Instructional boundary management: The complementarity of instructional leadership and boundary management

Instructional leadership, which emphasizes the teaching and learning aspects of school principalship, is an essential ingredient for improving student achievement. At the same time, boundary management, which includes both internal and external boundary activities, is intrinsic to today’s schools and poses one of the most persistent and potentially rewarding challenges to principals. The current study seeks to explore the overlap of these two frameworks and the ways in which they complement each other both conceptually and practically. Data collection included interviews with a diverse sample of 37 Israeli principals. Data analysis identified behaviors of principals that reflected instructional leadership and boundary management simultaneously. Findings suggested a new area of school leadership—instructional boundary management, which is a synthesis of instructional leadership and boundary management, where the two different frameworks merge with each other rather than compete for the principal’s attention and limited time.