Distributed leadership in Scottish schools

Challenges in distributed leadership: evidence from the perspective of headteachers

“…Contemporary literature points some difficulties, barriers and obstacles associated with practising DL in schools. Most researchers that engaged with DL were cautious of its efficacy in producing effective solutions to issues in school leadership since it was a new idea that lacked clarity (Harris, 2004;Leithwood et al, 2009), was a risky approach when leadership were designated to incompetent teachers (Timperley, 2009;Bell, 2007) and for some teachers, it is perceived as increased workloads and responsibilities (Torrance, 2012). Liljenberg (2015) also argued that the usage and application of DL in the school context is not an easy task for school leaders to implement.…”

“…This led to division among teachers, between leaders and followers. Furthermore, Torrance (2012) performed her comprehensive case study of DL in three schools in Scotland and listed few problems with the distributed approach of leadership. First, headteachers revealed that some teachers and staff were reluctant to be the informal middle layer leaders even though headteachers tried very hard to support and encourage them to be leaders within the school context.…”

“…Even though DL is considered a theory-grounded approach with the objectives of improving school leadership, leadership researchers believe that it is extremely new and thus lacks understanding, is still in its beginning stage (Spillane and Diamond, 2007), is limited (Maria, 2011) and has limited research (Harris, 2004;Spillane, 2006;Timperley, 2005;Wright, 2008) especially related to constraints and barriers of executing the suggested leadership approach. Torrance (2012) pointed out that many studies have been conducted on the topic, however, little empirical studies were conducted based on headteachers' experiences and perceptions when assigning the DL perspective in the school leadership structure. This study is therefore attempts to fill this gap by focusing on the Malaysian school context.…”

“…Investigating an issue as such, is practically imperative due to the fact that DL when practised by newly appointed headteachers in schools, they experienced issues and problems which slowed the process of reassigning senior teachers as part of the school leadership community. Admittedly, this task has been undertaken by previous researchers (Harris, 2008;Leithwood et al, 2009;Tian, 2011;Torrance, 2012) in exploring the barriers, impediments, and problems confronted by headteachers in their practice of DL. In this study, three schools were selected to understanding and explore in-depth explanations of the problems they faced while using DL as part of leadership development efforts for the middle layer administrators, subject heads, and senior teachers.…”

The shifting discourses of educational leadership

“…The slow-to-develop policy for Scottish educational leadership is reflected in its shifting discourse, with terminology since 2000 suffering from both lack of clarity and continuous change (see Torrance, 2009). The ambiguous nature of policy discourse, along with the absence of explanation as to the motivations behind policy terminology on leadership, in part explains why the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), as the largest teaching union in Scotland, took its time before recognising leadership as distinct from management.…”