimistic position. Researchers from the international elds of school effectiveness and school improvement have consistently highlighted the importance of leadership in generating better schools (Hargreaves et al., 1998; Hopkins, 2001; Sammons, 1999). Research has also demonstrated the contribution of leadership at other levels within the school organization, particularly those in middle leadership positions (Busher & Harris, 2000; Harris, 2001). It is within the theoretical framework of school level change and improvement that my own research is located. It has concentrated mainly on the question of what type of leadership promotes positive organizational change and improvement rather than being overly concerned with labelling or categorizing different types of leadership (e.g. Harris et al., 2002; Harris & Lambert, 2003). Most recently, this interest has led to an exploration of leadership as distributed phenomena, as a form of social action, where teachers have both agency and authority to lead (Harris, 2004). This particular variant of leadership theory will be explored and explained later in this article. In summary, there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that the quality of leadership positively enhances teaching and learning. Leadership has been shown to make a difference to the schools ability to improve by inuencing the motivation of teachers and the quality of teaching which takes place in the classroom (Fullan, 2001; Sergiovanni, 2001). It inuences whether a school is likely to succeed or fail against the odds. As Leithwood and Riel (2003: 3) note, large scale studies of schooling conclude that the effects of leadership on student learning are small but educationally signicant. So school leadership matters; however, the degree to which it matters remains a contentious issue. Grint (1997: 116) notes despite an enormous outpouring of material in the second half of the twentieth century, we appear to be little closer to understanding leadership. At one extreme there is a view that there is no natural entity or essence that can be labelled leadership. The work of Evers and Lakomski (2001), for example, questions whether leadership as a distinct concept within organizational development and change is meaningful. Lakomski (forthcoming) argues that leadership as traditionally conceived is of little help in explaining and engineering change in complex organizations. She proposes that a more productive approach is suggested which develops further current models of the learning organization and issues in a new theory of organizational learning and practice. At the opposite end of this discussion are empirically weak and often anecdotal accounts of heroic forms of leadership that single-handedly secure organizational development and change. Spillane (forthcoming) advocates that these accounts are problematic for four reasons. First, these epics typically equate school leadership with headteachers and their valiant actions. Second, these stories of school leadership pay scant attention to leadership but concentrate mostly on people, structures, functions, routines, and roles, focusing on the what rather than the how of leadership. Third, leadership practice is depicted mostly in terms of the actions, gallant or otherwise, of one or

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more leaders. Fourth, in the heroics of leadership tradition, leadership is dened chiey in terms of its outcome; we know leadership only when we see evidence of its effects. On this fourth point the international research base is largely inconclusive about exactly how leadership inuences school and student outcomes. Part of the problem resides in the fact that the evidential base is very diverse and the quality of studies varies considerably. In a comprehensive review of the school leadership literature Hallinger and Heck (1996) identied certain blank spots (i.e. shortcomings in the research) and blind spots (i.e. areas that have been overlooked because of theoretical and epistemological biases) within the leadership eld. An important blind spot related to the fact that much of the research literature, until recently, has focused upon the formal leadership of headteachers and has overlooked the kinds of leadership that can be distributed across many roles and functions in the school. In relying on accounts of headteachers to dene effective leadership, the eld has until relatively recently tended to neglect or simply ignore leadership at other levels, i.e. middle level leadership or teacher leadership (Harris & Muijs, 2003). It has also failed to address, with any degree of seriousness, the question of how leadership practice positively affects school or student outcomes. It remains a deep concern that relatively few studies of school leadership have established any direct causal links between leadership and improved student performance (Hallinger & Heck, 1996). A recent systematic review of the literature conrmed that effective leadership was an important factor in a schools success but that its effect upon student learning outcomes was largely indirect (Bell et al., 2003). This review concluded that distributed forms of leadership among the wider school staff is likely to have a more signicant impact on the positive achievement of student/pupil outcomes than that which is largely or exclusively top down (Bell et al., 2003: 4). Consequently, even though much of the school leadership literature takes for granted the better leadership equals better schools equation, more recent studies have highlighted the need for caution and have pointed towards more complex and contestable models of leadership practice to explain organizational change and development (Spillane et al., 2001) This article offers an overview of school leadership literature by outlining the main theoretical perspectives that currently dominate much of the writing and research in this area. Its main purpose is to provide a commentary on the dominant theoretical positions that characterize the contemporary leadership eld but also to explore the relationship with the empirical base of these different positions. The article does not presume to be the denitive word on school leadership as a number of different perspectives on leadership are omitted mainly because of limited theoretical or empirical substance. Consequently, the article is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the literature, as such reviews already exist (see Hallinger & Heck, 1996; Bush & Glover, 2003). Instead it aims to provide an overview of the main theoretical perspectives on school leadership that, rstly, have a theoretical and empirical base and, secondly, offer some insight into the question highlighted earlier, i.e. the relationship between leadership practice and organizational change and improvement.

