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Chapter 6.4
Distributed Leadership and IT
Nigel Bennett
The Open University, UK
[email protected]
Abstract: This chapter examines the possibilities for information technology specialists to
provide leadership within schools, particularly in circumstances where senior staff resist or
are unaware of the opportunities provided by technological development. It identifies three
key elements of leadership: power/compliance, legitimacy, and how we define “good”
leadership. Working from the starting point that power is a form of resource in a particular
situation, the chapter examines the implications of these elements for interpersonal
relationships and then explores the possibilities for developing leadership roles that they
provide. The concepts of distributed leadership and teacher leadership are explored, and the
relationship between these views of leadership and school structure and culture is discussed.
The chapter concludes with some suggestions for how information technology specialists can
develop leadership roles within schools and influence classroom policy and school practice,
even when they may not hold formal leadership positions.
Key Words: Accountability, Compliance/Commitment, Distributed leadership, Influence,
Power resources, Teacher leadership, IT co-ordinator
1. Introduction
When we talk about leadership we usually equate it with the activities of a particular
individual who holds a senior position within an organization or within the wider society: chief
executive officers, senior politicians, senior military officers and principals and headteachers
are all typical examples. However, there are other ways in which we can think about
leadership, and other ways in which we may use the term, often almost unconsciously.
Leadership can also be exercised quietly, and come from all kinds of unexpected sources. In
this chapter, we will look at the basic characteristics of leadership, using the traditional view
of “leadership from the top”, before moving on to explore the characteristics of an analysis of
leadership that has become much more widespread in education- “distributed leadership”.
Then we will consider circumstances which can help or hinder the exercise of distributed
leadership within a school, before concluding with some thoughts on how working through a
perception of leadership as a distributed property might assist teachers with IT
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responsibilities to review their responsibilities and their relationships with their colleagues.
2. Analysing the Elements of “Leadership
In its most basic form, “leadership” involves trying to influence others to do things that
they might not otherwise do. At one level, it might simply involve getting someone to agree to
undertake a specific task that is not normally part of their job description; at another, it might
involve persuading other people to accept the leader’s interpretation of events, such as the
task that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair faced over the Iraq war. Leadership
can involve anything from trying to influence specific actions to trying to influence what we
think.
Embedded in this paragraph are several important elements that need drawing out:
power and compliance, legitimacy, and good leadership . First, however, we must recognise
that people do not exercise leadership alone, but in a relationship with others. Leadership
requires followership: it is a relational activity.
Once we have acknowledged this, we can go on to explore three other sets of
questions. First, what enables people to exercise leadership? Why are some leaders
successful and others are not? Why are some successful on some occasions and not
others? Second, why do we regard some attempts to exercise leadership as legitimate but
not others? And third, what is “good” leadership? These questions involve us examining the
concepts of power, influence and trust.
2.1 Key Element 1: Power and Compliance
The essential elements in the exercise of leadership are the two opposites of power
and compliance. Educators tend to shy away from the idea of power, and to use the term in a
derogatory sense: “they” – government departments, local authorities, or curriculum bodies –
exercise it over “us”. However, when we look at the nature of the relationships between
teachers and pupils, or between teachers within a school, we can see the same basic
characteristic as we can identify between “the school” and “the department/authority”: that is,
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an asymmetrical relationship in which one party has more power than the other – there is a
“power disparity”. National examination boards can prescribe the subject curriculum for
teachers to follow, and this can include pedagogic requirements, such as demanding some
original research by the candidate. Teachers working on examination classes have no choice
in what they teach, but they can decide which elements of the syllabus to stress, which to
leave out, and how they are going to approach teaching it. On the other hand, as Ribbins
(2007) demonstrates, heads of department can be very directive in requiring teachers to
follow particular pedagogies.
