Who are the leaders in a culture of change?

Spillane, Halverson, and Diamond (2001) argue that leadership in school communities is distributed across different people who bring different kinds of expertise to addressing common problems. Similarly, Robinson (2004) argues that complex organisations need leaders at all levels. Fullan (2005) uses the terms “system thinkers in action” and “new theoreticians” to describe leaders at all levels of the educational system who “are working on the real problem of transforming real systems, learning by doing it” (page 14). Their goal is to establish patterns of interaction that help people to work and learn together, collaborating to build their own capacity to learn, change, and improve so that they can achieve better outcomes for their students.

ISTEs do not always have formal positions of authority in the communities of practice whose learning they are facilitating. They do, however, offer “educational leadership”: they have the knowledge and expertise required to help build the capacity, motivation, and commitment of individuals and communities to engage in improvements in teaching and learning.

It is the source of the influence that distinguishes leadership from coercion or force. People change their minds or do what they would not otherwise have done because they accept the authority of the influencer or the power of their ideas or argument.

Robinson, 2004, page 39

Wherever they are based, ISTEs belong to overlapping communities of practice and carry ideas and practices between them. They take on a “boundary role”, helping to build the collaborative relationships that are necessary for educators to carry out joint inquiry in the “third space” where their communities of practice overlap (Stein and Coburn, 2005; see pages 169–171). Wenger (1998) uses the term “brokers” to describe these highly skilled people who facilitate the exchange of ideas, perspectives, and practices between different communities of practice. They do so using objects (such as curricula) that are targeted enough to keep the work focused yet flexible enough to allow individuals from the different communities to negotiate their meaning.

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