Originally published as Journal of Educational Administration, Volume 46, Issue 2
ISBN: 0957-8234
Edited by: Alma Harris
The Special Issue puts distributed leadership in the spotlight. It focuses on its origins and development of distributed leadership; it raises concerns and questions its legitimacy; it poses methodological and epistemological challenges; reviews existing and new research evidence and considers the foci for future empirical enquiry. Its prime purpose is to not to reach a cosy consensus or to elevate or endorse distributed leadership but to deliberately push, challenge and extend what is currently known and understood about this form of leadership practice.
Contents:
The future of distributed leadership
Peter Gronn
This paper aims to assess the empirical utility and conceptual significance of distributed leadership.
Functionally adequate but causally idle: w(h)ither distributed leadership?
Gabriele Lakomski
The purpose of this conceptual paper is to argue that leadership, including distributed leadership, is a concept of folk psychology and is more productively viewed as an emergent self-organising property of complex systems. It aims to argue the case on the basis that claims to (distributed) leadership outrun the theoretical and empirical resources distributed and other leadership theorists can offer to support them.
Distributed leadership: according to the evidence
Alma Harris
This paper aims to provide an overview of the literature concerning distributed leadership and organisational change. The main purpose of the paper is to consider the empirical evidence that highlights a relationship between distributed leadership and organisational outcomes.
Taking a distributed perspective: Epistemological and methodological tradeoffs in operationalizing the leader-plus aspect
James P. Spillane, Eric M. Camburn, James Pustejovsky, Amber Stitziel Pareja, Geoff Lewis
This paper is concerned with the epistemological and methodological challenges involved in studying the distribution of leadership across people within the school – the leader-plus aspect of a distributed perspective, which it aims to investigate.
The relationship between distributed leadership and teachers' academic optimism
Blair Mascall, Kenneth Leithwood, Tiiu Straus, Robin Sacks
The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between four patterns of distributed leadership and a modified version of a variable Hoy et al. have labeled “teachers' academic optimism.” The distributed leadership patterns reflect the extent to which the performance of leadership functions is consciously aligned across the sources of leadership, and the degree to which the approach is either planned or spontaneous.
Distributed leadership: democracy or delivery?
Andy Hargreaves, Dean Fink
This article aims to discusses the nature and benefits of lateral approaches to educational change, especially in the form of distributed leadership, that treat schools, localities, states, or nations, as “living systems” interconnected by mutual influence.
Forging the links between distributed leadership and educational outcomes
Viviane M.J. Robinson
Several arguments have been put forward about why distributed leadership in schools should contribute to the improvement of teaching and learning. This paper aims to investigate the extent to which conceptual and empirical research in the field is aligned to this goal.
About the Journal of Educational administration
The Journal of Educational Administration seeks to meet the needs of principals, superintendents and directors of education interested in the practice and theory of educational administration. To ensure academic integrity, each paper submitted is subject to a triple-blind review process. In some cirumstances this process may vary.
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