Collaborative leadership and school improvement: understanding the impact on school capacity and student learning

Fifty years of theory and research offer increasing levels of support for the assertion that principal leadership makes a difference in the quality of schooling, school development, and student learning. In the current context of global education reform, however, recent inquiries have focused on identifying how teams of school leaders contribute to school improvement and student learning. This paper reports findings drawn from a series of empirical analyses that assessed the effects of collaborative leadership on school improvement capacity and student learning in a large sample of US primary schools over a four-year period. Our findings support the prevailing view that collaborative school leadership can positively impact student learning in reading and math through building the school's capacity for academic improvement. The research extends this finding, however, by offering empirical support for a more refined conception that casts leadership for student learning as a process of mutual influence in which school capacity both shapes and is shaped by the school's collective leadership.