Canadian contexts in educational leadership: a hermeneutic approach to distributed leadership for teachers’ professional learning

Abstract

Educational leadership in Canada has traditionally been conceptualized as a solo activity. However, in recent years, there has been a growing interest in the distributed character of leadership. Like any other theory or concept, distributed leadership has attracted praise as well as criticism. In this chapter, we conceptualize distributed leadership as concerted actions that happen in everyday practices in schools and through relationships among various partners such as principals/heads and teachers. The chapter is divided into four sections. In Section 1, we trace historical and theoretical antecedents of distributed leadership in general with respect to questions of representation, legitimation and praxis, with specific references to social impetuses. Section 2 considers Canadian educational contexts in terms of current conditions and trends in distributed leadership. The third section deals with the global perspective in terms of social, political and aesthetic forces. The fourth section speculates upon the future of distributed leadership in terms of utopian/dystopian possibilities. In this final section, we experiment with what philosophical hermeneutics may offer to a re-conceptualization of distributed leadership. Through Gadamer’s notion of praxis, we discuss concerted action of distributed leadership. We highlight the importance of this form of leadership in an era of unprecedented global interconnectedness, and how it may facilitate teachers’ professional learning and development.