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Mapping the terrain

The school leadership eld is difcult terrain to traverse. The reason for this lies in the plethora of alternative and competing models of leadership generated from multiple perspectives and constructs (Bush & Glover, 2003: 7). The fact that there are 350 denitions of leadership but no clear and unequivocal understanding of what distinguishes leaders from non-leaders also makes it complex territory (Cuban, 1998: 190). The absence of an agreed denition of the concept of leadership among those in the eld also makes the task of providing an overview difcult. The research on leadership has produced a wide range of ndings and, some would argue, an endless accumulation of empirical data that has not generated any clearer understanding of the term. As far back as 1959 Bennis wrote: Of all the hazy and confounding ideas in social psychology, leadership theory undoubtedly contends for the top nomination. Probably more has been researched and less is known about leadership than any other topic in the behavioural sciences. (p. 259) Some writers have attempted to provide a clear view of leadership from the literature by clustering various conceptions into a number of broad themes or types. Most recently, Bush and Glover (2003: 12) have identied eight models of leadership, drawing upon a typology adapted from Leithwood et al. (1999) that provide a starting point for a normative assessment of school leadership. This typology is a particularly effective way of organizing and interrogating different theoretical perspectives and is drawn upon, in part, to provide the framework for this analysis of the literature. Looking at the leadership literature it is certainly difcult to discern how certain theoretical positions or models of leadership differ. For example, the differences between spiritual and moral leadership or learner-centred versus instructional leadership are not well dened or delineated. Writers in the eld have tended to locate their writing in one particular dimension or variant of leadership theory and have tended not to look across the eld or to engage critically with competing denitions or constructs of leadership. Most recently, Bush and Glover (2003) have argued for an integrated model of leadership. This would seem a particularly ambitious aspiration when it is clear that not only are there many different labels applied to the same conceptual terrain, i.e. instructional leadership, learnercentred leadership and pedagogical leadership but also that the theoretical positions on leadership vary considerably in scope, nature and origin. It is questionable therefore whether such an integrated model of leadership is desirable given the inevitable reductionism that would occur. The next section considers leadership theory in some depth.

Leadership theory
There is a large and disparate literature on educational leadership that has generated various theoretical perspectives. Much of this literature is derived from North American and European sources, and it has been suggested, reects an over reliance upon commercial and business views of leadership. Yet despite a large literature,

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some would argue that social science can tell us little about the subject (Sergiovanni, 1996: 7). Similarly, Law and Glover (2000: 4) have suggested that there are no ready made or universally applicable leadership theories we can simply pull off the shelf. Fullan (1999) has suggested that many of the new or recent theories fail to provide robust examples and insights, which, in turn, can be linked to powerful concepts. He argues that more work needs to be done to develop a meaningful actionbased theory of leadership which places teachers at the centre of leadership activity (e.g. Frost & Durrant, 2002; Harris, 2003). Murphy et al. (1993) suggest that thinking about leadership falls into a number of phases building towards the current interest in the links between organizational culture and leadership behaviour. West et al. (2000: 32) have claried these phases as follows:

Initial interest in the personal qualities and characteristics of successful leaders which result in personality or trait theories of leadership; Increasing focus on what it is that leaders actually do are there some behaviours and approaches that are consistently associated with successful leadership? Such inquiries support the development of behavioural theories of leadership; Emphasis upon the links between leadership style and the culture of the organization a notion of leadership as transformational having the potential to alter the context in which people work; Growing awareness that task-related and people-centred behaviours may be interpreted quite differently by different groups and in different contexts, prompting explanation of how the particular context might be best accounted for within a general theory, and resulting in a variety of situational approaches to leadership.

This section takes a broad look at leadership theory by drawing upon the Bush and Glover (2003) typology. It explores the dominant leadership theories in education through four major lenses with the caveat that these are articial boundaries that attempt to analyse and describe rather than categorize or constrain:

Managerial Transformational Interpretive Instructional

These lenses provide a framework for presenting and evaluating different leadership theories. They also offer the opportunity to reect upon leadership research in the different phases of development outlined above.

