Instructional leadership in a historical perspective: A review

Leadership in the field of education has received a lot of attention during the past decades, mostly because of growing responsibilities for school principals and the accountability-driven context they work in (Muijs, 2010;... [ view full abstract ]

Leadership in the field of education has received a lot of attention during the past decades, mostly because of growing responsibilities for school principals and the accountability-driven context they work in (Muijs, 2010; Leithwood, 2010). The field of public administration has also been looking into an educational setting as a subfield of public administration (Meier & O’Toole, 2006). The management of schools is of vital importance to public administration as on average in OECD-countries 13% of total public expenditures is spent to education (OECD, 2013). Instructional leadership became an important focus as a result of effective school studies in the 70s and 80s (Hallinger, 2005; Hallinger and Murphy, 1986). Instructional leadership is one of the most important components of effective schools (Grobler, 2013; Hallinger, 2005; Hallinger & Murphy, 1986) and empirical evidence proves that effective schools almost always have leaders who focus on instruction (Edmonds, 1979). Therefore, this paper will develop a theoretical framework on instructional leadership, which will serve as a basis for a longitudinal field experiment about leadership development in an educational context.

Considering the long history that instructional leadership has as a theoretical concept, this paper aims at clarifying instructional leadership as a theoretical construct and how it has changed (Hallinger, 2005; Marks & Printy, 2003). To construct a theoretical framework, this review deals with the key definitions of instructional leadership and the changes in instructional leadership during the past four decades. Second, we focus on the similarities between the changes in instructional leadership and leadership theories. This research paper addresses the following research questions: (1) Which changes can be noticed in instructional leadership theory during the past four decades? (2) Which similarities can be observed between the changes of instructional leadership and the changes of leadership theories during the past four decades? Based on the results of this review, the paper will construct a framework to address the next two research questions: (3) What are the key characteristics of effective instructional leadership? and (4) How can principals and supervisors develop their instructional leadership?

The theoretical foundations for this research include instructional leadership and theories of leadership styles. Instructional leadership emphasizes the improvement of teaching and learning (Hoy & Miskel, 2013). Hallinger and Murphy (1985) define instructional leadership using three dimensions: defining the school mission, managing the instructional programme and developing the school learning climate. These definitions provide a general overview but a consideration of the behavior or the actions undertaken by the principal is missing. Some of the dominant theoretical approaches in the research literature such as the trait approach to leadership, situational leadership and transformational leadership will be used to complement the theoretical framework on instructional leadership in order develop a more complete framework of instructional leadership.