Although relationships are asymmetrical both parties may be able to exercise power
over the other. For example, if we view a classroom as a relationship between a teacher and
the pupils, it is an interesting question as to which party has more power. The same question
applies in one-to-one teaching relationships – if a keyboarding student fails to practice
between one lesson and the next, her (in)action can negate the apparent power that the
teacher has to provide instruction and set tasks. Grint (1999) argues that in a leader/follower
relationship, it is ultimately the followers who have the most power, as their refusal to obey –
to comply – can leave the leader powerless. This ignores the longer-term consequences that
a larger system can bring to bear on those who refuse, but in the immediate term it is a basic
and important point: Wellington could not have won the battle of Waterloo if the soldiers had
refused to obey orders.
It is also possible to distinguish between different kinds and sources of power, and
these can affect the distribution of power in a relationship. Put simply, some kinds of power
are more powerful than others, and which kind has the upper hand is likely to depend on
both the relationship and the circumstances in which it exists.
2.1.1 Forms of Power
Hales’ (1993) analysis of power is highly relevant to our discussion of distributed
leadership and the organizational characteristics that can help or hinder its development. He
suggests that we view power as a resource that we can deploy in a particular situation.
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Power resources represent things that are scarce or desired, or both, in that situation. They
may not be relevant in other situations. Hales identifies four kinds of power resources:
physical, economic, knowledge and normative. Each can be used in positive or negative
ways, and can produce different kinds of compliance or non-compliance. It is appropriate to
explain each kind of power resource briefly before going on.
Physical power is exactly what it sounds like: the ability to use physical force to
influence another’s actions. At first sight, it may be seen as bad, but it need not be –
restraining someone who is about to jump in front of a train would be an example of the
positive use of physical power resources (though this might not be the view of the person
who is restrained). In the context of most organizational activity, however, it is usual
negative.
Economic power resources are usually the property of individuals by virtue of their
particular role or position in an organization. These resources can include the capacity to
provide or withhold resources and materials, or to determine salaries and hire or fire others.
They are very powerful indeed: IT co-ordinators who have ultimate control over the budget is
likely to be on the receiving end of a lot of lobbying from their colleagues about resources
that they should buy, and their decisions will have a major effect on how IT is used in the
classroom, despite the wishes of their colleagues – and, possibly, of the school
administration. However, if IT co-ordinators are seen by their senior leaders or administrators
to be abusing their budgetary control, they may well remove it removed, demonstrating the
role-based nature of economic power.
Knowledge power resources are possessed by individuals without any necessary
connection with any post they may hold, although they will often have acquired them through
their experience in a post or series of posts. The potential knowledge that comes from
experience within a field is one major reason why most teachers in England are opposed to
non-teachers being appointed to headships, although this is not actually a legal requirement.
Hales uses the term “knowledge power resources” to refer to all the forms of knowledge and
expertise that individuals can bring to a situation: they may be “technical” in that they relate
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to the work that people are doing – the range of ways in IT can be used in the classroom is a
particularly “technical” form of pedagogical knowledge, for example – or “administrative” in
that they relate to the workings of the organization. Knowledge of administrative procedures
is one reason why experienced colleagues who “know the ropes” can be very influential even
though they may not hold very senior formal positions within the organization. Indeed, this
argument can go further and identify individuals who, although they are not formally senior
members of the organization nevertheless have very high status, which we can equate with
“senior positions” within the informal “hierarchy” of relationships that permeate any
organization (Bolman & Deal, 2003).
At first sight, IT specialists might see technical knowledge resources as their key
source of power and influence within school. They have an input into all areas of the
curriculum through the increasingly central role of technology in classroom practice. Their
knowledge is important to every teacher. IT technicians who are able to operate
sophisticated hardware and software can provide important support to their teaching
colleagues and be seen as a crucial member of the school staff, despite their holding what is
formally a “non-professional” status that is “below” the teachers whom they help. In addition,
the knowledge an IT technician may have of how to acquire resources or support from the
district office or the local authority, or of the informal procedures that can access to materials
and support quickly, is invaluable administrative knowledge that should not be
underestimated.
Normative power resources are the most difficult to explain, but are probably in the
longer term the most important since they exercise their influence at a much deeper level
than the other three. Hales (1993, p. 22) defines them as “scarce or desired ideas, beliefs,
values or affects.” Individuals may have ideas or beliefs that others find attractive, or may
simply influence others’ behaviour because they are well-liked and popular people.
