Distributed leadership in action
A study of current practice in schools by
John MacBeath, George K T Oduro and Joanne Waterhouse,
University of Cambridge

There is now a growing body of literature pointing to the importance of distributed leadership as a strategy for school improvement. Emphasis on the headteacher as the one who turns schools round is now recognised as both unrealistic and undesirable.

Much has been written about what distribution means, but there is comparatively little to inform us as to how it actually works and what its merits are. Our study, which ran from May 2003 to March 2004 and involved 11 schools of different phases and contexts, set out to explore what teachers understand by distributed leadership and what it looks like in practice.

The study was framed by six main questions:

1 What is understood by the term "distributed" leadership? What meanings are attributed to the term "distributed leadership" by headteachers and by other staff? 2 Who is involved and where does the initiative for distributed leadership lie? 3 What are the processes by which leadership is distributed? 4 What issues do headteachers encounter in trying to distribute leadership or to create environments in which leadership is dispersed? 5 What different forms may such distribution take? (For example, is it conferred, delegated, invited, assumed, or obtained by election or subversion?) 6 How do people in formal leadership positions deal with the multiplicity of leadership roles within a school?