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- Vol 6 PE: App E
- Vol 6 RE: Chapter 5
distributed leadershipteacher leadershipschool improvementleadership capacitypower relationsorganisational coordinationleadership accountabilitycausal evidenceJournal article Evidence summaryAt a glance
Harris reviews distributed leadership as a perspective on school improvement and asks whether its appeal is supported by sufficient conceptual and empirical clarity. Distributed leadership shifts attention from the principal alone toward leadership activity arising through interactions among formal leaders, teachers, teams, and organisational structures.
Key ideas
Evidence from improving schools suggests that multiple sources of influence, teacher leadership, collaboration, and capacity building can support change. Distribution is not automatically beneficial, however. It may be unplanned, fragmented, coercive, or used to delegate workload without authority; power relations and the principal’s role remain consequential. Harris distinguishes descriptive claims about how leadership is distributed from normative claims that it should be distributed and improve outcomes. The literature available in 2004 offered promising associations but limited causal evidence about which configurations work under which conditions.
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Schools should therefore develop expertise, trust, participation, coordination, and accountability deliberately, then evaluate effects on teaching and learning. Merely multiplying leadership roles or labelling existing committees “distributed” does not constitute improvement.
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- TE
- Teacher Edition
- PE
- Practice Edition
- RE
- Research Edition
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