Purpose: This article explores distributed leadership as it relates to two teacher teams in one public secondary school. Both situational and social aspects of distributed leadership are foci of investigation. Methods: The qualitative study used constant comparative analysis and discourse analysis to explore leadership as a distributed phenomenon. Data from field notes and video recordings of two teacher teams during one semester were used. Findings: Three constructs emerged that informed our understanding of collaborative interaction within each professional learning team: purpose, autonomy, and patterns of discourse. Purpose and autonomy, manifest as organizational conditions, largely shape patterns of discourse that characterize the interaction of the team members. We argue that the nature of purpose and autonomy within a teacher team can influence the social distribution of leadership. Conclusions: The nature of teams in shared governance structures—the fact that teams can organize to either find or solve problems—has important implications for the creative and leadership capacity of individual teams. Thus, structures and social dynamics of distributed leadership must be attended to and not taken for granted. Implications include (a) conceptualizing leadership in terms of interaction, (b) needing to help teachers become aware of conversational dynamics that lead to or subvert effective collaboration, and (c) needing to help principals become more aware of their role in helping to establish clarity of purpose and appropriate levels of autonomy, so that teams may engage in work that leads to effective and innovative problem-finding and problem-solving activities.

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Distributed leadership has joined the current pantheon of educational buzzwords. This represents a shift from a past that focused on positions and individuals as the keys to leadership. Unfortunately, the distributed perspective itself fails to capture much of the leadership activity that takes place in organizations. Specifically, activity that is inherently collaborative, interactive, and reciprocal is difficult to isolate and identify within the context of contemporary lenses of leadership, including distributed leadership. This article explores this conceptual terrain, through a review of scholarship and a discussion of empirical findings. It concludes that the lens of distributed leadership needs further conceptual development to effectively capture the dynamic nature of leadership in today's schools. The framework of emergent reciprocal influence is offered as an initial means of conceptualizing the complex and interactive forms of leadership that emerge within the context of collaborative activity in organizations.

This article shares insights from a review of dissertations produced by students in an EdD program in Educational Leadership at a public university in Connecticut. Program curriculum and learning experiences, built upon a social justice platform, prepare students to engage in scholarship and action to improve educational systems. However, retaining students’ focus on designing capstone projects that explore and seek to mitigate systemic injustice has been an ongoing challenge. To understand more about the impact of the EdD program’s vision of developing students’ capacities for systems transformation and social justice, program faculty conducted a document analysis of dissertations produced in the 15 years from program inception to the present, examining themes and trends that emerge from the focus areas, research questions, and research methods applied in dissertations. Document analysis revealed that, while earlier student dissertations tended to be more aligned with the educational policy cycle than with the program’s focus on social justice, more recent dissertations demonstrate a shift toward a stronger social justice orientation. As a member of the Carnegie Project on the Educational Doctorate (CPED) since 2018, this university’s EdD program engages in ongoing redesign to maximize impact on the field and to cultivate activism among program graduates who will lead systemic transformation in education. A conceptual framework for transcendent third-order change - cultivating systems leadership that transcends the limits of current paradigms and action, fosters collaborative engagement, and provides coherent structures for collaborative impact -  is the foundation for this redesign.