School leadership practice and school innovation

Abstract

This paper explores the role of school leaders in the introduction, spreading and rooting of school innovation processes. Through a Delphi survey, the study involved 33 experts who reflected on four professional dimensions of the leadership function in order to identify the “know-how” that mainly improves the spreading and rooting of school’s innovation processes. The ranking of the four investigated dimensions has been obtained from the analysis of the results of a questionnaire administered to the experts in two succes-sive cycles. The results show the primary importance of the didactic-peda-gogical dimension of leadership action in contexts of scholastic innovation. The Delphy process has also shown how the challenge of managing innova-tion and change for school leaders will adapt to the school context, suggesting a multi-perspective view of the executive role. Finally, the study opens up new research perspectives to implement Italian school leaders’ profes-sional training policies.