Instructional leadership

Abstract

Instructional leadership is one of the transformational leadership theories which focus on the task-person tension and dominates the world of organizations into the twentieth and twenty first centuries. The notion of instructional leadership emerged in the early 1980's. This was due to the fact that the public wanted change in education and to close the gap in the achievement between students who traditionally do well in schools and those who do not. Instructional leadership is also one of the most useful tools in creating a forward-looking environment. Various research studies show that instructional leadership has been criticized because it focused on curriculum and instructions from principals; as a result a principal is a center of power and authority. Instructional leadership model also focuses on the direction of influence which is increasingly concerned with teaching and learning.