The Distributed Leadership Study

One component involves designing and validating research or diagnostic instruments such as logs of practice and social network instruments. We use these instruments in schools to gather data, but policy-makers and practitioners may also find them useful for diagnostics purposes.

A second component of our work involves describing and analyzing leadership and management arrangements in schools. For example, our research shows that, in addition to the principal, other formally designated leaders and staff members without such designations are involved in leading and managing.  The extent to which and how these others are involved in the working of leading and managing, however, differs by school type, school subject, and organizational function.

A third component of the DLS work, especially critical when it comes to developing knowledge for practice, involves engaging district policy-makers and school practitioners who participate in our studies with our research findings. Specifically, we compile reports for individual schools and then conduct workshops that focus on the findings in the individualized reports. Our workshops are designed to engage practitioners in diagnostic and design work using their school data.

A fourth component of the DLS work involves designing curriculum modules based on our research to engage school staff in diagnostic and design work using the distributed perspective. We use these modules to explain the distributed perspective to participants and to help participants apply this framework in diagnostic and design work related to their own schools.