Distributed leadership is presently the most frequently adopted model of school leadership globally (Wang, 2018; Wenner & Campbell, 2017), and has become embedded in school policy internationally including USA, Australia and Europe (Harris, 2011). As a model of leadership it is increasing in importance in influence from both policy and practice perspectives. This paper will illustrate the results from a scoping literature review that examined distributed leadership in post-primary schools globally and mapped current empirical research. The investigation into the distributed leadership theoretical framework is aimed at researchers, school leaders, teachers and policy makers. While many reviews to date are theoretical in nature, no single review currently investigates the empirical research on distributed leadership specific to post-primary schools (student age range 12-18) from teachers’ and leaders’ perspectives.
The review followed a systematic method of searching and synthesising information. Five main databases were searched (Education Source, Education Source (full text), ERIC (EBSCO), ERIC ProQuest, SCOPUS), along with a search of grey literature. Literature published between the years of 2009 and 2019, that were peer-reviewed, written in English, and empirical in nature were considered. No limitations regarding geographical location or methodology were imposed. The searches resulted in a total of 196 articles for potential inclusion, which were reduced to a total of 39 after literature was compared to the inclusion/exclusion criteria.
Three categories emerged during analysis; a) trends, b) limitations and c) recommendations for future research. The trends included (i) the numerous research methodologies used, (ii) the relationship between distributed leadership and various theoretical constructs, (iii) the dominant theoretical framework adopted by distributed leadership researchers, and (iv) the discrepancies in teachers and leaders’ perceptions of distributed leadership. The review also highlighted several limitations within the literature whereby studies do not take into consideration the external factors that may influence the leadership model adopted by the school, studies that lack replication, and studies reporting teachers and leaders’ misinterpretation of distributed leadership theory. Future research could further consider the culture needed for distributed leadership to flourish, the need for previous studies of distributed leadership to be repeated for reliability purposes, and investigations to further consider the impact of disparity of teachers’ and leaders’ perceptions of distributed leadership distributed leadership research.
This paper will advocate for greater rigour in distributed leadership studies. Theoretically, this study emphasises the importance of a common understanding of leadership considering the “fuzzy research” generated by weakly defined constructs (Spillane, 2017). This research is relevant to the conference theme “Educational Leadership Network: Reimagining the global leadership agenda” particularly as the paper draws together what is currently known about empirical research in the field of distributed leadership in post-primary schools, with recommendations that may shape the future direction of distributed leadership research.