'A school full of instructional experts': shared instructional leadership in rural schools

This article explores instructional leadership as a shared practice in a rural school in Australia. It presents a three-year case study of how one school built teacher leadership capacity despite having no formal leadership team beyond the principal. Rural school principals’ workloads are often all-encompassing, especially for leaders without a formal leadership team to whom tasks can be delegated. Policy and discourses surrounding instructional leadership in this case study context included an expectation that the principal would be a curriculum expert, leading from the front, resulting in additional workload and pressures. In response, this school developed a team full of instructional leaders, rethinking some of the dominant discourses associated with instructional leadership in this context. This case study provides insight into a strategy that developed a shared approach to instructional leadership moving it beyond those in formal leadership positions, and explicitly developing the capacity of teachers to take the lead in rural schools.