Distributed leadership in schools

Deposited with permission of the author. © 2008 Andrew Leonard Hill.This study examines the concept of distributed leadership as applied to schools. Various interpretations of the term, ‘distributed leadership’ are described in the literature: Distributed leadership is presented by some writers as another version of team leadership, shared leadership, democratic leadership and the like. Other writers describe distributed leadership as normative practice – as the way leadership ought to be enacted. The term, ‘distributed leadership’, as used in this thesis, refers to a dualistic, two-dimensional explanation of organisational life. Here, a naturalistic, causal-computational view of organisational action stands alongside a phenomenological, qualitative view of the essence of leadership. Whist the former may offer a universal, third-person view of organisational functioning; the viewpoint presented by the latter offers distinctive, first-person experiences of leadership. Although correctly emphasising the role of environment and culture in leadership as distributed, it is argued here that distributed leadership shares the theoretical and epistemological problems of all leadership theories and lacks explanatory power. This conclusion is reached by means of a naturalistic coherentist theory of knowledge, which recognises the theory-dependence of empirical data. Coherence is adjudicated according to the superempirical virtues of conservatism, simplicity, consistency, comprehensiveness, fecundity, explanatory unity, refutability, and learnability