Normative power resources are essential to effective political and religious leaders, for
example, because ultimately we follow them through an emotional attachment to what they
say or represent – even if we claim that it is a rational and intellectual response. An IT
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specialist with a particular vision of school and classroom culture and the place of IT within it
is likely to be guided by this vision in deciding which resources to purchase and the kinds of
training provided for non-specialist colleagues. When colleagues share this view of
classroom culture and practice, they are likely to see the co-ordinator’s use of economic
resources as supportive and the IT co-ordinator will develop normative power resources.
Normative power resources will not develop between the IT co-ordinator and colleagues who
don’t share the same view. When the normative resources available to IT co-ordinators are
weaker than those available to colleagues who promote alternative visions of “proper”
educational practice, they will not be able to obtain the deeper acceptance of their leadership
that normative resources bring. In this situation the IT-leadership has to draw on other power
resources. We will examine this further when we consider the issue of compliance.
By viewing power as a set of resources that relate to a specific situation and draw
their strength from the fact that they are scarce or desired in that situation, possessed by
some individuals but either wanted or needed by others, Hales demonstrates why there is
considerable potential for the development of distributed forms of leadership rather than
seeing it in traditional, top-down forms. However, we also have to go beyond this to consider
the question of when power resources are seen as positive and negative: in other words,
what makes their usage legitimate.
2.2 Key Element 2: Legitimacy
In a nutshell, leadership becomes legitimate when it is seen to derive from power
resources that are acknowledged to be proper and are deployed in ways that are deemed
appropriate. The two are connected. Certain forms of power resources will almost always be
seen as non-legitimate, the most obvious being physical force. Associated with physical
force, though Hales does not discuss it, is the kind of psychological force that is associated
with bullying. Exercising such forms of power may produce compliance, but it will also
alienate colleagues. At the other extreme, normative power resources are almost always
seen as legitimate, even though they rest on the characteristics of individuals rather than
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their formal position. We accept and comply with the exercise of normative power because it
asks us to take actions that we agree with, or that we agree are appropriate even if we find
them distasteful. Economic and knowledge power lie between these two “extremes”.
Why should we acknowledge and see the exercise of these other forms of power as
legitimate? Both can be used negatively as well as positively: withholding resources from a
colleague is exercising economic power resources, just as providing resources is, whilst
knowledge can be used to assist or to prevent colleagues to complete a task. As indicated
above, this can make the ways in which IT specialists use economic and knowledge
resources critical to the culture of the school and the success of individual colleagues. Hales
(1993) suggests that the exercise of economic and knowledge power resources gets
legitimated by the consequences of their being exercised, initially on a situation-by-situation
basis. If resources are both promised and provided, we are more likely to agree to the person
exercising economic resources in the future, and the more this continues, the more legitimate
their exercise becomes. Similarly, if a person’s knowledge of administrative procedures turns
out to be consistently correct, or the pedagogical advice on handling classroom problems is
usually helpful, then we are more likely to accept that that person’s knowledge is valid. In
Hales’ terms, we move progressively from a calculative compliance –“is it worth my while?” –
to a committed compliance – “I believe that she will deliver on her promises and therefore I
accept what she says”. This deeper sense of the legitimacy of power can develop in relation
to both the positive and negative exercise of power: if a teacher always carries through a
threat to discipline a student then the student is likely to move beyond mere calculation -- “if I
do this, then I might get away with it or I might be caught and suffer the consequences” to a
negative form of commitment – “I will not do it or I will suffer the consequences, and I know
what the consequences will be”. Conversely, if a colleague’s advice never seems to produce
the promised results, you are increasingly unlikely to follow it, your calculative compliance
falls away, and their use of power resources loses its legitimacy.
Calculative compliance, then, develops on a situation-by-situation basis. Moving from
this to compliance based on commitment is a major step, as it takes the relationship away
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from one that is contingent upon the situation and when we don’t know what to expect will
result if we comply towards one in which the situation is defined in terms of what we expect
of our students or our colleague. The more consistently individuals deliver on their
“promises”, particularly when these are helpful or constructive, the more likely we are to
move from calculative compliance towards compliance based on commitment. And
eventually, says Hales, we move beyond commitment to a broader relationship in which we
trust the other party.
