Instructional Leadership and the School Principal: A Passing Fancy that Refuses to Fade Away

One lasting legacy of the effective schools movement was the institutionalization of the term “instructional leadership” into the vocabulary of educational administration. Evidence from other recent reviews of the literature on principal leadership (e.g., Hallinger, 2001 Hallinger, P. A review of two decades of research on the principalship using the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale. annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Paper presented at the, Seattle, WA Google Scholar; Hallinger Southworth, 2002 Southworth, G. 2002. Instructional leadership in schools: Reflections and empirical evidence. School Leadership Hallinger Southworth, 2002 Southworth, G. 2002. Instructional leadership in schools: Reflections and empirical evidence. School Leadership & Management, 22(1): 73–92. CSACROSSREFTaylor & Francis Online , Google Scholar). The paper will seek to define the core characteristics underlying this approach to school leadership and management based upon both conceptual developments and empirical investigation. The review will identify the defining characteristics of instructional leadership as it has evolved, elaborate on the predominant model in use for studying instructional leadership, and report the empirical evidence about its effects. Finally, the paper will reflect on the relationship between this model and the evolving educational context in which it is exercised and how this is reshaping our perspective on instructional leadership.