Distributed leadership and relational trust: Bridging two frameworks to identify effective leadership behaviors and practices

This dissertation investigates how relational trust manifests within schools that have recently enacted the distributed leadership framework, a program implementation by the Penn Center for Educational Leadership. First, the dissertation highlights research that connects the distributed leadership and relational trust frameworks in the task of identifying specific behavioral anchors which give rise to trust considerations across distributed leadership team members in particular schools (phase I). Then, the dissertation looks into the leadership practices of a particular school to identify how specific team activity extends/engenders relational trust beyond the DL team to involve the greater faculty (phase II). In phase I, these behavioral anchors, are utilized in crafting a typology of leadership behaviors which inform respect, integrity, personal regard, and competence interpretations in the school organization in accordance with the relational trust framework developed by Anthony Bryk and Barbara Schneider during their work in Chicago schools. Phase II culminates in a narrative-analytical account of the leadership practices in a particular school that bear on relational trust in that school. Trust is pivotal in encouraging the adaptive readiness levels of staff, particularly when they are being called on to implement new policies, procedures, and reform initiatives. Rather than cultivating trust haphazardly or incidentally, this dissertation explores possibilities for intentionally engendering trust in school organizations, through consideration of the effects of particular leadership behaviors and practices on relational trust, as well as the effect that a particular program implementation has had in developing relational trust in a particular school. The results of this mixed methods study, which features a quantitative sampling frame and both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methods, could help inform school and district leaders on how leadership activity in their schools is contributing to the overall health, longevity and capacity of their educational organizations, particularly in a time of increasing state and federal oversight, proliferating education reform(s), school closures and leader turnover