ABSTRACT Leadership is an essential contributor to effective professional networking within education. In the pursuit of school and system improvement, leaders at all levels are being challenged to collaborate and network in order to secure the best positive outcomes for students. Professional learning networks are one of the main developments in many education systems in recent years. The article takes a distributed perspective on leading professional learning networks. Firstly, the article explores the contribution that leadership makes to effective networking and productive collaboration; secondly, it considers the challenges of leading collective action; and thirdly, it proposes that distributed leadership could offer an important theoretical framing to understand, in greater depth, the nature and impact of professional collaboration, particularly but not exclusively, in the form of networks. Consequently, the article argues that distributed leadership offers a useful framework for future empirical enquiry and analysis into the effective leadership of professional learning networks. Finally, it proposes that the knowledge base on networks and networking should move away from largely normative descriptions, self-report and over assertion to far more sophisticated data collection and analytical processes that would generate more rigorous and reliable evidence on the intentions, processes and outcomes of professional learning networks.

中文翻译：

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对领先的专业学习网络采取分布式观点

摘要领导力是教育领域有效专业网络的重要组成部分。在追求学校和系统改进方面，各级领导人都面临着协作和网络化的挑战，以确保为学生带来最佳的积极成果。专业学习网络是近年来许多教育系统中的主要发展之一。本文对领先的专业学习网络采取了分布式观点。首先，本文探讨了领导者对有效网络和生产性协作的贡献；其次，它考虑了领导集体行动的挑战；第三，它建议分布式领导可以提供重要的理论框架，以便更深入地了解专业合作的性质和影响，特别是但不是唯一地以网络形式。因此，本文认为分布式领导为将来对专业学习网络的有效领导进行实证研究和分析提供了有用的框架。最后，它建议，有关网络和网络的知识应从规范性的描述，自我报告和断言转变为更为复杂的数据收集和分析过程，从而对意图，过程和结果产生更为严格和可靠的证据专业学习网络。