Organizational partnership and collaboration have moved rapidly to the centre of schools policy in England (Glatter, 2003). This has involved schools in collaboration across traditional organizational structures. Most recently, the development of extended schools has created new challenges for leaders and leadership (DfES, 2006). Extended schools provide a range of services and activities, often beyond the school day, to help meet the needs of children, their families and the wider community. Leaders of extended schools, community and partner agencies are embracing and enacting various forms of leadership practice. All of this raises important questions about the forms of leadership that are necessary in order to take the extended service agenda forward and sustain it. This paper presents the results of an ongoing study for a PhD. Through a critical epistemological perspective, the research project specifically attempts to learn more about how the work of leading and managing the extended services agenda is enacted in practice by examining leadership activities in schools, community and partner organizations. The study will consider if distributed leadership’s theoretical roots in activity theory (Gronn, 2002) and distributed cognition (Spillane et al. 2004) are evident in the data on leadership practice in a multi-agency collaborative context. To inform this process evaluation, the study’s conceptual framework is based on Huxham and Vangen’s (2005) theory of collaborative advantage. Relevant literature on leadership, collaboration, community, and current educational policy in England is brought together and integrated to frame the research design and analysis.

The project employed a qualitative case study approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 20 participants and 12 observations, narrative inquiries, and document analysis from schools, community and partner organizations in a town in England.

The preliminary findings suggest that leadership would be better served by implementing a community development approach which identifies that any opportunities where any project delivery or service delivery has to take account of the social capital to build. It is important for the wider agenda to be communicated on the ground and for it to work in partnership across all sectors and institutions, with the development of community cohesion and inclusion as its main aim. This study contributes to the development of our understanding how leadership practice might be constructed within a multi-agency collaborative environment and provides some empirical evidence that might offer support for practitioners in England and other European countries.