Introduction 15 1 Spillane et al., 2004). This means that leadership practices are not the privilege of formal leaders but can also be conducted by informal leaders such as teachers. This leadership-aspractice approach fits with the notion of collaborative innovation, which implies practices such as exchanging resources in interaction in horizontal and vertical working relations. Furthermore, the approach resonates with distributed leadership (Raelin, 2016). Both the leadership-as-practice approach and distributed leadership theory acknowledge leadership as a social phenomenon that is enacted in interactions and networks. 1.3.4. Leading (collaborative innovation) in networks Studying leadership as a social phenomenon of leadership practices that are enacted in interactions between several persons, fits with a social network perspective. This perspective can be used to understand relations between persons or groups and interactions of organizational and relational processes (Freeman, 2004; Raelin, 2016; Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Therefore, this perspective is considered promising for studying interactions that shape leadership practices in schools (Azorín et al., 2020; Liou & Daly, 2020). The relationships between persons and their resources, such as information, knowledge, and support (Coleman, 1988), shape a social network structure. Within this network structure, persons have access to and can mobilize the resources (Lin, 1999). This is interpreted as social capital (Brouwer et al., 2020; Coleman, 1988; Lin, 1999, 2001; Liou & Daly, 2018, 2020). Within education, communities of practice (COP) and professional learning communities (PLC) are network forms in which (mainly) teachers exchange social resources (Admiraal et al., 2019; Giles & Hargreaves, 2006; Prenger et al., 2017; Wenger, 2011). PLCs refer to groups of people who engage in interaction processes of collective learning in a shared domain of interest to develop shared practices (Wenger, 2011). In the Netherlands, PLCs are increasingly established with the aim of enhancing teacher quality and school improvement – for instance, by helping teachers to keep their expertise up-to-date and to improve practices in their schools together with colleagues (Prenger et al. 2017; Schaap et al., 2018). Admiraal et al. (2019) stress the importance of teacher PLCs in which teachers informally share practices, support each other, and collaborate. They studied interventions that Dutch secondary schools implemented aimed at enhancing a school as a PLC, finding that schools focus most on professional learning opportunities, collaborative work, and teachers’ learning. Interventions focused on leadership, such as activities of teacher leaders, team leaders and school principals, were rare. In this regard, less attention still seems to be paid to (distributed) leadership practices in learning and innovation processes in networks such as PLCs. Studying how collaborative innovation is led by school principals and teachers might contribute to insights in the literature on PLC’s, COPs, and other networks of collaboration.
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