There was no much interest in the field of leadership until around the 1900s when some scholars showed interest in the area. Among the early were Fredrick Taylor, Max Webber, and Mary Parker Follet. They were the early contributors in the field of leadership. There are many differences between leadership and management. Leadership can be defined as the superiority or having the power to influence other people. It is the power that enables one to persuade others to take a particular course of action. Leadership comes from the power, and we have different types of power which reward, expert, referent and coercive power. There are different types of leadership, and the paper is going to concentrate narrowly on the distributed leadership which is a model/theory of educational leadership. In addition, the paper is going to review the existing literature review about the distributed leadership.
Distributed leadership is mainly practiced in schools research although the mode of administration is currently being applied in other fields like business and corporation management. The reason this kind of leadership is copied is because of the associated success in the education centers where it is applied. Distributed leadership is the type of leadership that is mainly concerned with the exact practice of the leadership rather that specific roles of leadership or responsibilities. In other words, distributed leadership can be said as a type of leadership that is concerned with the mobilization of the expertise at all levels with the motive of coming up with more opportunities for change and pave a way for improvement either in the school or the organization involved. This type of leadership can alternatively be termed as a leadership which is against the other common types of leadership whereby the leaders lead by strictly following the rules which are divided about the experience.
There are many reasons leading to emergency and development of distributed leadership. In today’s era, there is much advocacy for accountability and transparency in schools. Therefore, the old model of leadership becomes challenging to school leaders who are the principals. The workload becomes much for these leaders, and thus, they opt for distributed leadership where everybody in the system is given a role to play in ensuring that the schools achieve the goal of accountability. The principals and school leaders benefit from the support they are accorded by other teachers who are acting as instructional leaders. Findings have shown that for the distributed leadership to be effective, there is a need for proper planning and strategy laying in the school whereby every teacher is given a role to play. For this to work effectively, the teachers are dived into groups, and each is group given an instructional leader. This is one among many models of distributed leadership. In addition, the teachers will be regarded as experts in their respective fields and hence they will be welcomed to develop the curriculum, curricular objective and goals, professional development and building management strategies. Instilling distributed leadership in middle schools is easy.
Studies have identified that adherence to a philosophy called middle school philosophy which advocates for the formation of groups which are instrumental in decision making. In this model, the interdisciplinary teams are the primary key organizational structures, and they are necessary mechanisms which encourage decision making and the improvement of teacher leader relationship. It can, therefore, be concluded higher teaming spirit and the school middle-level philosophy is the main contributing factors which have led to the success of distributed model of leadership. Tone can understand different lessons from distributed learning.
Among these important lessons is that distributed leadership does not deprive the leader the authority or the responsibilities. However, it is worth noting that the principal or the leader of an organization does not lead alone. In other words, it does not mean that there is no person in charge of the entire organization. Otherwise, the principal should understand that there exists a synergetic relationship between the present organizational structure and the leadership. The organizational structure can be the informal groups and thus they are important in the administration of the school. The overall leader should make a proper use of these groups by imparting the distributed leadership. Under distributed leadership, the role of the leader is to recognize and improving and enhancing skills and the ability of the people present in the organization. This system can hold the individuals in the organization together by creating a relationship to bring various groups and people in the organization together to work independently and productively toward the mission and the vision of the school.
However, although this mode of relationship is beneficial, there some critical facts that are associated with this type of leadership. It increases the responsibilities of the leader, and his duties become more complex although productive. Therefore, it becomes necessary to get assistance from the other teachers for the model to be effective. Therefore, it can be concluded that distributed leadership is a collective duty for everyone in the organization with a view to making it a success. The impact of this theory of leadership can be felt in different organizations and schools.
Distributed leadership has many impacts that have been explained in a different textbook and various articles. They explain the advantages and the disadvantages of this particular type of leadership. Many of the books and texts can point the positive development and the relationship between the distributed leadership, student improvement and organizational improvement. Although these texts have been able to reveal some shortcoming of the relationship in question, many of them have identified the distributed leadership as the principal contributor toward real change and improvement and improvement of schools. However, besides these positive changes, the idea of distributed leadership is not without critics.
The critics are able to point some areas of weakness where each organization employing this specific type of management should look into. However, the good news about this kind of leadership is that different scholars have noted that the difference between performing schools and non-performing schools is the extent of leadership distribution. In other words, high performing schools are highly spreading the leadership role between the leaders. This can be summarized by stating that there is a lot of evidence which shows distributed leadership as an outstanding player in the positive outcomes of the organization.
Although, there is another reason that contributes to school improvement, distribution of roles and leadership is the amalgam of the contributing factors to improvement. The research further shows that different forms of leadership distribution have a direct and indirect impact on the students’ performance in the school not to mention the overall development orchestrated by accountability and transparency. There are different challenges associated with distributed leadership.
