Instructional leadership and leadership for learning: global and South African perspectives

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the notion of instructional leadership and to apply it to the South African context, drawing on international and South African literature and research. It also addresses the conceptual and semantic confusion arising from the use of overlapping terminology to describe this aspect of leadership. This topic is significant because of increasing recognition that instructional leadership is one of the most important (if not the most important) activities for principals and other school leaders. Its centrality has been recognized by the inclusion of Managing Teaching and Learning as a core module in the national ACE: School Leadership programme. The paper discusses international and local research and literature to develop a grounded framework for instructional leadership in South Africa.