In this article, I provide findings from a multisite case study of three urban high schools. In each of the schools, principals endeavoured to foster the capabilities of their department chairs to enhance school-wide instructional capacity and increase student achievement. Data were gathered from interviews, participant observations and document…

To meet accountability demands, principals are being encouraged to enhance schools' organizational capacities by distributing leadership and initiating professional communities. Yet, relatively little attention has focused on how to develop the capabilities of potential co-leaders, and professional communities can be difficult to initiate and…

A large corpus of literature has been compiled highlighting the essential role principals can play in effecting school improvement as instructional leaders. More recently, the growing body of literature associated with distributed forms of instructional leadership has focused on identifying its various forms, as well as its potential to enhance…

A growing body of literature has highlighted the affordances of distributive forms of instructional leadership as a means to broaden and deepen instructional leadership capacity within schools. Yet, specifically how the capabilities of such key leaders as high school department chairs can be fostered to realize enhanced instructional capacity…