Revisiting instructional and transformational leadership

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the taxonomy of two conceptual models of leadership roles for principals – instructional and transformational leadership (IL and TL) – can be traced empirically in a sample of Norwegian school leaders. Design/methodology/approach – The participants consisted of 149 school leaders attending a national training program for newly appointed principals at the University of Oslo. Leadership preference was measured according to a theoretically grounded self-report scheme representing the most important aspects of both leadership models. Estimations were conducted by means of principal component analyses and confirmatory factor analyses. Findings – The principal component analyses revealed seven meaningful factors: demand-supportive leading, outcome control and loyalty to school owner, management by objective, trust in standard programs for development, trust in professional community, emphasis on collective responsibility, and distributed leadership. Furthermore, by using these seven factors as inputs, the authors attempted to model second-order factors representing IL and TL. The results showed that the structure of IL and TL could not be replicated. Instead, a more complex cross-model structure was revealed. Practical implications – The results suggest that even though the concepts of IL and TL are valuable analytic tools, they may be too simplistic to represent the reality of school leaders’ thoughts and actions. Originality/value – The study contributes to the field by challenging the established models of school leadership and by generating insights into Norwegian school leaders’ leadership beliefs and preferences.

A review on leadership and leadership development in educational settings

“…Instructional leadership is defined as centred around the school principal (Aas & Brandmo, 2016;Nedelcu, 2013). It can be characterised as a top-down approach to school leadership because it mainly focuses on the principal and their tasks in coordinating and controlling instruction (Aas & Brandmo, 2016).…”

“…Instructional leadership is defined as centred around the school principal (Aas & Brandmo, 2016;Nedelcu, 2013). It can be characterised as a top-down approach to school leadership because it mainly focuses on the principal and their tasks in coordinating and controlling instruction (Aas & Brandmo, 2016). Nedelcu (2013) states that Hallinger sees instructional leaders as hands-on principals, strongly focusing on the curriculum and unafraid of working with teachers on the improvement of teaching and learning.…”

“…Transformational leadership contrasts with instructional leadership as it is described as a shared leadership model and aims to create change through bottom-up actions (Aas & Brandmo, 2016). Hence, transformational leadership is related to leadership models which focus on collaboration.…”

Leadership in low- and underperforming schools—two contrasting Scandinavian cases

“…The concept of leadership as a process where the leader is related to the situation and the followers, can therefore be helpful to create a more nuanced picture of school leadership in these dynamic low-and underperforming schools. In an examination of whether the taxonomy of two conceptual models of leadership roles for principals -instructional and transformational leadership -could be revealed empirically in a sample of Norwegian school leaders, Aas and Brandmo (2016) suggested that although the concepts of instructional and transformational leadership can be valuable for analytic reflections, they are too simplistic to represent the reality of school leaders' thoughts and actions. This means that the leader and their personal prerequisites must be related to the context in which they lead.…”

Leadership Strategies in Diverse Intake Environments

“…The opposite is more typically the case, as studies of school principals' leadership orientations in the Nordic cultural context suggest that international models, such as transformational leadership (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2000) and instructional leadership (Robinson, Lloyd, & Rowe, 2008), do not paint the full picture. For example, in a sample of Norwegian school principals, norms of democratic and distributed leadership were strong additional components in the school leaders' preference structure (Aas & Brandmo, 2016). Thus the current paper aims to contribute to Nordic school leadership research by exploring how school leaders operating in a challenging socioeconomic intake context over time work systemically with schools' internal and external determinants of school improvement.…”