Distributed leadership: Utilising everyone's strengths

Abstract

Research shows that leadership plays a significant role in the process of educational change and improvement (Day, Harris, Hadfield, Tolley, & Beresford, 2000; Fullan, 1992; Hargreaves, 1994; Sergiovani, 2001). There are many different theories about leadership and the types of leadership that are most effective in bringing about change and improvement. Pedagogical leadership commands particular interest because it is pedagogy that impacts most immediately on children. Pedagogical leadership has been described as leaders attending to the behaviours of teachers as they engage in activities directly affecting the growth of students (Leithwood, Jantzi, & Steinbach, 1999, p. 8). Pedagogical leadership is also about motivating and convincing teachers to do things differently and producing evidence that change is worthwhile and beneficial to children and teachers' learning. Recently there has been emerging groundswell of support for a new kind of leadership which is promising to have positive effects on educational quality and pedagogy. This new approach to leadership is usually described as or leadership (Harris, 2002). The notion of distributed leadership comes from the premise that educational change and raising student levels of achievement are never the sole responsibility of the principal, supervisor or head teacher, and that the people with these roles cannot accomplish improved outcomes on their own. Distributed leadership recognises the role that all professionals within educational setting play in implementing change, and that it is through collaboration and collectivity that expertise is developed. Distributed leadership also recognises that everyone has their own strengths and interests, and that encouraging team members to utilise their strengths affords them greater agency and motivation. A useful definition of distributed leadership suggested by Bennett, Wise, Woods and Harvey (2003) incorporates the following elements: an emergent property of a group or network of interacting individuals, openness of the boundaries of leadership, and varieties of expertise distributed across many rather than the few (p. 7). A number of studies carried out in schools (Day et al., 2000; Silins & Mudford, 2002; Southworth, 2002) and a small study in three early childhood centres in Aotearoa New Zealand (Thornton, 2005) attest to this theory about distributed leadership encouraging expertise and valuing everyone's contribution. This notion of a capable and team of teachers within either a school or early childhood centre resonates nicely with the aspirational statement in Te Whariki that children grow up as competent and confident learners (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 9). Distributed or shared leadership also seems to connect especially well with the contexts of early childhood education. Because of the ratio of teachers to children required, and the expectation that children in centres are able to move freely between the indoor and outdoor environment, teachers in early childhood centres in Aotearoa New Zealand need to operate in teams. The author of the study this article is based on, which was conducted as part of a master's thesis, was interested in investigating why teachers decided to be involved in a model of professional development that emphasises leadership, and what made them continue their involvement. The study was also interested in ascertaining whether or not teachers had developed leadership skills. The research used the Educational Leadership Project (ELP), independent professional development provider focusing on centre-wide pedagogical improvement and shared leadership, as a case study. Eleven teachers from three different early childhood centres participated in the research. The centres had all completed at least two years with ELP. Individual interviews were conducted with the 11 teachers, giving them opportunity to tell their stories. …