Leadership and Management Development in Education (Education ...

THE IMPACT OF LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT123ment of impact is to be made. In practice, however, impact studies tend to focuson the measurable outcomes sought by governments, notably student testscores. Secondly, even where improvements occur, it is very difficult to attributethem with confidence to a specific intervention, such as a leadership developmentprogramme, when there are many other contemporaneous changes.Thirdly, while leadership is widely regarded as the second most importantfactor affecting student outcomes, after classroom teaching, it is a mediatedvariable with leaders exercising their influence indirectly. This makes it difficultto assess the nature and extent of leaders’ impact.There are few studies of the impact of leadership development activities andthey are often of limited validity, typically because they rely on short-term andself-reported findings. Role-set analysis serves to address the second of theseproblems but well planned and executed long-term studies are essential if theeffects of leadership development are to be assessed with confidence.Leadership development is expanding as governments and individual leadersincreasingly acknowledge its importance. The next step is to ensure that thispublic and private investment is subject to thorough and extended evaluation.Well-grounded evidence on the impact of leadership, and of leadershipdevelopment, is a major research need.