Primary School Leadership Practice: How the Subject Matters

This article explores how the practice of leadership in primary schools is structured differently depending on the school subject. The issues addressed are based on data from the Distributed Leadership Study, a 5-year longitudinal study of school leadership in kindergarten to grade 5 and kindergarten to grade 8 schools in the Chicago area. Spillane argues several key points. First, teaching is a critical consideration in investigations of primary school leadership, and not just as an outcome variable; specifically, factoring in instruction as an explanatory variable in scholarship on school leadership involves moving away from views of teaching as a monolithic or unitary practice. Second, when it comes to leadership in primary schools, the subject matters. The practice of leadership differs depending on the school subject. Hence, more sophisticated conceptualizations of teaching are necessary that take into account the subject matter (e.g., mathematics, literacy) and the dimension of teaching (e.g., content, teaching strategies) in research on school leadership.