The primary problem with this type of leadership is the conflict that occurs in the when trying to do what is critical to future and when managing the current pressures in organizations. In distributed leadership, the worker concentrates on perfecting the future of the organization. However, these goals are made difficult by the current demands of the organization making the leaders focus on solving the current challenges at the expense of plans. This makes the organization vulnerable to conflicts between leaders who advocate for ideas and who are concentrating on the current problems.
The other challenge facing the implementation of distributed leadership is the fitting the system in our existing plans. However, many leaders agree that this type of leadership is right the problem is the implementation. People don’t believe that this model is real because they do not have strategies to implement this type. Changing the existing leadership system will disrupt the system of the organizations. Some activities are hard to change especially when the organization has no guarantee for the success of the adoption of the system. To modify this question of whether the guarantee of achievement should be answered by asking oneself what a company can do achieve the greater success. If the current system is failing the management should not hesitate in adopting another system probably the distributed leadership if it is practiced.
The other disadvantage associated with this type of leadership is fear. It results from the misunderstanding of the concept. In reality, this model does not mean that everyone leads in the organization. Or rather it makes the makes each leader responsible for the actions and the leadership role created. Some of the fears undermining this type of leadership are fear of the threat of other duties and responsibility, and the genuine responsibility.
Distributed leadership has positive on the leadership practice of the management of the schools and schools. We can understand that the leadership role of teachers starts in the classroom. In the class, it is made possible by the influence the teachers have on the students. However, it goes beyond the classroom to the collaboration with workmates. Collaborative working is important to the teachers because they can share the challenges that are faced in the classrooms and thus come up with the solution that can help curb them.
The other important point to note is that distributed leadership has an impact on the way issues are related to the school. It affects the relationship between a teacher and a student. It also examines the situation of a teacher as a learner, how the said leadership affects the development of the profession of the teacher. In this situation, the teacher is a learner from the collaboration of teacher and students and between the fellow teachers. Learning of the teacher results in professional development which is a great achievement for the method of study. It also influences the extent which the teacher shares with the other teachers through engagement in stories involving the colleagues. The dialogue is important because it enable the share the ideas thus innovation and creativity enhancement.
There are important features of management which the distributed leadership has taught me always to advocate. They will be instrumental to my teaching practice in future. The first lesson is that I will ensure that at my school there is an emergency of interacting individuals. I will say that the institution I will be leading there will be a good network of a formal and informal group. These groups tend to have leaders who may be appointed or may assume the leadership of the group automatically.
The theme of these groups will “working together” as they will have more strength when working together opposed to when each teacher will be undertaking his activities independently. Many of these groups will be informal although formal groups can be present in the departments which include subject development and activities department in the school. The free formation of groups in schools enables easy sharing of ideas, not forgetting easy exchange of the resources. Teachers will feel motivated and have higher morale.
The other lesson I have learned from developing the opportunities for that enhance the development of different leaders. I will be selfless and help the fellow teachers to become effective leaders. Having many teachers in the school with sufficient leading skills is advantageous because there will be many developments. I have learned thus creating opportunities for faculty and the management to work together usually creates various ways, and the leaders are distributed to different teachers depending on the demanding situation at hand.
Leadership, in this case, can be provided informally or formally. For instance, it can be formal through the stewardship of the subject coordination teacher or the head of the department teacher. Alternatively, leadership can be provided informally by the teacher who is leading an informal group made of the fellow teachers. Again, I would ensure that the particular students are incorporated into the same school with the others. Most of the teachers have no idea how to treat special need student. Therefore, the ordinary teachers will work with the special needs teachers and in the process, they will understand how to deal with special needs children. These are some of the activities which ensure there is a development of multiple leaders in a school.
Finally, the method the technique I will apply in future as a leader or a principal of a school is collaborative cultures. I expect to face many challenges trying to make this because it is not easy to establish a collaborative culture where people can work together. There is a different barrier which I am prepared to overcome to create this kind of culture. I will employ measures that will ensure that there is confidence in every teacher in my team. The application of focus groups in the team of teachers will be instrumental because one can understand all the teachers and create confidence in them. I would encourage the teachers who have the experience to work with the new teachers to share new ideas. These strategies will assist the school to implement fully the distributed leadership.
In conclusion, it is noticeable that it is not easy to make this particular type of leadership happen. The main reason for this is that there is no blueprint for the implementing it. The other reason is that schools are not the similar, and they should not be treated the same. The main secret behind the success of this type of leadership is professional collaboration. This can only be achieved through proper planning, good design, and, disciplined team.
References
Gronn, P. (2002). "Distributed leadership." Second international handbook of educational leadership and administration. Springer Netherland, 653-696.
Gronn, P. (2002). Distributed leadership as a unit of analysis. The leadership quarterly, 423-451.
Harris, A. (20004). Distributed leadership and school improvement leading or misleading? Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 11-24.
Spillane, J. P. (2005). Distributed leadership. In The educational forum, 143-150.
Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. B. (2001). Investigating school leadership practice: A distributed perspective. Educational Researcher, 23-28.
