Distributed Leadership: Still in the Gift of the Headteacher

Abstract

Contemporary efforts to reconceptualise the teaching profession in Scotland as seen with the Donaldson (2011) Review of Teacher Education, the McCormac (2011) Review of Teacher Employment and the GTCS (2012) Review of Professional Standards are aligning themselves to certain principles. Among them, is the core principle that leadership should form an integral feature of the role of every qualified teacher. Teacher leadership is premised on a distributed perspective on leadership. However, defining leadership, distributed leadership and teacher leadership proves problematic. So too does the identification of the expectations and responsibilities related to discrete and complementary roles within school hierarchies within the suite of revised professional standards. This article takes as its focus the problematic nature of distributed leadership. It reports on a study exploring a distributed perspective on school leadership through three headteacher case studies conducted in Scottish primary schools. It draws from a sequence of in-depth, semi-structured and narrative style interviews conducted with each headteacher, as well as from a semi-structured questionnaire and sociometric analysis conducted with staff. The article reports on six themes emerging from an analysis of the findings. The sixth dominant theme is discussed in detail. To a large extent, distributed leadership was found to be in the gift of the headteacher, actively encouraging, enabling and facilitating distributed leadership at individual and whole staff levels. Implications are drawn for educational leadership in relation to contemporary Scottish policy developments.