Distributed Leadership

Spillane, James P.

JB Leadership Library in Education

1. Edition March 2006
144 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd

ISBN: 978-0-7879-6538-9

John Wiley & Sons

Sample Chapter

Further versions

James Spillane, the leading expert in Distributed
Leadership, shows how leadership happens in everyday practices
in schools, through formal routines and informal interactions. He
examines the distribution of leadership among administrators,
specialists, and teachers in the school, and explains the ways in
which leadership practice is stretched over leaders, followers, and
aspects of the situation, including routines and tools of various
sorts in the organization such as memos, scheduling procedures, and
evaluation protocols.

This book is a volume in the Jossey-Bass Leadership Library in
Education--a series designed to meet the demand for new ideas
and insights about leadership in schools.

Acknowledgments ix

The Author xiii

1. The Nature of the Beast 1

2. The Leader-Plus Aspect 29

3. The Practice Aspect 53

4. A Distributed Perspective on and in Leadership Practice 87

References 105

Index 113

"We all know how important leadership is to school improvement. What we haven't been able to understand, until this book, is how leadership practice 'stretched across multiple people' can actually accomplish this improvement."-- SUSAN H. FUHRMAN, dean and George and Diane Weiss Professor of Education, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, and chair, Management Committee, Consortium for Policy Research in Education

"Grounded in the work of real schools and their many leaders, this concise and cogent analysis gives practical meaning to Spillane's oft-cited--yet rarely understood--theory of distributed leadership. It is an essential guide for all those intent on improving their schools."-- SUSAN MOORE JOHNSON, Porzheimer Professor of Teaching and Learning, Harvard Graduate School of Education

"The most important 'street level' look to date at a topic at the very center of effective leadership for twenty-first century schools--by the nation's foremost expert on distributed leadership."-- JOSEPH MURPHY, professor of education and associate dean, Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organization, Vanderbilt University

JAMES SPILLANE is professor of human development and social policy and learning science at Northwestern University.

J. P. Spillane, Northwestern University