School leadership and professional learning communities

Abstract

Principals are considered as playing a key role in the development of professional learning communities. This chapter examines to what extent educational leadership affects the development of professional learning communities across countries and economies. The first part of the chapter focuses on the manifestation of professional learning communities in individual countries and economies. In the second section, the relationship of instructional and distributed leadership and professional learning communities is examined, while accounting for relevant school context and teacher characteristics. In the third part of the chapter, these analyses are redone using the four types of educational leaders and the three types of systems classification in place of instructional and distributed leadership. The chapter concludes with a short summary of the findings and some reflections on the impact of these findings for educational practice and policy.