Managerial
Sergiovanni (2001) has suggested that there are two main failures within the existing school leadership literature: rstly, its reliance upon a view of leadership as behaviour rather than action; secondly, its overemphasis upon bureaucratic and technical rational authority that equates leadership with a series of transactions within an

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organization. This rational form of leadership is premised upon leadership equating with the management of systems and processes rather than the management of people. Hence, the rst lens on the school leadership literature is managerial which, at rst glance, may appear to be contradictory given the distinction made between management and leadership within the literature. However, it merits serious consideration because this rational form of leadership with its emphasis upon bureaucratic and technical rational authority is one that persists and still inuences leadership development and practice (Sergiovanni, 2001). Within the Bush and Glover (2003) typology it appears because it serves to demonstrate that a narrow view of management is often adopted within the leadership literature. Managerial leadership is also close to a formal model of leadership characterized by Bush and Glover (2003: 29) as a model that assumes that organizations are hierarchical systems in which managers use rational means to pursue agreed goals. This form of leadership equates leadership with a series of transactions within an organization and has been termed transactional leadership. Transactional leadership theory dominated the attention of those within the school leadership research eld until the early 1980s. Implicit in this theoretical position is a crudely abstracted leader-follower dichotomy, in which leaders are superior to followers and followers depend on leaders. In this way leadership consists of doing something, for, to and behalf of others. It is also premised upon tasks being delegated to the followers and followers completing these tasks. This form of leadership is one that emphasizes procedures and hard data to inform decision-making. Based upon an exchange of services for various kinds of rewards that the leader controls, the role of the transactional leader is to focus upon the purposes of the organization and to assist people to recognize what needs to be done in order to reach a desired outcome. It is clear that as a theory of leadership it ts well with well-recognized models of task and maintenance management models. The transactional leadership or management approach as it relates to schools and schooling is concerned largely with structures, emphasizing organizational purposes rather than people. The role of the transactional leader is to focus upon the key purposes of the organization and to assist people to recognize what needs to be done in order to reach the desired outcomes. Sergiovanni (2001) called transactional leadership a form of leadership by bartering and it was this theory that heavily inuenced the total quality management movement in schools in the late 80s and early 90s. More recently, the systems management approaches within the National Qualication for Headteachers (NPQH) reect certain aspects of transactional leadership. Consequently, while the empirical base concerning transactional forms of leadership and school or student outcomes is limited, it continues to inuence the way in which organizational change and development in schools is understood. The transactional model of leadership can still be found in various site or school-based management approaches but most importantly it provides a point of reference and contrast for the major theoretical perspectives that have followed it.

Transformational
The second lens on the school leadership eld is associated more directly with improved organizational and student outcomes. Transformational leadership is a

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leadership approach that focuses upon people rather than structures and is essentially concerned with cultural rather than structural change. In the last two decades, there has been an increasing emphasis upon the links between leadership and the culture of the organization (Dalin, 1996). This has strengthened the view of leadership as transformational where leaders have the potential to alter the cultural context in which people work. Leithwood et al. (1999: 9) argue that transformational leadership is about building a unied common interest between leaders and followers: This form of leadership assumes that the central focus of leadership ought to be the commitments and capacities of organisational members. Higher levels of personal commitment to organisational goals and greater capacities for accomplishing those goals are assumed to result in extra effort and greater productivity. Sergiovanni (2001: 1256) describes transformative leadership as follows: In transformative leadership . . . leaders and followers are united in pursuit of higher level goals that are common to both. Both want to become the best. Both want to shape the school in a new direction. When transformative leadership is practised successfully, purposes that might have started out being separate become fused. Leaders acting in this mode try to use power with or through other people, rather than exercising control over them. It is this perspective that leads Sergiovanni (1992) to describe leadership as a moral art rather than a technical science. The literature would suggest that transformational leaders not only manage structure but they purposefully impact upon the culture in order to change it. At its most basic level to transform essentially means to change, so in this respect any leader who brings about change could be viewed as transformational. However, in the leadership literature the term transformational has a more precise denition. It is concerned with relationships and engagement of individuals. In contrast to transactional leadership, transformational leadership entails a change in the leader-follower relationship for mutual benet and good. Bass (1997) denes transformational leadership as including charisma, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration. Burns (1978) describes transformational leadership as concerned with exploring conventional relationships and organizational understandings such that there is involvement between persons in which leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality. A recent overview of the research relating to transformational leadership has suggested that taken at face value, transformational leadership is strongly related to positive perceptions of the headteachers effectiveness, organization level effects and student effects (Leithwood et al., 1999). Burns (1978) describes transformational leadership as being concerned with exploring conventional relationships and organizational understandings through involvement and participation. Leithwood et al. (1999: 39) proposes that transformational leadership in schools may be identied by a number of core leadership activities:

