Instructional Leadership in Centralized Contexts

Abstract

There are many models of educational leadership (Bush, 2011) and they move in and out of fashion almost as fast as clothes or mobile communication devices. The current favoured model is distributed leadership, featured in a special section of Volume 41(5) (September 2013). Instructional leadership is also regaining its former significance as research increasingly connects enhanced learner outcomes to leaders’ engagement with classroom practice. It differs from most other models in focusing on the direction of influence rather than how influence is exercised. It has waned in importance until recently because of two fundamental flaws. First, it focused on principals/headteachers, to the exclusion of other leaders and teachers. Second, it emphasised teaching rather than learning. However, in the 21st century, it has been rebadged as ‘leadership for learning’, with a wider perspective on who might exercise instructional leadership. Given the recognition that leadership is about influence, not formal authority, instructional leadership could emanate from many different sources and be seen as one aspect of a distributed approach. The recent emphasis on instructional leadership is based largely on research and practice in decentralized or partly decentralized contexts, where the demands of the hierarchy are modest and principals have substantial scope to determine how to lead and manage their schools. However, centralized education systems remain widespread, for example, in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. One such example is Thailand, and Philip Hallinger and Moosung Lee, in the first article in this issue, show how difficult it is for principals to operate as instructional leaders in such contexts. This is partly because they are civil servants, ‘who function as line managers within the hierarchy of a highly centralised, national system of education’. I was aware of similar expectations on recent visits to the Philippines and to Thailand’s neighbour, Malaysia. As Hallinger and Lee point out, instructional leadership remains ‘outside the main job description of the principal’ in such contexts. Their article traces the impact of the National Education Act (NEA) 1999, which introduced new system expectations for principals to act as instructional leaders. Drawing on surveys of principals conducted before and after the NEA, the authors conclude that ‘the predominant orientation of Thai principals remains largely unchanged’. They argue that more systematic and substantial steps are required to train and support principals in making this change in their role. The second article, by Chi Wai Chan, examines the leadership styles of kindergarten principals in Hong Kong and makes similar points to those of Hallinger and Lee. She notes that Chinese principals are expected to be autocratic and to practice a ‘bureaucratic style of management’. The author carried out a survey of kindergarten teachers and found that most perceived their principals to be practising empowerment and participation, rather than the bureaucratic style noted above. She comments that the small size of kindergartens, and their ‘simple organizational structures’ may have contributed to the participative style of such principals. Educational Management Administration & Leadership 2014, Vol 42(1) 3–5 a The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1741143213507207 emal.sagepub.com