Beyond Instructional Leadership: What is required of today’s school leaders?

The author explores how our understanding of leadership has altered over time, and asks what it is like to be a school leader these days. He discusses major shifts that have occurred in our perceptions and expectations, focusing in particular on links and distinctions between Instructional Leadership and Leadership for Learning – in theory and practice. He concludes that key for leaders of schools, facing the pressures of our rapidly changing, complex and increasingly diverse world, must be to adopt a style that caters to the needs and aspirations of every student, their families, and their teachers, whilst also carefully manoeuvring the school towards what the state requires.