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setting directions (includes vision building, goal consensus and the development of high performance expectations) developing people (includes the provision of individualized support, intellectual stimulation and the modelling of values and practices important to the mission of the school) organizing (culture building in which colleagues are motivated by moral imperatives and structuring, fostering shared decision-making processes and problem solving capacities) building relationships with the school community

These behaviours have been shown to encourage teacher collaboration, to increase teacher motivation and to improve teachers self-efcacy. There is evidence to demonstrate a positive relationship between such transformational leadership approaches and school improvement. This has been shown to involve the building of school cultures or promoting culture behaviours that contribute directly to school improvement (Leithwood et al., 1999). Culture building by transformational leaders includes behaviours aimed at developing school norms, values, beliefs and assumptions that are student centred and support continuing professional development. Some of the behaviours utilized by transformational leaders to strengthen the school culture include reinforcing with staff, norms of excellence for their own work and the students, and assisting staff to clarify shared beliefs and values and to act in accord with such beliefs and values. A relatively recent study into effective headship in the UK has posited a new theoretical position on leadership that has been labelled post transformational (Day et al., 2000). The two most important aspects of this form of leadership are that, rstly, effective leaders are constantly and consistently managing several competing tensions and dilemmas and, secondly, effective leaders are, above all, people centred. This form of leadership starts not from the basis of power and control but from the ability to act with others and to enable others to act, Effective leaders must have the ability to read and adjust to the particular context or set of circumstances they face. In this respect, their leadership behaviour is contingent on context and situation. The choices that they make relate directly to their own beliefs, values and leadership style. Within post-transformational leadership it is recognized that the capacity of leaders to make a difference depends upon their interpretation of and responses to the constraints, demands and choices that they face. Goldring (1997) argues that effective leaders must know how to span boundaries in order to promote information and resource control. At the same time as they negotiate the constraints of internal and external environments, they must capitalize on the many opportunities for making choices. Centrally important in post-transformational leadership is the co-operation and alignment of others to the leaders values and vision with those of the leader. There is substantial evidence to link transformational, including post-transformational leadership, with improved organizational and student learning outcomes. Implicit in this view is also the notion of shared or distributed leadership activity where leadership activity is not chiey the preserve of the headteacher but seen as an

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organizational entity that can be widely shared. Leithwood et al. (2004) have suggested that transformational leadership is leadership that is distributed throughout the organization and it is the action of distribution that generates the capacity for change.

Interpretive
Currently within the eld of education leadership, a great deal of attention has focused upon the idea of distributing or distributed leadership (Spillane et al., 2001; Gronn, 2003; Harris, 2004). In theoretical terms, the work of Spillane et al. (2001) and Gronn (2003) is fuelling the contemporary debate about leadership and organizational development in schools. Their view of distributed leadership is predominantly interpretive rather than normative. Both Gronn (2003) and Spillane et al. (2001) use distributed leadership in an analytical and descriptive sense to explore leadership in action, as a social phenomenon. Gronn (2003) clearly sees activity theory as the centrepiece of his analysis of distributed leadership based on the idea of conjoint agency and a consideration of Engestrms activity theory (1999). In activity theory, the notion of activity bridges the gap between agency and structure. As Gronn (2003: 331) puts it: . . . the potential for leadership is present in the ow of activities in which a set of organisation members nd themselves enmeshed. Essentially distributed leadership is an emergent property of a group or a network of interacting individuals. It is a form of concerted action which is about the additional dynamic that occurs when people work together or that is the product of conjoint agency. Spillane et al. (2001) similarly imply a way of understanding leadership that focuses upon interaction and the exploration of complex social processes. In this sense, leadership is best understood as practice distributed over leaders, followers and their situation (Spillane et al., 2001: 13). A distributed view of leadership incorporates the activities of multiple groups of individuals in a school who work at guiding and mobilizing staff in the instructional change process. It implies a social distribution of leadership where the leadership function is stretched over the work of a number of individuals where the leadership task is accomplished through the interaction of multiple leaders (Spillane et al., 2001: 20). It implies inter-dependency rather than dependency, embracing how leaders of various kinds and in various roles share responsibility. Distributed leadership in theoretical terms means multiple sources of guidance and direction, following the contours of expertise in an organization, made coherent through a common culture. It is the glue of a common task or goal improvement of instruction and a common frame of values for how to approach that task (Elmore, 2000: 15). The distributed perspective focuses on how leadership practice is distributed among formal and informal leaders. As Bennett et al. (2003: 3) note, distributed leadership is not something done by an individual to others . . . rather it is an emergent property of a group or network of individuals in which group members pool their expertise. Engaging many people in leadership activity is at the core of distributed leadership in action. Hopkins and Jackson (2003: 99) suggest it is where leadership and organizational growth collide and by denition, it is dispersed or distributed.

