Distributed school leadership: Making sense of the educational infrastructure

Pär Larsson,Jan Löwstedt

doi:10.1177/1741143220973668

Abstract

Distributed leadership focuses on what teachers and school leaders do together, but also on how the situation mediates that interaction. This paper focuses on the importance and function of the situational dimension of practice. By framing situational aspects in terms of local educational infrastructure, it explores organizational components in the educational infrastructure and how they condition teachers’ sensemaking about their instructional practice. Two schools in the same school district in Sweden were purposively chosen to reflect significant variation in student outcomes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, in addition to observations of meetings. The results show that an important function of the infrastructure is to facilitate and guide teachers’ sensemaking about their instructional practice and that these processes are influenced by the clarity of the school’s vision and the principal’s use of the infrastructure for sensegiving purposes. The outcome is an argument for studying school leadership through the lens of organizational components in the educational infrastructure

Highlights

During the last few decades, the traditional view on the school principal as the main actor responsible for school development and improvement of student results has been challenged
In Lowville, we identify this support from the school district as a core component in their educational infrastructure
The distributed leadership perspective adopted in this paper suggests that school leaders, teachers and the situation in interaction shape the instructional practice in a school

Summary

Introduction

Situation mediates that interaction and becomes the infrastructure for instructional practice in a school (Spillane et al, 2004). The distributed perspective on leadership assumes that teachers’ educational practice is influenced by the principal (formal leader) and other people that take on leader responsibilities, and that this interaction is conditioned by situational aspects (educational infrastructure), especially organizational activities, structures and cultural-cognitive beliefs. Data from the interviews concerning organizational activities and structures that were reported to govern and support the educational work were examined for each school separately Based on these reports, initial categories of influencing aspects were identified, such as, for example, individual training activities and morning meetings and culturally established belief patterns or frameworks. A more theory-driven analysis (Braun and Clark, 2006) was conducted across the established categories, based on a theoretical sensemaking perspective, to identify ways in which they influence teachers’ sensemaking about their instructional practice

Results

Conclusions

Limitations and future research