Research Paper on School Leaders and Distributed Leadership

Distributed Leadership and School Leaders

"Distributed leadership" is an orientation toward leadership rather than a prescriptive guide for leadership. While distributed leadership theory fails to provide immediate answers to how school leaders should work alongside others to achieve learning, it can nonetheless help equip school leaders to better understand what leadership entails in practice, and what leaders' role should and can be. By conceptualizing knowledge as distributed and a leader as practically "responsible" rather than as traditionally "authoritative" (or "expert"), the distributed leadership framework can help future school leaders to improve schools and student performance.

As Timperley writes, leadership theory has traditionally focused on the individual leader rather than other important aspects of leadership practice, evaluating personal characteristics of successful leaders, for example, rather than other important elements which lead to achievement in school settings (p. 395). Yet such scholarship cannot be seen as completely adequate to the task of understanding school leadership, as leadership does not take place merely in the principal's office, by the principal. For this reason understanding how leadership is distributed among the principal and other educators can be helpful. The conceptualization of both knowledge and the leader embedded in distributed leadership formulations can help school leaders to work with others in a more productive and supportive way to achieve school goals.

Knowledge, like leadership, is understood as distributed within distributed leadership theory. That is, no one, not even the principal, knows everything, and each of us have had different experiences which inform our actions and provide us with insights on various situations. By understanding knowledge as distributed, principals and other school leaders do not need to overburden themselves and can appropriately delegate tasks to others, such as head teachers, without fear of doing their work incorrectly. Principals cannot be expected to know everything that is going on in their schools, and they therefore must rely upon others, understanding knowledge as distributed rather than individual in the school setting.

By understanding knowledge as distributed, principals can also recruit educators as head teachers, literacy leaders, or into other leadership roles, taking advantage of the knowledge of others working around them. Indeed, not all principals are or ever were expert school teachers themselves, and none know all that there is know about teaching in every subject or grade level. On the other hand, teachers should be expected to know more about the daily lives and lifestyles of the members of the student body, and can thus best support one another, when possible, in helping individual students to achieve more. Thus, by understanding knowledge, including that knowledge of how to improve a school, as distributed throughout the school faculty, school leaders can utilize the expertise of their coworkers without fear or shame that they do not know everything.

In relation, a second important way that school leaders and schools can benefit from distributed leadership is by understanding a leader not as a traditional "authority" but more pragmatically, as a responsible party. While distributed leadership theory clearly moves away from the interpretation of leadership as individual personality traits such as strength of character or charisma, emphasizing that "leadership practice takes form in the interactions between leaders and followers, rather than as a function of one or more leaders' actions" (Spillane, p. 406), the leader is undeniably responsible and accountable, and his or her actions are therefore important. Thus there is a paradox in this understanding, as it implies a role for the leader, but one of inner strength rather than of outer strength, or brute force. As Rolph (2010) argues, the leader must be confident to delegate some of his or her traditional or structural authority to others, but he or she must at the same time not be too strong as a leader, in order to effectively delegate authority to others in the practical sense.

In other words, the leader must see it as valuable to share power and authority with others, rather than to attempt to make decisions and act autonomously in the school setting, to enhance the use of distributed leadership in his or her school. Knowing how and where to share authority and power is not something that distributed leadership theory can prescribe, unfortunately, and delegating tasks and responsibilities is determinant upon school contexts which are always interactive, changing, and dynamic. Nonetheless, no individual can effect a school positively by him or herself, and thus leading as a responsible colleague rather than as the authority can help school leaders and followers to change schools for the better by leading in different ways in different situations.

Paradoxically, distributed leadership ultimately depends in part on what leaders do, though distributed leadership theory denies that leaders' actions are all that constitutes leadership. As a framework for understanding how leadership operates through people, places, and artifacts, distributed leadership can help school leaders to expand their understandings of how knowledge is distributed in their workplaces and how leaders need not be expert authorities, though they remain responsible for the overall direction of their schools. By using these revised conceptions of knowledge and leadership, school leaders can make better use of the talents in their midst by engaging in collaborative and constructive relationships, in which all parties knowledge is viewed as valuable, and tasks can be delegated by a leader who has the confidence to lead through relating to others rather than depending exclusively upon his or her own charisma, charm, strength, or knowledge. Though nontraditional, distributed leadership paves the way toward successfully action by teams by viewing knowledge and leadership as distributed.

References

Rolph, C. D. (2010). The paradoxes of distributed leadership in schools. iNet.

Spillane, J. P. Distributed leadership. The Educational Forum, 69, 143-150.

Timperley, H. S. Distributed leadership: developing theory from practice. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37(4), 395-420.