THEORETICAL FRAMING
3.4. OVERCOMING THE CRITICISMS OF DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP LEADERSHIP
character where initiative circulates widely (Woods, 2004) and both have the potential for concertive action (Gunter, 2005, p.56). However, it is different in that it does not assume political neutrality, but instead engages critically with organisational values and goals (Woods, 2004, p.7) and raises questions of inclusion and exclusion which include “how meaning is developed, how experiences are understood and how we work for change” (Gunter, 2005, p.57). In other words democratic distributed leaders transform not only individual understandings of self and others, but they “lay the groundwork for challenging social inequities and inequalities” (Shields, 2006, p. 77).
It is from within a democratic distributed leadership framework that “critical transformative leaders enter and remain in education not to carry on business as usual but to work for social change and social justice” (Brown, 2004, p. 96).
I found these characterisations of distributed leadership as discussed above (Gunter, 2005) particularly valuable in determining the nature of the leadership practice and the extent to which teacher leadership was enabled in schools in my study. The application of these developmental characterisations to the practice of teacher
alternative to the individualistic view of leadership which has dominated the field (Gronn, 2000). However, despite its popularity, there is little agreement about the meaning of the term ‘distributed leadership’ and this lack of clarity presents a real danger that it will be used as “a ‘catch all’ term to describe any form of devolved, shared or dispersed leadership practice” (Harris and Spillane, 2008, p. 32).
Furthermore, this lack of conceptual clarity “does not allow for a clear operationalisation of the concept in empirical research” (Hartley, 2007, p. 202).
Hatcher (2005, p. 258) warns of the “seductive ideological character” of distributed leadership which has been touted by some as ‘the answer’ to the leadership woes in present day schools – the right way to lead. Both the lack of clarity of the concept as well as its normative use in perceiving distributed leadership as something desirable, I argue, are potential weaknesses of the theory. In some of my chronicles, I positioned myself alongside those researchers (see for example Day and Harris, 2002; Harris, 2003; Harris, 2004) who use the concept normatively70.
In reflecting on my own work and in direct response to these criticisms, I elected in my more recent chronicles71 to both give clarity to the concept of distributed leadership and adopt a more descriptive approach to it. In this regard and in line with the work of Spillane (2006) who also adopts a primarily descriptive approach, I defined distributed leadership in terms of the leader-plus aspect and the practice aspect, as already discussed. I worked from the premise that distributed leadership offers a way of thinking about and analysing leadership but that it need not necessarily be desirable. Understood in this way, the distributed leadership practice being observed in the interactions between the leaders and the followers may be autocratic or democratic; it may be transformational or transactional, depending on the situation at hand. As Timperley soberly warns, distributing leadership over many people can involve risk which “may result in the greater distribution of incompetence”
(2005, p. 417). She goes on to suggest that
70 See my use of the concept in Chronicles 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8
71 See my use of the concept in Chronicles 4, 6 and 7
Increasing the distribution of leadership is only desirable if the quality of the leadership activities contributes to assisting teachers to provide more effective instruction to their students, and it is on these qualities that we should focus (Timperley, 2005, p. 417).
Despite the criticisms leveled at distributed leadership theory, I have found it a useful theoretical construct in my research because it creates the space for forms of empowerment and agency which are also at the core of teacher leadership. The value of distributed leadership as conceptualised in my study is that it is premised on the view that more than one person can lead in a school and that teachers are included in this leadership practice because they have “the agency to lead change and to guide organisational development and improvement” (Harris, 2003, p. 322). Theorised as a social practice with a range of levels of distribution, a distributed leadership framing afforded me the conceptual clarity which allowed for a clear operationalisation of the concept in my study.
In the South African education research arena, distributed leadership is still in its infancy but I suspect that it is likely to grow in popularity since it can be justified because of its “representational power” (Harris and Spillane, 2008) and its leaning towards democratic ideals in schools. While heeding the warnings of the opponents of distributed leadership, I am convinced that if distributed leadership is conceptualised as a frame or a lens through which to observe more effectively, at a range of levels, the flow of influence and the redistribution of power in an organisation such as a school, it will have value for the practice of leadership, and teacher leadership in particular. In the context of my study, I adopted this lens which enabled me to
“generate insights into how leadership can be practiced more or less effectively”
(Spillane, 2006, p. 9).
In summary, I contend that teacher leadership cannot be researched in isolation.
Instead it has to be conceptualised within a framing of distributed leadership order to understand and explain not only what teacher leaders do (or do not do, as the case may be) but also how they do it and why they do it. To do justice to any research into teacher leadership, we cannot persist in disregarding or devaluing the notion of teacher leadership as a form of distributed leadership because “to do so is to
knowingly invest in forms of leadership theory and practice that make little, if any difference, to the achievement of young people” (Harris, 2003, p. 322).