This document discusses 10 models of educational leadership: Instructional leadership, Managerial leadership, Transactional leadership, Transformational leadership, Participative leadership, Distributed leadership, Moral leadership, Emotional leadership, Postmodern leadership, and Contingent leadership. Each model is briefly defined, with a focus on its key characteristics and assumptions. The models range from more traditional top-down approaches like managerial leadership to newer distributed and postmodern conceptions of leadership.

1. Republic of the Philippines
Southern Philippines Agri-Business and Marine and Aquatic School of Technology
Matti, Digos City
Graduate School
EDEM 505:
Leadership and Management of Educational Institution
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Classifying Models of Educational Leadership
MARY GRACE ORDOÑA PAGAS
January 2015

2. ABSTRACT
Models of Educational Leadership
Various writers have generated different models of educational leadership. Such
models will be discussed in this paper. Ten educational leadership models will be
featured, which are believed to be the most significant.
Instructional Leadership. This model of educational leadership focuses on the
direction of influence, rather than its nature and source. Instructional leadership is
essential for the improvement of teaching and learning is essential for the improvement
of teaching and learning in schools. Also, it is strongly concerned with teaching,
including the professional learning of teachers as well as students growth. Another focus
of this model is on the behavior of teachers in working with students. The leaders
influence targets the learning process of the students through the teachers. The model
points out the direction and impact of the influence or the product rather that the
influence process itself.
Managerial Leadership. Basically, the model, managerial leadership is top-down,
with the authority closely aligned to the formal roles of the leaders. This type of
educational leadership focuses on managing existing activities successfully rather than
visioning a better future for the school. This kind of approach is very suitable for school
leaders working in centralized systems. Managerial leadership is an essential component
of successful schools but it should complement, not supplant, values-based approaches.
Effective management is essential but value-free managerialism is inappropriate and
damaging. Managerial leadership is the model which provides the greatest risk of a
managerialist approach to school organization. By focusing on functions, tasks and
behaviors, there is the possibility that the aims of education will be subordinated to the
managerial aim of greater efficiency.

3. Transactional Leadership. Leadership in which relationships with teachers are
based upon an exchange for some valued resources; that’s how transactional leadership
is defined. Interaction between administrators and teachers is usually episodic, short-
lived and limited to the exchange transaction. This exchange is an established political
strategy for members of organizations. An exchange may secure benefits for both
parties to the arrangement. There are three dimensions of transactional leadership:
contingent reward, management by exception-active and management by exception-
passive.
Transformational Leadership. This model is based around commitment and
capacity of organizational members. Transformational leadership is conceptualized
along eight dimensions: building a school vision, establishing school goals, providing
intellectual stimulation, offering individualized support, modeling best practices and
important organizational values, demonstrating high performance expectations,
creating a productive school culture, and developing structures to foster participation in
school decisions. Transformational leadership practices, considered as a composite
construct, had significant direct and indirect effects on progress with school-
restructuring initiatives and teacher-perceived student outcomes. The transformational
model is comprehensive in that it provides a normative approach to school leadership,
which focuses primarily on the process by which leaders seek to influence school
outcomes rather than on the nature or direction of those outcomes. When
transformational leadership works well, it has the potential to engage all stakeholders in
the achievement of educational objectives. The aims of leaders and followers coalesce
to such extent that it may be realistic to assume a harmonious relationship and a
genuine convergence leading to agreed decisions.
Participative Leadership. Participation, this refers to the opportunities that staff
members have for engaging in the process of organizational processes. This model is
supported by three assumptions: (1) Participation will increase school effectiveness. (2)
Participation is justified by democratic principles. (3) In the context of site-based

4. management, leadership is potentially available to any stakeholder. The burdens of
leadership will be less if leadership density were to emerge as a viable replacement for
principal leadership. This will succeed in “bonding” staff together and in easing the
pressures on school principals.
Distributed Leadership. This model of educational leadership has become the
normatively preferred leadership model in the twenty-first century. Distributed
leadership concentrates on engaging expertise wherever it exists within the
organization rather than seeking this only through formal position or role. In this model,
there should be “redistribution of power”, not simply a process of “delegated hardship”.
School leadership has a greater influence in schools and students when it is widely
distributed. Distributed leadership was significantly was significantly related to growth
in student learning.
Moral Leadership. This educational leadership model assumes that the critical
focus of leadership ought to be on the values, beliefs and ethics of leaders themselves.
Authority and influence are to be derived from defensible conceptions of what is right
or good. There are two approaches to moral leadership: (1) described as spiritual and
relates to the recognition that many leaders possess what might be called higher order
perspectives; (2) moral confidence, the capacity to act in a way that is consistent with an
ethical system and is consistent over time. Schools must be run effectively if they are to
survive. But for the school to transform itself into an institution, a learning community
must emerge. This is the moral imperative that principals face.
Emotional Leadership. Emotion is concerned with individual motivation and
interpretation of events, rather than emphasizing the fixed and the predictable.
Emotion is socially constructed and stresses the importance of individual interpretation
of events and situations: “perception is reality”. Emotional silence may be the most
powerful self-replicating mechanism of bureaucratic hierarchy – in schools and
elsewhere. Educational leadership cannot, and does not, function without emotion.

5. Postmodern Leadership. Current postmodern culture celebrates the multiplicity
of subjective truths as defined by experience and revels in the loss of absolute authority.
Postmodern leadership developed as a reaction to universal formal or scientific
theories: A post-modern stance on educational leadership questions the very notion of
seeking truth and objectivity in research. Leaders should respect and give attention to
the diverse and individual perspectives of stakeholders. Leaders must pay attention to
the cultural and symbolic structures of meaning construed by individuals and groups…
postmodern theories of leadership take the focus off vision and place it squarely on
voice.
Contingent Leadership. Contingent model provides an alternative approach,
recognizing the diverse natures of school contexts and the advantages of adapting
leadership styles to the particular situation, rather than adopting a “one size fits all”
stance. This approach assumes that what is important is how leaders respond to the
unique organizational circumstances or problems… there are wide variations in the
contexts for leadership and that, to be effective, these contexts require different
leadership responses. Effective leaders are continuously reading the situation and
evaluating how to adapt their behavior to it. Leadership requires effective diagnosis of
problems followed by adopting the most appropriate response to the issue or situation.