Follow the leader" Capturing the perspectives of post primary principals in the Irish voluntary school sector on implementing a distributed leadership framework

This study investigates the perspective of voluntary secondary school principals undertaking the implementation of the Department of Education (DE) CL003/2018 on Leadership and Management within the voluntary school sector. The research question asks: What is the experience of school principals in the implementation of distributed leadership in the voluntary secondary school? The researcher conducted a thematic review of relevant peer-reviewed literature on leadership and seminal work in distributed leadership for this study. The concepts of power, motivation, and accountability emerge from the review of both policy texts and form the sub-questions within the research. The sub-questions are: 1. Does the implementation of the Department of Education (DE) CL003/2018 change the principal's role within the school's leadership framework? 2. Does the micropolitics of a school impact the implementation of a distributed leadership framework? 3. What are the strategies employed by principals to motivate staff when implementing the Department of Education (DE) CL003/2018? 4. Can distributed leadership exist without distributed responsibility and accountability? The researcher took a pragmatic approach to the research methodology, adopting a case study methodology within a mixed-method sequential quantitative > qualitative research design. The quantitative research instrument was an online survey distributed to a census population of voluntary secondary school principals in Ireland. Using Zoom, semi-structured interviews with ten voluntary secondary school principals informed the qualitative research. The findings are examined and interpreted within the context of the literature review. The researcher presents the findings from the semi-structured interviews and online survey acknowledging the implications and limitations of the study. The research identifies recommendations on continuous professional development for principals to develop sustainable leadership capacity within the voluntary secondary school sector, the essential time to hold strategic leadership team meetings and the consideration of a generic leadership title for posts of responsibility with recommendations for further research and policy development