Is instructional leadership possible? What leadership in other knowledge professions tells us about contemporary constructs of school leadership

Abstract

This article reviews leadership representations in a variety of knowledge professions to contrast the conceptualizations of leadership of educational labour, commonly called instructional leadership. It aims to understand from a comparative perspective how leadership of professionals in other fields is articulated so to better understand the potentials and limitations of instructional leadership. This general review article examines leadership representation from professional and scholarly journals within a variety of fields, each chosen in order to provide a broad view of leadership in professionalized (or professionalizing) knowledge fields. Leadership in education is posed as a bureaucratic mechanism, tied to organizational functionality, while leadership in other knowledge professions is posed as a bridging mechanism between the professional knowledge workers and the political or market systems that pay for their services. This article provides conceptualization around instructional leadership as a specific institutional trait within the discourse of educational improvement.