Distributed Leadership in Schools

A Practical Guide for Learning and Improvement

John A. DeFlaminis, Mustafa Abdul-Jabbar, Eric Yoak

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317540861
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Building on best practices and lessons learned, Distributed Leadership in Schools shows educators how to design and implement distributed leadership to effectively address challenges in their schools. Grounded in case studies and full of practical tools, this book lays out a framework for building strategic, collaborative, and instructionally-focused teams. Supported by voices of practitioners and based upon original research, this comprehensive resource shares concrete strategies, tips, and tools for creating teams that are skilled at using data to plan and monitor their work, and successful in facilitating change to improve student learning. This innovative method will aid leader development and facilitate reflection, and will reshape leadership practice in a way that benefits teachers, leaders, schools, and students.

Part I A Distributed Approach to Leadership and Leader Development

The chapters in Part I explain what distributed leadership (DL) is and how it can be used in school-based leadership practice. They include an in-depth review of the DL Program: an extensive program framework and implementation approach to operationalizing DL in schools. The DL Program approach offers practitioners a robust example from the field featuring a curriculum design framework which may provide further guidance for developing or complementing leadership preparation programs, particularly those that seek to include DL elements. DL theory and practice will be shown to provide a productive tool for individual leader development and reflection, as well as a novel, innovative way to reframe leadership practice.

1 Distributed Leadership as a Framework for Learning and Practice

DOI: 10.4324/9781315727752-2

Outstanding leadership has invariably emerged as a key characteristic of outstanding schools. There can no longer be doubt that those seeking quality in education must ensure its presence and that the development of potential leaders must be given high priority.

Beare, Caldwell, & Millikan, 1989, p. 99

In this chapter . . .

• Introduction
• The “Heroic Leader” Bias
• A New Vision for Leadership
• The Distributed Perspective
• Entailments of the Distributed Perspective
• The Importance of Description
• Distributed Perspective on and in Practice
• DL as a Tool for Leader Development
• DL as a Tool for Organizational Design
• Chapter Summary
• Chapter Discussion Questions
• Suggested Reading
• References

Introduction

Teaching is widely acknowledged to be the single most important factor related to student learning, but it does not occur in a vacuum. It is structured and supported by a host of organizational factors, effective leadership being foremost among them. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, mounting evidence has confirmed the direct and indirect effect of leadership on school effectiveness and student learning (Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004). These findings have led to increased pressure to ensure high quality leadership in schools (Darling-Hammond, LaPointe, Meyerson, Orr, & Cohen, 2007). However, despite knowing that leadership quality is important, understanding how it operates, and how it can be designed for in practice, can prove difficult.

According to Spillane, Halverson, and Diamond (2004, p. 4):

While it is generally acknowledged that where there are good schools there are good leaders, it has been notoriously difficult to construct an account of school leadership, grounded in everyday practice, that goes beyond some generic heuristics for suggested practices. We know relatively little about the how of school leadership, that is knowledge of the ways in which school leaders develop and sustain those conditions and processes believed necessary for innovation.

While there is some broad agreement about what leadership is within organizations, why we need it, and which practices are most successful, there is much less consensus as to how it actually works. Bennis and Nanus (1997) argue that there are over 850 definitions of leadership, and that “no clear and unequivocal understanding exists as to what distinguishes leaders from nonleaders” (p. 4).

In light of these challenges facing the practice and understanding of educational leadership, this chapter opens Part I of the book with discussion on how leadership in schools has been perceived. It proceeds on this point by distinguishing between the prevailing, traditional view on leadership—the widely held view that leadership work in schools is performed primarily (if not only) by school administrators (i.e., the “heroic leader” bias)—and a powerful emerging paradigm that has been termed the “distributed perspective” on leadership practice, or distributed leadership (DL). The chapter concludes with a discussion on how DL can serve as a tool for organizational design and leader development.

The “Heroic Leader” Bias

Leadership is still largely understood through a narrow lens. Most studies of school leadership continue to focus most often on formally appointed school leaders, principals, or assistant principals, and their actions and behavior. Numerous studies detail how school principals allocate resources, make decisions, incentivize and supervise other staff, and attempt to develop lists of the most important leadership actions (e.g., Waters, Marzano, & McNulty 2003).

When we talk with teachers and administrators in schools, we find that hierarchical, top-down visions of leadership are prevalent. And though, increasingly, there are principals who work actively to foster staff collaboration, and teachers who perceive themselves to be leaders in their schools, nearly all still hold assumptions about leadership which emphasize formal leadership roles and top-down decision-making, with an emphasis on the actions of school principals. As a first-year principal describes, “You follow the pattern that you kind of lived under, which was the top-down—you make the decisions and you pass the decisions down” (Susie, personal interview, February 20, 2013). The pervasiveness of the top-down model of leadership across schools led one experienced teacher leader to comment that, “Leadership in any school I’ve been in has always relied on whoever the principal is” (Emily, personal interview, February 18, 2013).