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Yet despite the widespread and growing enthusiasm for distributed leadership within the educational research community, specic empirical evidence about the phenomenon is less forthcoming. As Bennett et al. (2003: 2) note in their overview of the literature on distributed leadership: there were almost no empirical studies of distributed leadership in action, although we found some empirical studies that related to the various interpretations we explored. In particular, there are no empirical data on the effectiveness of distributed leadership, in terms of pupil or student achievement. Leithwood et al. (2004) suggest that there is an urgent need to test and enrich the concept (of distributed leadership) with systematic evidence. It is at this point that distributed leadership as a conceptual frame shifts from the interpretative to the normative; it moves from the analytical to the empirical. Instead of describing leadership in action, distributed leadership in an applied sense equates with certain forms of leadership practice based upon certain core assumptions. Chiey, that leadership as a distributed entity necessitates sharing leadership responsibilities and empowering teachers to lead (Harris, 2004). Instead of leadership being understood or analysed as the outcome of the dynamics of interpersonal relationships (Bennett et al., 2003: 6) distributed leadership becomes a form of leadership practice that is predictive and predicated upon collective teacher leadership activity (Harris and Muijs, forthcoming).

Instructional
The fourth and nal lens on the school leadership literature is instructional. Leithwood et al. (1999: 8) point to the lack of explicit descriptions of instructional leadership in the literature and suggest that there may be different meanings of the concept. Their denition is: Instructional leadership typically assumes that the critical focus for attention by leaders is the behaviour of teachers as they engage in activities directly affecting the growth of students. Over the past decade the idea of instructional leadership has become more widely accepted by practitioners and researchers alike (Smylie, 1995). There is a substantial body of North American work that has focused on educational reform and teacher professionalism or leadership (Fullan, 1993; Hargreaves, 2004; Lieberman, 1988). This work suggests that teacher leadership, rstly, equates leadership with agency focusing upon the relationships among people hence crossing organizational boundaries; secondly, is not simply being about role or function but rather as a dynamic between individuals within an organization; thirdly, is primarily concerned with improving instructional practices. Bush and Glover (2003) highlight differences between narrow and broad conceptions of instructional leadership where the latter also involves variables, such as school culture, which may have important consequences for teachers behaviour: The narrow denition focuses on instructional leadership as a separate entity from administration. In the narrow view, instructional leadership is dened as those actions that are directly related to teaching and learning observable behaviours such as

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classroom supervision. In the broad view, instructional leadership entails all leadership activities that affect student learning (Sheppard, 1996: 326). Instructional leadership is a model of leadership that places an emphasis upon the development of the school through the development of teaching and learning. Sergiovanni (2001) describes instructional or pedagogical leadership as a form of leadership which invests in capacity building by developing social and academic capital for students and intellectual and professional capital for teachers. He argues that this model differs from other bureaucratic, visionary and entrepreneurial leadership theories that dominate the literature because it is concerned with adding value by developing various forms of human capital. Instructional leaders aim to build learning enriched schools for staff as well as pupils through leadership which is . . . fuelled by a vision of possibilities. Their vision leads to a sense of the drama being played out everyday in the school. It is a drama of becoming a people, learning how to participate, how to negotiate, how to forgive, how to celebrate heroic ideals. (Starratt, 2001: 57) Elmore (2000: 14) suggests that the skills and knowledge that matter in leadership are those that can be connected to, or lead directly to, the improvement of instruction and student performance. Blas and Blass (1998) research with 800 principals in American elementary, middle and high schools suggests that effective instructional leadership behaviour comprises three aspects:

talking with teachers promoting teachers professional growth fostering teacher reection

Evidence for the efcacy of instructional leadership can be found in the many studies of teacher leadership highlighting a clear overlap between these two perspectives. While there is some empirical evidence which shows the positive side of instructional leadership on student learning outcomes, Leithwood (1994: 499) argues that instructional images are no longer adequate because they are heavily classroom focused because they fail to address second order changes such as organization building. His view is that instructional leadership is now showing signs of a dying paradigm (Leithwood & Louis 1999: 502) because it considers just one aspect of organizational development and change, i.e. the classroom, and neglects other potential areas of change within the school.

