DISTRIBUTIVE LEADERSHIP

Distributive Leadership at School



Distributive Leadership at School

Introduction

Over the past twenty years, a large number of leadership theories are proposed. Unfortunately, there are just few theories which lead to effective school leadership. There are several theories, which are introduced and practiced in schools or colleges but do not show a significant rate of success. Most of the schooling systems use transformational leadership styles, which mainly base on non-educational settings therefore, it comes out to be not effective as the administrators expect. Between the periods of 1999 to 2001, radical changes have been made to the transformational theory to make it workable and efficient in schools or colleges. However, these changes failed to bring any significant change.

Recently, the theory which has received much attention of different schools and is growing more effectively in most of the schools is “Distributive Leadership”. In this essay, we will discuss the effectiveness of this theory for our school “South Houston Intermediate”.

Discussion

Good leaders are made not born. If a person has the desire and willpower, he can surely become an effective leader. Good leaders develop through a never ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience. The leaders are responsible for organizing the labor into productive units and monitoring their roles. The leaders continue to evaluate the overall progress of the organization, and making adjustments ensure that progress maintains and efficiency increases wherever possible.

There are various theories of leadership. Organization uses any theory according to its structure and needs, such as autocratic leadership in which the leader makes the decision without involving anyone else in the decision, democratic in which the leader encourages the other for decision making, and distributed leadership in which the power distributes among the employees. In the next section of the essay, we will discuss the influences of the distributed leadership theory.

The theory of distributive leadership refers to the concept of “the sharing of leadership” between two or more individuals. It is also sometimes termed as shared leadership, relational leadership or group-centered leadership. Nowadays, with the increasing work loads of administrators, this theory is gaining increased popularity.

This theory is most workable in the school scenario. Schools with shared visions, collaborative management, collective responsibilities for students well being prove to be most efficient (Spillane, J., et.al, 2004). Practically, school principal or administrators cannot be present everywhere every time. In such cases, they use this leadership. In some schools, leadership powers distribute between two or more administrators or principals, while some schools involve teachers and parents, as well. This strategy creates a group and there is no central leader involves. As a result, numerous aspects of the schools work improve.

Role of Distributed Leadership in South Houston Intermediate

Before few years, like most schools, our school was working on the autocratic theory, in which principal had been wholly responsible for the performance of school. Very soon, the management realized that effective performance of the school is not possible without incorporating an appropriate leadership style (Maicibi ...