These representations from the field are congruent with what Yukl (2010) has termed the “heroic leader” bias. The heroic leader bias refers to a view of leadership that associates leadership activity with individual practices and decision-making, without looking to broader and collective patterns of social interaction or contextual influences for examples of leadership practice. In this view, leadership is often equated with the actions and decisions of a few, formally appointed individuals, such that other sources of influence are ignored. They are simply not counted.

Table 1.1 The Traditional View of Leadership

Influenced by the “heroic leader” bias
• Leadership can be understood primarily through individual decision-making and actions.
• Leaders lead from the top by setting an example, or directing the actions of others.
• Leaders need to be strong, independent, and authoritative, and have expert knowledge of their field.
• Leadership is mostly aligned with the formal positions people hold within organizations like schools.
• Leadership is often associated with gendered and racialized perceptions of who holds social power and influence.

The heroic leader bias is widespread, deeply entrenched, and has influenced years of professional practice. This bias is shaped further by cultural context and stereotyped notions of ability along lines of gender, race, class, and national origin, similar to the great man theories of history. In the nineteenth century, Thomas Carlyle (1841) popularized the notion that major shifts across human history could be largely understood through the specific decisions and actions of a small number of particularly talented or influential men. While this view has since been widely criticized, it nonetheless reflects a longstanding bias in our world view and a widely held perception. As such, we find that “current leadership theories are biased in reflecting the structures and cultures of North American organizations run by White, Anglo, heterosexual men” (Chin, 2013). These biases tend towards underinclusiveness, narrowing our view not only of who leads, but also of what actions characterize leadership.

In short, that which is not counted, does not count. Thus, it is not surprising that the traditional view (summarized in Table 1.1) has resulted in numerous blind or blank spots in our understanding of how leadership works in schools (Hallinger & Heck, 1996; Spillane et al., 2004).

A New Vision for Leadership

While every leadership theory helps frame our perceptions and actions, there are dangers that attend the traditional, biased conception of leadership in the field. The misconception that leadership is primarily the province of formally appointed individuals causes others to overlook their own capacity for leadership. As such, they may fail to tap into their individual or collective power to drive change. Furthermore, this individualistic view is often context-insensitive; we may underappreciate the role of context and history in framing our actions. The notion that leaders are mainly authoritative decision-makers leads us to overidentify the individually talented and ambitious. And we may ignore other sources of power and undervalue those who foster relationships, build consensus, and lead from the middle as opposed to the front. These and other biases limit how we understand leadership and the actions we take to recruit and develop individual leaders, as well as foster collective leadership capacity within our schools.

Distributed leadership (DL) represents a move away from the heroic leader perspective and presents a new framework—the distributed perspective—that expands the definition and practice of leadership in organizations. The distributed perspective, discussed at length below, is more inclusive in its definition of leadership than the traditional, individualized view, and promises to broaden the practice of leadership, particularly because it overcomes the traditional view’s problem of underinclusivity.

The Distributed Perspective

Our work with the Distributed Leadership Project has been informed most directly by the work and partnership of James Spillane and his collaborators (e.g. Spillane, 2006; Spillane & Coldren, 2011; Spillane et al., 2004). So, while we have also either worked with or drawn upon other theorists and commentators in the field, notably Alma Harris, Kenneth Leithwood, and Peter Gronn, it is upon Spillane’s articulation of DL theory that we draw most directly. His definition of distributed leadership has been our working definition:

Leadership refers to those activities that are either understood by, or designed by, organizational members to influence the motivation, knowledge, affect, and practice of organizational members in the service of the organization’s core work.

(Spillane, 2006, pp. 11–12)

What is significant in this definition is its scope: the fact that any and all activities interpreted or intended to influence organizational members in teaching and learning (i.e., the core work of schools) are cognizable as leadership activity. More simply, this definition of leadership rather than pointing to any concrete, specific persons or individual actions (in contrast to the traditional view), casts a wider conceptual net, promoting a unique perspective on leadership that views all leadership activity as inherently “distributed,” or “stretched over” the interactions of leaders and followers as they unfold within a specific social context (Spillane et al., 2004) (see Figure 1.1).

To say that leadership is stretched across (1) leaders, (2) followers, and (3) context is to suggest two things: interdependence and interaction. The notion of leadership being stretched focuses not just on the interdependence between these three components, but also on their interactions. Leaders, followers, and the si...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Other Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Meet the Authors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I A Distributed Approach to Leadership and Leader Development
• Part II Distributed Leadership for Building School Leadership Capacity
• Part III Distributed Leadership and Instructional Improvement
• Appendices
• Index