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Session 1. Leadership in Schools: Three Models in Plain Terms
Objective. Explain instructional, distributed and transformational leadership in plain words, match each to the school problem it suits best, and look honestly at how your own time is spent.
Every school has leadership, but not every problem needs the same kind. A head who inspires when teachers need practical help, or who controls when teachers need freedom, wastes energy and trust. This lesson goes beyond the key ideas: it shows where leadership really happens in a school, how your own calendar reveals what you lead, and how to combine the three models in a sensible order instead of choosing a favourite.
Key ideas
Leadership is influence, not a title
- Leadership means influencing people toward goals that matter for pupils. A deputy head, a methodist, a head of a subject association and a Grade 4 teacher who changes how colleagues teach reading can all lead.
- Research reviews, such as Leithwood, Harris and Hopkins (2019), describe the effect of leaders on pupils as mostly indirect: leaders shape teachers' motivation, skills and working conditions, and teachers shape learning.
- So a leader's first question is not 'What should I tell people to do?' but 'What conditions would help my colleagues teach better?'
Instructional leadership: keep teaching and learning at the centre
- The leader sets clear learning goals, protects teaching time, visits lessons, gives useful feedback and watches pupil results. Think of a deputy head who spends the first Monday hour in classrooms, not in the office.
- Strength: the school never forgets why it exists. Risk: the leader becomes the only expert, and teachers wait for approval instead of thinking for themselves.
- Course 14.2 (Instructional Leadership) goes deeper; here you only learn when this model is the right main tool.
Distributed leadership: leadership shared across people
- Spillane, Halverson and Diamond describe leadership as something that happens in the interaction of several people, their tasks and their tools, not only in one person at the top.
- It is not dumping boring tasks. It means giving real responsibility with clear limits to the person with the best knowledge, for example a maths teacher leading the Grade 7 assessment plan.
- Risk: when everyone is responsible, nobody is. Distributed leadership needs clear roles, trust and one person who keeps the whole picture.
Transformational leadership, and choosing between models
- Transformational leaders build a shared picture of the future, support people as individuals, challenge them to think differently and model what they ask. It helps most when staff are tired, doubtful or stuck in 'we always did it this way'.
- Risk: inspiring words without attention to teaching detail, and a school that depends on one person's energy.
- Real leaders mix the models. Name the problem first, then pick a main model and a supporting one. The same head may need all three in one term.
Three models at a glance
Instructional
Where is teaching going?
- Goals, visits, feedback
- Protects lesson time
- Risk: leader as only expert
Distributed
Who else can lead this?
- Real tasks, clear limits
- Uses hidden expertise
- Risk: nobody answers
Transformational
Why should people care?
- Shared picture of success
- Personal support
- Risk: words without detail
Where leadership really happens
Ask staff, 'Who do you go to when you want to improve a lesson?' The names you hear are often not the people with titles. A Grade 4 teacher whose pupils read well, a librarian who knows every textbook, a methodist who answers messages in the evening: these are informal leaders, and the formal leader's work is to notice them, support them and connect them.
Your calendar is a second map. What you spend the first hour of each day on, what you attend and what you postpone tells staff what you truly lead. A time log kept for a week usually shows more crises and paperwork than the leader expected, and fewer minutes with teaching and learning. This is not a failure; it is data for deciding what to stop, hand over or protect.
Combining the three models in order
A useful sequence for a new change is: transformational first, distributed second, instructional third. First give people a reason and a picture of success. Then hand real parts of the work to the people best placed to lead them. Then check, with simple evidence such as pupil work, whether teaching is changing. Skipping the first step produces compliance; skipping the second produces a tired leader; skipping the third produces a lovely idea that nobody can see in classrooms.
Avoid the 'model of the month'. If a head announces distributed leadership but still approves every small decision, staff will notice the gap and trust drops. Say plainly which decisions are shared, which are not, and why.
Examples from the classroom
Inspiring when help was needed
Scene. Jasur, head of a school near Fergana, gives a moving speech about 'a reading nation' to his Grade 5 and 6 teachers. Weeks later nothing has changed. A short talk with two teachers shows they do not know how to teach finding the main idea. Jasur adds a weekly 20-minute session in which a teacher shows one reading routine, and uses a quick check of pupils' answers to see the effect.
Insight. Inspiration was the supporting model; the main need was instructional, shown by what teachers could actually do.
The timetable hero
Scene. In Bukhara, deputy head Malika writes the timetable alone every August and works until midnight. She teaches Sardor, a second-year English teacher who is good with tables, to build the grid on paper, first checking a draft, then drafting under her review. By the next August Sardor produces the draft in three days, and Malika spends the saved time visiting lessons in Grades 1 and 2.
Insight. Distributed leadership is a ladder: she moved from showing, to reviewing, to trusting, and the freed time went to teaching.
Rehearsals eating lessons
Scene. Three weeks before Navruz, a Tashkent school loses six lessons a week to rehearsals. The head, Aziz, calls a 20-minute meeting and says, 'Pupils have the right to both a festival and their lessons. Rehearsals may use two lessons a week, never the same subject twice.' Teachers keep to it and ask for it to be repeated next term. Nobody had to be inspected.
Insight. A clear statement of what matters, a transformational act, solved a problem that inspection would not have solved.
Common pitfalls
- Choosing one favourite model and using it for every problem.
- Calling it distributed leadership while still approving every small decision.
- Describing the problem as a person ('the teachers are lazy') instead of a cause.
- Never looking at how your own time is spent.
Match the Model to the Problem
- Open the Activity Kit: six SAMPLE problem cards from a school like yours, the model comparison table and a blank leader time log. (5 min)
- Alone (10 min): read the six cards. For each, write in one line what the REAL problem is (not the symptom).
- Trios (15 min): agree a main model and a supporting model for each card, and one specific action the leader could take on Monday morning.
- Whole group (10 min): compare. Where did trios disagree, and what does the disagreement show about the problem?
- Part B, Leader time log (15 min): alone, fill the log for a typical working day in your school, then mark each line that someone else could do. In pairs, name one thing to stop, one to hand over and one to protect.
- Alone (5 min): write your leadership task from the Kit.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which problem needed more than one model, and which model would you have used wrongly at first?
- What in your time log surprised you, and what does it say about what your school really leads on?
- Who in your school already leads without a title, and how do you know?
Reflect
- Which model do you reach for by habit, and when has it failed you?
- What is one decision you made last month that a colleague could have made better?
- What would your teachers say your school's main goal is, and would they agree with each other?
Try it tomorrow
- Keep a five-minute evening log for three days and underline everything someone else could do.
- Ask one colleague, 'Who do you go to for help with teaching?' and note the names.
- Take one current school problem and write its main and supporting model in one line.
Further reading and links
Name the problem first; then choose a main leadership model and a supporting one. No model fits every problem.