The DOI matches its Crossref record; 3 of the 3 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Strategies and Challenges for Distributing Leadership in Communities of Practice
Abstract
A major concern of higher education in the United States and abroad is increasing the number of college-educated citizens in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Researchers argue that innovative and empirically tested teaching practices will support STEM college student retention and degree completion. Promoting change in pedagogy reform among faculty is found to be successful in communities of practice (CoP) where individuals come together based on a common interest or passion in a distributed leadership model. In the CoP and distributed leadership literature, leadership is process oriented, shared, situated, and dependent on a positional or key leader, termed the community coordinator. What is not present in the literature is how a community, such as a CoP, manages to continue a distributed leadership model during critical leadership junctures. Drawing on interviews of over 112 individuals, three key themes were identified related to strategies leadership development and challenges for distributing leadership in CoPs beyond the core group. The findings identify the need for a new CoP leadership model that engages the multiple levels of CoP membership in the earlier stages of formation.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“In keeping with Lester and Kezar (2017), we argue that both coordination and distributed responsibility have been required to navigate the vCoP through its critical junctures, and document how both elements operated at those moments.”
From Navigating from ‘heroic’ leadership to a distributed leadership model in a virtual community of practice (2025) · cites this paper as Lester and Kezar, 2017
In the citing paper
“Whilst this was a highly effective way of working, it was also important to acknowledge that despite the distribution of leadership and responsibilities, there still remained a need for a (non-heroic) coordinator, for example, to set deadlines, manage relationships, and harmonise the different sub-groups (Lester and Kezar, 2017).”
From Navigating from ‘heroic’ leadership to a distributed leadership model in a virtual community of practice (2025) · cites this paper as Lester and Kezar, 2017
In the citing paper
“We draw upon this definition, yet pay heed to the notion that the effective function of CoPs generally also requires community coordination (Lester and Kezar, 2017).”
From Navigating from ‘heroic’ leadership to a distributed leadership model in a virtual community of practice (2025) · cites this paper as Lester and Kezar, 2017
Citations
Cites
Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511815355 · Cited by 35,324
Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems
Wenger, E. (2000) · Organization · doi:10.1177/135050840072002 · Cited by 4,274 · cited 1×
“Wenger (2000), in a seminal work on CoPs, explained the relationship between community leaders and the distributed leadership model: ”The role of ‘community coordinator’ who takes care of the day-to-day work is crucial, but a community needs multiple forms of leadership: thought leaders,…”
BackgroundRelational leadership theory: exploring the social processes of leadership and organizing
Uhl-Bien, M. (2006) · The Leadership Quarterly · doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2006.10.007 · Cited by 1,973
Research works printed but not linked: 40
- 10.1002/jls.21320 · DOI
- 10.1080/13583883.2013.790071 · DOI
- 10.1108/09534810510589570 · DOI
- 10.1007/BF01456613 · DOI
- Bennett N., 2003, Distributed leadership
- 10.1111/j.1468-2370.2011.00306.x · DOI · Paper page
- Boyatzis R., 1998, Transforming qualitative information: Thematic analysis and code development
- Creswell J., 2011, Designing and conducting mixed methods research
- Crowther F., 2009, Developing teacher leaders: How teacher leadership enhances school success
- Day C. Sammons P. Hopkins D. Harris A. Leithwood K. Gu Q. …Kington A.(2007).The impact of school leadership on pupil outcomes: Interim report. Nottingham England: National College for School Leadership for Department for Children Schools and Families. · DOI
- Day C. Sammons P. Hopkins D. Harris A. Leithwood K. Gu Q. …Kington A.(2009).The impact of school leadership on pupil outcomes: Final report. Nottingham England: Department for Children Schools and Families. · DOI
- Fontaine M.(2001).Understanding identifying and selecting the roles needed to staff and support communities of practice. Cambridge Institute for Knowledge Management.
- 10.4018/978-1-59140-200-8.ch001 · DOI
- 10.1016/S1048-9843(02)00120-0 · DOI · Paper page
- 10.1177/1742715009337770 · DOI
- 10.1177/1741143214535745 · DOI
- 10.1007/978-1-4020-9737-9_2 · DOI
- Harris A., 2004, Improving schools through teacher leadership
- 10.1108/02621711211190961 · DOI
- 10.1177/0892020607085623 · DOI
- 10.1080/0142569042000294200 · DOI
- 10.1177/1350507607073026 · DOI
- 10.1080/1360080X.2012.642334 · DOI
- Leithwood K., 2006, Successful school leadership: What it is and how it influences pupil learning
- 10.1080/15700760601091267 · DOI · Paper page
- 10.1177/0013161X08321221 · DOI
- MacBeath J., 2004, Distributed leadership in action: A study of current practice in schools
- 10.1177/0013161X07309480 · DOI
- Murphy J., 2005, Connecting teacher leadership and school improvement
- Pearce C., 2003, Shared leadership: Reframing the hows and whys of leadership, 10.4135/9781452229539 · DOI
- Pearce, 2006, Shared leadership: Reframing the hows and whys of leadership
- Rogers E., 2003, Diffusion of innovations
- 10.1177/106591299805100401 · DOI
- 10.1108/00197850510593737 · DOI
- Spillane J., 2006, Distributed leadership
- Spillane J., 2007, Distributed leadership in practice
- 10.1007/s10734-009-9224-y · DOI
- Wenger E., 2002, Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge
- Wenger E., 2000, Communities of practice: The organisational frontier, Harvard Business Review, 78, 139
- 10.3102/00346543074003255 · DOI
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Johnson, I., Bickle, E., & Kantcheva, R. (2025) · Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education · doi:10.47408/jldhe.vi33.1216 · Cited by 3
Metadata
- Authors
- Lester, J., & Kezar, A.
- Affiliations
- George Mason University (US)
- University of Southern California (US)
- ORCID
- Lester, Jaime
- Venue
- Journal of Leadership Studies
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2017-04
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 17-34
- ISSN
- 1935-2611 (ISSN-L)
- 1935-262X
- OpenAlex
- W2605811632
- Cited by
- 21
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 2
- FWCI
- 4.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Leadership Studies (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1444789)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Teacher Education and Leadership Studies
- Social Sciences › Education › Innovative Education and Learning Practices
- Social Sciences › Education › Educational Leadership and Practices
- Keywords
- distributed leadership, communities of practice, STEM education, faculty development, pedagogical change, community coordinators, leadership development, community formation, college retention, higher education
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Strategies and Challenges for Distributing Leadership in Communities of Practice. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1002/jls.21499
- The paper
- Lester, J., & Kezar, A. (2017). Strategies and Challenges for Distributing Leadership in Communities of Practice. Journal of Leadership Studies. https://doi.org/10.1002/jls.21499
