A systematic review of school distributed leadership: exploring research purposes, concepts and approaches in the field between 2010 and 2022

Enactment of Transformational School Leadership—Insights from Primary School and System Leaders

“…LAOS 2022 [70], while promoting distributed leadership, also outlines many leadership behaviours that could arguably be achieved effectively and sustainably through the employment of transformational school leadership by the whole school community. With value in its potential for interpreting school-level decision-making practice [105], distributed leadership has enjoyed an increase in popularity in recent years [106][107][108][109], is valued for being an inclusive leadership model [110] and improves organisational culture; principals relinquish power and authority, and leadership practice takes the form of interaction built on reciprocal trust [101]. Distributed leadership also has value in times of crisis and change [110] and principals specifically see the value of collaborative practices in terms of sustaining themselves and their school communities [111].…”

“…Balanced with distributed leadership we argue that a practice of shared leadership underpinned by transformational leadership principles can help towards sustaining school leaders. This hybrid model of transformational and distributed school leadership is proposed to deliver on leading learning, growth, and development for the whole school community, in Ireland and internationally, given the rise in curiosity, research, and development regarding leadership within the field of Educational Leadership, Management and Administration [108]. The creation and application of a 'transformational and distributed leadership school' model that facilitates the whole school community in growing and learning together merits examination and discourse, as does an exploration of the facilitating and inhibiting factors influencing the implementation of transformational school leadership in the Irish setting.…”

The formation and functions of school‐based trauma‐leadership teams: A preliminary qualitative study

“…Distributed leadership is a growing application in schools worldwide (Mifsud, 2023). Distributed leadership in schools has been demonstrated to have a positive effect on teacher self-efficacy and an indirect positive impact on teacher job satisfaction at both the teacher and school levels (Sun & Xia, 2018), including at schools disadvantaged by lack of financial resources (Torres, 2019).…”

The impact of distributed leadership on teacher commitment: The mediation role of teacher workload stress and teacher well‐being

“…Despite such increasing attention, an established definition of the concept is still missing. Various understandings and relevant theoretical discussions about the concept can be found in the literature (Bennett et al., 2003; Mifsud, 2023).…”

“…As mentioned above, distributed leadership has become a major topic of study in the educational administration field. While related research was dominated by conceptual and qualitative studies to explore the meanings, antecedents and practices of distributed leadership in the early years, empirical research focusing on the effects of distributed leadership has been growing very fast in the last two decades (Mifsud, 2023; Tian et al., 2016). Such research has focused on either the direct or the indirect effects of distributed leadership on student outcomes (Chang, 2011; Heck & Hallinger, 2009; Leithwood & Mascall, 2008; Leithwood et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2022), as well as on many different aspects of school improvement and capacity‐building processes.…”