During the last thirty years, the period of the Frontiers in Education conferences, there has been a research movement that has studied school effectiveness and thus the factors that lead to school improvement. While this movement has been of considerable interest to politicians and policy makers the idea of such research has made little impact on higher education where ideas derived from industry such as total quality management seem to have had greater effect. Associated with the school effectiveness movement is the concept of educational leadership and an ancillary concept of instructional leadership neither idea of which has infiltrated higher education. In parallel with these developments the study of qualitative and quantitative methods of educational research has made considerable progress. The purpose of this paper is to argue the case for instructional leadership in higher education and to indicate the qualities and knowledge required by those who might be asked to carry out such a task in engineering education. The paper begins with a summary of the research on school effectiveness.
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