Distributing School Leadership

              

Now that I have discussed the need for a different school leadership model and outlined the responsibilities of school leaders, it is finally time to explore what a new model could look like. In this post I will review chapter 3 of Improving School Leadership, Volume 1: Policy and Practice, “Distributing School Leadership”, and in the next post, I will discuss ways to distribute some of the leadership responsibilities in my school.

In chapter 3 Pont, Nusche, and Moorman first clearly state that with distributed leadership, the principals’ roles as the “ultimate leader” will not change, but rather that it is even more important that the principal be skilled as a leader to effectively distribute responsibilities. This is important to stress as there will likely be push-back from people who are uncomfortable not knowing who the “boss” is – it is comforting to have someone who can give a final “yay or nay” and to know who that someone is. There are two different perspectives on distributed leadership, additive and concertive. Without going into too much detail, I believe that the concertive perspective would be more appropriate and better received by our staff. This is based on the three main characteristics that explain this perspective. The first one, I will quote here as it is, what I feel, an excellent description:

“Distributed leadership is not something done “by” or “to” members of organizations, but rather an emergent property inherent in the social collective such that “concerted action” responsive to situational needs and opportunities is carried out within a set of shared relationships where expertise and initiative are pooled.” (Bennett et al. 2003a and 2003b as qutd. in Pont, Nusche, and Moorman 2008)

I take this to mean staff needs to be responsive and aware of the needs in and around the school. So, rather than having a “cookie-cutter” model that all schools simply adopt, each school will have teams based on the current needs of the school. For example, our school is struggling with school-wide procedures – both what they should be and how to enforce them. With distributed leadership, the principal would recruit a team of teachers based on their expertise and willingness to tackle the problem. The team would then come up with a solution and the staff would weigh in on the idea, with the principal having the ultimate say, if necessary.

                This seems like a fairly simple solution, but there are more factors to consider – like giving compensation and incentive, not to mention authority, to members of these groups. In addition, when we consider distributed leadership, we have to consider several different “levels” of leadership that currently exist in many schools. The principal, the vice, deputy, or assistant principal, middle management, district heads, and school boards. In one model of distributed leadership, schools in Finland have distributed leadership among all levels; school principals divide their time between their schools and the district office, each of these principals serves as a district head, which means a position that was formerly held by a single person is now a team of five. Leadership within the schools is distributed among the vice-principal and “middle management” (head teachers, department heads, coordinators, and teachers with special duties). This model allows schools to have a say in decisions that are being made at the district level. Principals will know what the needs of the schools are when they are deciding on curriculum or assessments.

                There are several other distributed leadership models discussed, including one where all school leaders, including principals and vice-principals, are teachers, but with a lighter teaching load. There is even a fantastic spreadsheet that outlines leadership levels and responsibilities in schools in different countries. Here is a link to the full PDF, the spreadsheet is located on pages 96-101. (Improving School Leadership ) However, regardless of what model we as a school, or we as a district decide to adopt, there is not likely to be much of a difference if changes are not made on a national level. This means that as a nation, we need to recognize the need for high-quality school leadership and be willing to pay the cost associated with it. This means offering leadership development to teachers who show interest and aptitude to grow future principals and district heads. It means changing our idea of leadership to include teams and developing incentive programs for those who participate on these teams. I also believe that we need to change how we view public schools and school teachers in general. Making the job more attractive, setting higher standards to become a teacher, providing more opportunity for career growth, incentivizing graduate degrees and continuing education, and encouraging participation in school leadership are some of the ways we can improve our education system.

                Of course, I cannot make these changes and waiting for them to happen will not make anything happen, so we need to focus on the task at hand, which is to determine if and how distributed leadership can benefit our school. The next post will combine all of the posts that I have written thus far; we will discuss our specific school model, the responsibilities to be distributed, and what that may look like in the upcoming years.

Works Cited

Bennett, N., C. Wise, P. Woods and J. Harvey (2003a), Distributed Leadership, National College for
        School Leadership, Nottingham, England.

Pont, B., Nusche, D., & Moorman, H. (2008) Improving School Leadership Volume One: Policy  and
        Practice. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/education/school/44374889.pdf