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

Abstract

ABSTRACT Literature presents evidence of the exponential rise of distributed leadership both as a focus of research and as leadership development in education in the twenty first century (Hairon, S., and J. W. Goh. 2015. “Pursuing the Elusive Construct of Distributed Leadership: Is the Search Over?” Educational Management Administration & Leadership 43 (5): 693–718; Hall, D. 2013. “The Strange Case of the Emergence of Distributed Leadership in Schools in England.” Educational Review 65: 467–487), in addition to the growing criticism of the theory’s dominance and its ‘acquired taken-for-granted status’ (Lumby, J. 2016. “Distributed Leadership as Fashion or fad.” Management in Education 30 (4): 161–167). This paper thus seeks to provide a systematic review of the literature on distributed leadership published between 2010 and 2022 through a methodical collection, documentation, scrutiny, and critical analysis of the research publications. The review seeks to identify trends in distributed leadership knowledge production according to the study type/purpose, topical foci, methodological approach, focus group, and geographic distribution via a narrative synthesis approach (Oplatka, I., and K. Arar. 2017. “The Research on Educational Leadership and Management in the Arab World Since the 1990s: A Systematic Review.” Review of Education 5 (3): 267–307).