As compliance moves through commitment to trust, we move away from responding
to economic and knowledge power resources. As we develop trust in the other person, we
move towards a relationship in which their power becomes normative rather than based on
economic or knowledge resources. However, as soon as we start to examine the workings of
trust and normative resources, we run into the issue of what we mean by “good” leadership.
Is normative power necessarily good? History tells us that it is not. So what makes
leadership “good”?
2.3 Key Element 3: What Makes “Good” Leadership
One way of defining “good” leadership is to ask if it is effective. From this perspective,
an IT co-ordinator whose policy of deploying resources through the school to promote
improved performance in specific targeted areas has proven to be successful would be seen
as providing “good” leadership. However, we might also ask if the resources were used in
ways that are morally acceptable. If the IT policy directed resources solely into activities
concerned with remediation, or solely into the development of higher-order thinking, then the
IT co-ordinator’s decisions might be challenged as morally unacceptable even if the target
group’s performance improved substantially. Those who challenged this policy would argue
that one group – the more able or less able – should not receive a disproportionate amount
of time and resources at the expense of others. The two interpretations are compatible: the
difference lies in the judgement we make about how the objectives are achieved and whether
they are morally acceptable.
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The moral dimension of leadership has always been acknowledged (see, for
example, Bottery, 1990), and has recently become more strongly emphasised by leading
scholars in the educational leadership field (e.g., Fullan, 2003).
In the development of good leadership in the moral sense, an important element is
the development of trust between leader and led. Bottery (2004) and Macmillan, Meyer, and
Northfield (2005) have both developed typologies of trust that, although they use different
names for the elements, are strikingly similar in form. They suggest that, just as compliance
becomes more committed over time, so our trust in others deepens from a calculative
response on the situation-by-situation basis described above to a level in which we can
anticipate their reactions to situations and work in the secure knowledge of how they will act.
Such “deep” trust can lead to highly skilled individuals deferring to a colleague, even though
they are of similar ability.
3. Moving on from “Top Down” Leadership
If power is a set of different kinds of resource, then particular kinds of resource, either
alone or in combination, may be relevant to certain situations and irrelevant to others. This
leads us to ask who possesses these power resources and how they can best be accessed
and deployed. Traditional views of leadership answer this question in two ways. In one view,
power resources are possessed by individuals who have reached senior positions in the
organization, because by working their way up they have gained a sound knowledge of all
the different aspects or “functions” of the work being done there: production (teaching),
finance, personnel or human resources. In return, the people who have reached the top
through this bureaucratic view of leadership development delegate much day-to-day work to
more junior staff, leaving themselves free to undertake strategic decision-making. However,
alongside this view of expertise there lies a second one: the idea of “charismatic” leadership,
which develops when an individual is able through force of personality as well as knowledge
resources to generate a high degree of followership from colleagues. A good example of this
is the approach that is often adopted in England to “rescuing” or “turning round” a school that
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has failed its inspection –a new “superhead” is appointed to generate new practices and
overhaul the school. This is widely seen as successful, but there is evidence that when the
superhead leaves after two or three years the school’s performance falls back because
insufficient attention has been paid to developing power resources that other staff can use by
“building capacity” so there is enough leadership potential or experience to sustain the
changes that have been made.
This is not to argue against strong personalities taking leadership roles. Indeed,
charisma is an important dimension of good leadership as it can help to promote normative
power resources and thence trust within the school (Fineman, 2003; Conger, 1989). Further,
Harris (2002) argues that such strong leadership from the headteacher or principal – she
calls it “moral ruthlessness” in that it sets clear moral boundaries around activities that define
acceptable practice within the school – is an essential part of any school development
activity. Collaboration according to both Harris (2002) and Fullan (2003) has to take place
within clearly defined moral boundaries and in pursuit of a vision that is articulated primarily
by the headteacher and “sold” to the rest of the staff.
