Pedagogical Leadership

Abstract

Pedagogical leadership has been assigned different meanings and conceptualizations in different educational settings and across contexts. In the early childhood sector, the term first emerged in the 1990s. Here, pedagogy is seen as more applicable to the holistic work of early childhood educators in contrast to the term instructional leadership, which is usually associated with the schooling context. Pedagogical leadership is recently gaining more prominence due to the acknowledgment of the importance of leadership in early childhood and its integration into policy and qualifications (e.g., England’s Early Year Professional Status). In the schooling sector, pedagogical leadership was first promoted by Thomas Sergiovanni as an alternative to bureaucratic, visionary, and entrepreneurial leadership. Here, leadership is seen as a form of pedagogy and as being practiced by school leaders and teachers. Proponents of the model argue that pedagogy, especially in contrast to instruction, recognizes the cultural, moral, and societal aspects of learning. It involves a focus on building social and academic capital for students and intellectual and professional capital for teachers. Pedagogical leadership is described as bringing a pedagogical lens to all aspects of teaching and is strongly focused on dialogue with those being led or taught. Pedagogical leadership, as promoted by Sergiovanni, has not found great uptake in policy or research and the author did not further promote or examine the model in his later work. The term pedagogical or pedagogic leadership, however, is often used in research and policy in different contexts with other meanings attached to it. In the North American context, pedagogical leadership is generally used to describe leadership activities specifically focused on the improvement of teaching and learning as an aspect or dimension of a broader leadership model, such as instructional or transformational leadership. In the Scandinavian countries, pedagogical leadership has been used as a term in educational policy since the 1940s; however, it seems to lack a clear conceptualization and, in the schooling sector, is often regarded as the equivalent to instructional leadership, with some noting overlaps to Sergiovanni’s work or extending the earlier conceptualizations. Given the varying conceptualizations and uses of the term pedagogical leadership, this article incorporates sections on the use in each sector and the Scandinavian context. It highlights research published in the field, works that are helpful in understanding overlaps with other models, and works that extended conceptualizations of pedagogical leadership. Finally, sections on journals and books in the field are included.