Distributed Leadership

Distributed leadership refers to shared leadership practice that is stretched across across different leaders interacting with different participants (or "followers") in different situations across a school (Spillane, 2006). Distributed leadership is contrasts with the traditional perspective of the heroic leader, instead defining leadership as a shared process of enhancing the individual and collective capacity of people to accomplish their work effectively (Harris, Liethwood, Day, et. al., 2007). Distributed leadership, when executed effectively, has been found to have positive benefits including (Leithwood, Louis, Wahlstrom, et. al., 2010):

• Greater impacts on student learning compared to individually enacted leadership,
• Promotes improved instruction,
• Takes advantage of individual teachers specific expertise ,

Further, evidence suggests that distributed leadership does not appear to diminish a principal's influence, and may in fact increase it (Leithwood, Louis, Wahlstrom, et. al., 2010).

Sources:

Harris, A., Leithwood, K., Day, C., Sammons, P., & Hopkins, D. (2007). Distributed leadership and organizational change: Reviewing the evidence. Journal of Educational Change, 8(4).

Leithwood, K., Louis, K. S., Wahlstrom, K., Anderson, S., Mascall, B., & Gordon, M. (2010). How successful leadership influences student learning: The second installment of a longer study. In A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan, & D. Hopkins (Eds.), Second Inteternational Handbook of Educational Change. New York: Springer.

Spillane, J. (2006). Distributed leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.