Acknowledgments ix

The Author xiii

1. The Nature of the Beast 1

2. The Leader-Plus Aspect 29

3. The Practice Aspect 53

4. A Distributed Perspective on and in Leadership Practice 87

References 105

Index 113

James Spillane, the leading expert in "Distributed Leadership," shows how leadership happens in everyday practices in schools, through formal routines and informal interactions. He examines the distribution of leadership among administrators, specialists, and teachers in the school, and explains the ways in which leadership practice is stretched over leaders, followers, and aspects of the situation, including routines and tools of various sorts in the organization such as memos, scheduling procedures, and evaluation protocols.

The book provides an overview of what it means to take a distributed perspective on leadership, an examination of various uses of the term, a summary of the most current research, illustrative examples, and helpful guidelines.

“Grounded in the work of real schools and their many leaders, this concise and cogent analysis gives practical meaning to Spillane’s oft-cited—yet rarely understood—theory of distributed leadership. It is an essential guide for all those intent on improving their schools.”-- SUSAN MOORE JOHNSON, Porzheimer Professor of Teaching and Learning, Harvard Graduate School of Education

“The most important ‘street level’ look to date at a topic at the very center of effective leadership for twenty-first century schools—by the nation’s foremost expert on distributed leadership.”-- JOSEPH MURPHY, professor of education and associate dean, Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organization, Vanderbilt University