Leading schools from the Middle. Middle leadership in a context of distributed leadership

Abstract

Current education reforms have resulted in enhanced responsibilities and
accountabilities for all schools while leadership responsibility is now
stretched over a range of different actors. Following with this, the centrality
of distributed leadership reinforces the importance of the middle tier to
generate improvement and to influence teaching and learning processes in
schools. Unfortunately this is not the case of Italy, where any attempt to introduce
and recognize intermediate layers of management have been unsuccessful.
In this sense, Italy lacks an organizational component that the
literature has identified as crucial to improving the quality of education. By
reviewing international studies in the field of school leadership, the author
will discuss middle management in schools in relation to the current discourse
on distributed leadership in the attempt to pave a debate on middle
leadership in Italy.