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Investigating Leadership Practice: Exploring the Entailments of Taking a Distributed Perspective

This paper examines two questions: What does it mean to take a distributed perspective on leadership in schools? What are the entailments of taking a distributed perspective for research on school leadership? Arguing that the practice of leadership should be a key concern in scholarship on school leadership, the authors explore the leader-plus and the practice aspects of taking a distributed perspective. Arguing that both aspects are essential when taking a distributed perspective, the authors review findings from recent research that dwells mostly on the leader-plus aspect. Turning to the second question, the authors explore the methodological challenges involved in taking a distributed perspective. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, April 2005. This paper is based on research supported by the Distributed Leadership Studies (http://www.distributedleadership.org), with research grants from the National Science Foundation (REC-9873583), the Spencer Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy and Institute for Policy Research also supported the work. This paper would not have been possible without the Distributed Leadership Study’s interdisciplinary research team of postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate students. All opinions and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funding agency.