Distributed Leadership: School Principals’ Practices to Promote Teachers’ Professional Development for School Improvement

Abstract

Distributed leadership is based on increasing the knowledge and skills of those who play the role of leaders at schools. The objectives of this study are (a) to analyze school principals’ practices aimed at creating professional development opportunities to promote teacher leadership for school improvement and (b) to relate the perceptions of teacher leaders regarding the professional development opportunities granted by principals. The methods were based on an examination of 21 interviews, including individual semi-structured interviews with school principals and group interviews with teacher leaders at six public schools in Chile, as well as a documentary analysis of institutional educational projects using thematic analysis and NVivo 12 software. The results are presented in three categories: management of principals regarding school organization, development of the professional capacities of teacher leaders, and management of principals regarding school coexistence and the participation of teacher leaders. The discussion and conclusions detailing school principals’ practices show that distributed leadership helps develop teachers’ leadership competencies. Furthermore, this study suggests that training amplifies the beneficial effects of distributed leadership on teachers’ development. Finally, the findings imply that school principals should regularly fulfill their responsibilities and pay attention to teachers’ professional development to improve their schools.

Does Distributed Leadership Deliver on Its Promises in Schools? Implications for Teachers’ Work Satisfaction and Self-Efficacy

“…Our results reveal significantly higher organizational identification and perceptions of leadership empowerment in school in which the leadership functions are exercised by a single person as compared to schools in which these leadership functions are distributed. We join the voices calling for more accurate and uniform definitions of distributed leadership in schools [7,9,16,35,63] in order to facilitate large-scale studies that allow the comparison of within-school differences in perceptions of distributed leadership (using self-report scales that evaluate the extent to which teachers themselves are have leadership roles) with the between-schools comparison (evaluating the number of formal leaders in each of the schools) of such differences.…”

“…A plausible explanation of such an effect lies in the insufficient training and planning of how leadership functions are to be exercised. Simply assigning someone a leader role does not necessarily mean that they can successfully fulfill leadership functions [16,35]. A direct implication of this interpretation is that when schools intend to distribute leadership functions across several teachers, they also have to make sure that sufficient training and resources are available to support these teachers to effectively exercise leadership.…”

“…In organizational settings, empowerment reflects efforts aimed at generating agency and proactivity among employees in order to increase task engagement and ultimately foster organizational effectiveness [34]. Most recent research considered empowerment as an integral part of distributed leadership practices [16,35]. Moreover, scales used to evaluate distributed leadership explicitly include dimensions like teacher empowerment, shared decision making and participation in decision-making processes concerning task planning and allocation [11,35,36].…”

“…Most recent research considered empowerment as an integral part of distributed leadership practices [16,35]. Moreover, scales used to evaluate distributed leadership explicitly include dimensions like teacher empowerment, shared decision making and participation in decision-making processes concerning task planning and allocation [11,35,36]. When teachers are allowed participation in the decision-making processes aimed at influencing their work practices and tasks, they are likely to experience more positive interdependence (understand that in order to achieve their individual aims they need to support others to achieve their) and ultimately feel more empowered at work.…”

“…Distributed leadership has been defined as the leadership responsibilities and functions that need to be fulfilled by different people with varied levels and types of expertise [10,16,35]. We evaluated this variable by asking participants how many individuals fulfilled leadership functions in their school, and it was coded as a dummy variable (one leader versus multiple leaders).…”