How Is Instructional Leadership Distributed?

Instructional leadership of the 1980s was principal-centered, often accompanied by images of heroic leaders single-handedly keeping the school on track. Many recent policy documents continue to put principals front and center; for example, Gene Bottoms and Kathy O’Neill (2001) characterize the principal as the "chief learning officer" who bears "ultimate responsibility for success or failure of the enterprise."

However, a growing number of researchers say that instructional leadership is distributed across the school community, with principals, superintendents, teachers, and policymakers having complementary responsibilities (King; Richard Elmore 2000; Spillane and colleagues).
Elmore identifies five key players in reform: (1) policymakers, whose responsibility is synthesizing diverse political interests into a viable system; (2) researchers and program developers, whose responsibility is identifying and creating successful strategies and structures; (3) superintendents and central office staff, whose responsibility is framing coherent district-wide goals and support systems; (4) principals, whose responsibility is designing and implementing a well-focused school improvement plan; and (5) teachers, whose responsibility is translating curriculum into meaningful learning experiences for students. Elmore says that each role leads to a different kind of expertise that leaders must both respect and cultivate.

Distributed leadership does not imply a simple division of labor, with participants playing their designated roles in isolation from the others. Instead, their efforts are interdependent, frequently spanning boundaries (Spillane and colleagues). For example, principals can arrange professional development opportunities, but teachers must actually apply the new ideas in the classroom.

Source: http://eric.uoregon.edu/publications/digests/digest160.html