Distributed liderazgo: the making of spaces and leadership structures for a multilingual school ecology

Abstract

ABSTRACT This qualitative study conducted at a Midwestern U.S. elementary school with a ‘strand’ bilingual programme examines the ways that administrators, teachers, and parents create learning environments for emergent bilinguals (EBs) that promote a positive view of bilingualism. To frame the study, the author used distributed leadership to emphasise the multiple stakeholders and levels on which leadership is exercised. Liderazgo is used to emphasise the collective mission behind these leadership practices to create wider multilingual school ecology. Critically applying these perspectives to the data, the author developed the notion of ‘distributed liderazgo’ to identify actions taken and needed to contribute to the school's multilingual ecology. Promising instances include a shared mission focused on EBs, teacher collaboration reinforced by shared planning and opportunities for students to interact outside their programmes, and parent-led meetings. Additional steps could be taken to further the visibility of parent leadership and opportunities to support more languages at the school. The notion of distributed liderazgo is useful for practitioners and researchers to consider how leadership practices can contribute to a school's assets-based orientation to bilingualism. Work like this is important to contest monolingual orientations and deficit discourses about EBs that persist in otherwise English-dominant classrooms and schools.