Workshop

Learn from Jim at full-day pre-conference workshop The Social Side of School Improvement: Designing Educational Infrastructures that Work


James Spillane

Jim Spillane is a Professor of Human Development and Social Policy, Learning Sciences, and Management & Organizations at Northwestern University.
Jim is recognized for his ground-breaking work on distributed leadership, theorizing a new way of conceptualizing educational leadership in schools and school systems.  Jim’s theoretical work on distributed leadership has influenced research on school leadership around the work.
Jim explores relations between government policy and local practice at the school district, school, and classroom levels. Jim has consulted with public and private organizations in the US and around the world including OECD, The Spencer Foundation, Institute of Education Sciences, the National Commission on Educational Statistics, and The MacArthur Foundation.
Jim has designed and taught modules to develop school principals and other school leaders and done workshops for school principals and school leaders around the world including Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, United States, Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium.

This keynote will engage participants in figuring out the essentials of what it means to take a distributed perspective to school and school system leadership for instruction. A central consideration will be what does it mean to take a distributed leadership perspective to diagnostic and design work as system and school leaders.
Further, Jim Spillane will engage participants in applying a distributed perspective to leading and managing by focusing on diagnosis and design work centered on the formal school organization- formal positions and routines; and the informal organization. Using his own and others empirical research, along with cases and simulations, he will engage participants in grappling with the nuts and bolts of the work of leading and managing instructional improvement from a distributed perspective.
A key focus of the keynote will involve helping participants shift their focus from the formal organizational structures to the ‘lived organization’ as experienced by school leaders and teachers.


The Power of Social Capital in School Improvement with Dr. Jim Spillane | Education Vanguard #83