Commentary
This overview has highlighted the main theoretical perspectives on school leadership that are currently inuencing and shaping policy, practice and research. As noted earlier, while the school leadership literature is vast and increasing almost on a daily basis, its empirical base remains underdeveloped. Consequently, there are some important questions that remain unanswered about school leadership. Firstly, relatively little is know about the relationship between leadership and long-term organizational change and improvement. The kinds of leadership required to sustain school

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development and improvement over time remain in question. Secondly, whether and how leadership is affected by cycles of organizational development and change remains another underexplored area. The evidence base that does exist suggests that different stages of organizational development and change require different forms of leadership and possibly different types of leaders and leadership (Hopkins et al., 1997). Thirdly, the existing research base has not adequately addressed the issue of contextual differences between schools and how this inuences the form or forms of leadership that best assist them to develop and improve. While some initial work has been undertaken (Harris & Chapman, 2002) more in-depth studies of leadership in different school contexts are urgently needed. Finally, in England, the current policy shift towards collaboration, partnership and networking among schools urges some exploration of leadership practice. These new organizational couplings will inevitably mean new and potentially different forms of leadership practice, possibly more lateral or distributed in their nature. It would seem particularly important therefore that leadership is explored within these emerging school partnerships chiey because so little is known about leadership across multiple sites. It is inevitable and possibly predictable that any overview of the literature raises more questions than it answers. In the case of school leadership this is particularly so simply because of the nature of studies which have dominated the eld. While small-scale case studies of leadership offer valuable insights into practice they are rarely sophisticated enough to address some of the questions highlighted above. To do so will necessitate longitudinal, multi-method, cross-cultural studies that explore exactly how school leadership contributes positively to school and student performance. In short, a much more systematic analysis of school leadership is required that considers what Grint (1997: 142) has termed deep leadership where leadership is deeply and systemically present throughout all levels of the organization as opposed to shallow leadership, associated with those at the top of the hierarchy. As Grint (1997) notes, if researchers are convinced, a priori, that leadership is something which only executives and managers do then by denition, they are not going to look beyond the leadership of the headteacher or the senior management team in schools. The practical implications of switching to investigations of deep leadership mean moving away from low level descriptive accounts of leadership practice to more sophisticated, large-scale, multi-level research studies that can confront, challenge or conrm much of what is so readily assumed and frequently claimed in the literature. It also means embracing alternative conceptions of leadership practice that provide new insights into exactly how deep leadership affects organizational change and development. The current focus on distributed leadership within the education eld highlights the possibility and potential of this particular theory to challenge and confront some the leadership orthodoxies that persist and prevail. For example, to challenge that leadership equates with formal role or responsibility, that it can be dened as a set of individual capabilities, that leaders can be trained and prepared to lead and to challenge how far current models of school leadership adequately explain highly complex social interactions. On the last point, distributed leadership theory in both its analytical and normative stance offers a powerful and alternative way of exploring and under-

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standing the relationship between leadership and organizational change and development. Building on activity theory and theories of distributed cognition, the distributed perspective on school leadership offers a frame for studying leadership practice. Its chief purpose is to make the black box of leadership practice more transparent by revealing and analysing how leaders think and act. Spillane et al. (2001: 39) propose that the distributed leadership frame is a sensing device for the complex practice of school leadership. Yet distributed leadership theory is not simply a sensing device conned to educational settings but has application and relevance to leadership research and practice in other elds. A distributed perspective necessitates understanding how leadership practice is stretched over aspects of the situation that enable and constrain practice (Spillane, forthcoming). For this alone, it is worth serious consideration by those interested and involved in leadership research and practice.

References
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Alma Harris is Director of the Institute of Education, University of Warwick, England. Her most recent research work has focused upon improvement in schools facing challenging circumstances and the relationship between distributed forms of leadership and organizational change. She is nationally known for her work on middle level and teacher leadership focusing particularly on ways in which these contribute to school development and improvement. Her most recent books include Harris et al. (2003) Effective Leadership for School Improvement, Routledge/Falmer; Harris and Lambert (2003) Building Leadership Capacity for School Improvement, Open University Press; (2002) School Improvement: Whats in it for Schools?, Routledge/Falmer; (2002) Leading the Improving Department, David Fulton Press.

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