We’ve all been in meetings where leaders are asked to collaborate, yet the room doesn’t feel collaborative at all. Andy Hargreaves once called this contrived collaboration, which occurs when collaboration is required but rarely transformative. Lately, the two of us have developed instructional leadership collectives (ILCs) at the provincial, regional, and state levels in the United States and Canada. Instructional leadership collectives are grounded in collective leader efficacy, which is the belief that leaders and teachers who develop a shared understanding, engage in joint work, and collect evidence of impact can positively affect student and adult learning. They are guided, facilitated groups of educational leaders who engage in collaborative inquiry using structured protocols.

ILCs are not a new name for professional learning communities or communities of practice. For the last three decades, those two approaches have shaped how we think about professional collaboration.

Professional learning communities give us data-driven collaboration, but in practice, they can become compliance-driven. Communities of practice, meanwhile, offer authentic identity-based learning but tend to be more organic and free-flowing. ILCs, in contrast, are a new way of organizing professional learning for leaders, teacher leaders, and such educators as school psychologists in leadership positions. They blend structure with flexibility and create improvement within and across systems.

What Makes Instructional Leadership Collectives Different?

Three elements set ILCs apart from other forms of professional learning.

They are guided and intentional. ILCs aren’t free-floating conversations or compliance-driven meetings. They are facilitated learning collectives that move through a six-phase cycle of collaborative inquiry: gathering and identifying themes, forming collectives, designing inquiry, implementing and collecting evidence, reviewing progress, and sharing knowledge across groups. Tools like the Collaborative Inquiry Placemat help leaders frame problems of practice, set priorities, and build theories of action supported by both leading and lagging indicators.

They include educators from different roles and different districts. In many systems, teacher leaders, coaches, mid-level administrators, and superintendents operate in isolation. ILCs bring them together. A principal in a rural district can learn alongside a central-office leader from a larger system. Instructional coaches can contribute insights that inform district strategy. This design ensures leaders at all levels see themselves as part of a coherent improvement effort.

They are focused on evidence and impact. Too often, professional learning is disconnected from outcomes. ILCs are purpose-driven: Themes emerge from real data, such as equity and belonging, Tier 1 instruction, grading practices, or persistent absenteeism. Leaders gather and analyze evidence throughout the cycle, using data not as a compliance tool but as a flashlight to illuminate what’s working, what isn’t, and where adjustments are needed.

How do you start them?
In our work, we use collaborative inquiry, which focuses on four stages: 1) developing a problem of practice; 2) creating a theory of action; 3) collecting four types of evidence, as laid out by Victoria Bernhardt (demographic, perceptions, student learning, and school processes) around the problem they are solving; and then 4) reflecting on what went well and what didn’t.

What we have seen in our work with leaders across North America is that there are common themes to the challenges they want to solve using inquiry. We recently wrote about it, which you can find here. When working within districts, regions, or across states, we look at the participant’s focus for collaborative inquiry, create common themes around those areas of focus, and then invite participants to join that group. Typically, we want no more than 10 educators in a group so we can keep them intimate and personalized. We take those theme-based groups through six phases of learning using collaborative inquiry in an effort to foster collective leader efficacy among the group.

Districts that want to follow the same approach and create collectives can research the common areas their leaders, teachers, and staff members are focusing on in their academic or school improvement plans, create small theme-based groups around those areas of focus, and use a facilitator to help guide the collectives through inquiry. At a broader scale, regional networks can research the areas of focus schools within their regions are interested in and create theme-based collectives. Developing collectives, training facilitators to do the work, or creating collectives and facilitating the group ourselves is the work the two of us are doing.

Why ILCs Matter Now

Professional learning for leaders has long left people siloed, unsupported, or stuck in compliance mode. In too many cases, leaders leave a workshop with a binder on the shelf but no ongoing structure to apply and refine what they’ve learned.

Instructional leadership collectives change that dynamic. They create spaces where professional learning is:

• Reciprocal — every participant both contributes and learns.
• Networked — spanning schools, districts, and even provinces.
• Sustainable — grounded in ongoing cycles of inquiry rather than one-off sessions.
• Impactful — centered on evidence of impact on both adults and students.

A Call to Action

Over the past few years, we have surveyed hundreds of leaders and their teams, and found that their challenges are similar to other leaders and educators in different regions, states, provinces, or countries.

What we also have seen is that regional budgets are being cut and school districts cannot afford to send educators out to conferences. They are looking for a hybrid approach, which brings together in-person and virtual learning. These collectives can become a lifeline so no one feels alone as they navigate through their challenges.