Making Sense of Distributed Leadership: Exploring the Multiple Usages of the Concept in the Field

Abstract

Background: The term distributed leadership is now widely used among scholars and practitioners in the field of educational leadership. Major actors in the nonprofit sector promote and financially support the development of distributed leadership. Unfortunately, there is confusion and ambiguity about what distributed leadership means, and there is no strong link between distributed leadership and two primary goals of the educational leadership field: school improvement and leadership development. Purpose: The author inventories usages of distributed leadership and exposes some of the key fault lines between these meanings and the implicit disagreements that underlie them. The author's objective in this exercise is to catalyze discussions about how to keep research around distributed leadership both theoretically anchored and connected to problems of practice central to the field. Findings: There are four common usages of the term distributed leadership , which include the original descriptive theoretical lens and three prescriptions for how sharing leadership in schools can improve practice. Each usage has its strengths and weaknesses, though two of the prescriptive usages are actually contradicted by empirical research. Conclusions: While not dismissing any particular definition, the author encourages those who use the descriptive definition to focus more on making connections to school improvement and leadership development. The author also encourages those who use the prescriptive definitions to use theoretically and empirically grounded research frames and offers suggestions about how to link research on distributed leadership to the practical concerns of the field.