Having established the key elements of leadership, we now turn to two important
concepts that are becoming increasingly popular in analysing it. The first is “distributed
leadership”; the second, “teacher leadership”. In relation to the work of IT specialists and coordinators, particularly in school systems where there is a strong differentiation between
“administration” and teaching, both of these views of leadership may be helpful in analysing
their potential practice, especially when they are analysed in terms of the power resources
that are available.
4. Distributed Leadership
Distributed leadership is not a clear-cut concept. Not only do we need to differentiate
it from more traditional views of leadership, we also need to decide if it is to be differentiated
from teacher leadership, an idea that has received little attention in England until recently but
which has been widely discussed in the USA. We can distinguish two broad schools of
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thought about what distributed leadership is: one deriving broadly from the work of Gronn
(e.g. 2000, 2003) and the other from the work of Spillane (e.g. Spillane, Diamond, & Jita,
2003; Spillane 2006). A literature review led by the author (Bennett, Harvey, Wise, & Woods,
2003), suggests that the concept has three basic linking ideas.
4.1. Distributed Leadership as an “Emergent Property”
The idea of distributed leadership as an “emergent property” is that leadership exists
in the interaction of groups of people rather than the actions of individuals. Gronn
distinguishes between what he calls “additive” and “conjoint agency”. Additive leadership is
little more than a form of delegation in which individuals undertake actions with leadership
elements within them, but without any necessary collaboration or sharing. Conjoint agency,
on the other hand, occurs when individuals do collaborate and bring ideas and expertise
together so that their collective action achieves more than their individual actions would have
done. Spillane et al. (2003) give an example of how the progress of a professional
development meeting can be expedited through such conjoint agency or, as he puts it (2003,
p. 538) collective leading, to co-enact a particular leadership task. The principal chaired the
meeting and kept it to task and timetable; teacher one led the discussion; and teacher two
defined terms, clarified others’ contributions, and recorded the discussion. Thus the three
teachers worked interdependently, drawing on particular expertise to discharge related
activities that made the meeting more effective.
4.2. Distributed Leadership Stretches the Boundaries of Leadership
Stretching the boundaries of leadership is the idea that instead of leadership being
exercised by a small number of individuals in an organization, leadership roles should be
spread wider and made more inclusive. However, there is no agreement in the literature
about where the boundaries of leadership responsibilities should be drawn. Most writers
draw the boundary around the teaching staff, but there are also other important adults in the
school staff who might be placed within the boundary, and, perhaps even more
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controversially, there are pupils and students. Spillane et al. (2003) go further, to suggest
that artefacts such as textbooks and interactive whiteboards can be included within the
boundaries of leadership, as teachers can defer to the structure of a textbook in planning
their lessons on a topic even though, left to themselves or with a different book, they would
choose to approach the topic differently. He also extends the discussion of leadership
beyond the more contingent approach offered above, which suggested that different forms of
power resource influence the degree of power disparity in a given situation and therefore
help to locate leadership within it, to argue that the situation is a fundamental component of
practice rather than an independent variable that influences it.
This raises the question of what individuals within and outside the boundary do.
Traditional bureaucratic or charismatic views of leadership see the task as direction setting,
values-creation, and taking decisions that others act upon. Distributed leadership suggests
that not only are the boundaries within which leadership is exercised wider than in traditional
models, but that the nature of leadership itself may be different. For example, school
principals who publicly espouse the doctrine of distributed leadership frequently point to the
existence of pupil councils in their schools. However, an analysis of these schools in terms of
the extent to which distributed leadership exists would need to ask to what extent these
councils are involved in providing leadership in the sense of taking initiatives and putting
them into operation. Do they exist simply to act as a conduit between senior staff and
students, bringing up issues from the students and commenting on issues that are brought to
them by the teachers or the principal? Are they expected to act as role models for their
fellow-students, providing leadership in the sense of emphasising behaviour that staff wants
to see? Such questions raise the more general issue of when leadership is about taking
decisions, when it is about taking action and requiring others to act, when it is about
collaborating in the process of decision making and the actions that result, and when it is
participating in more informal ways through providing information. This suggests that
distributed leadership, exercised within wider boundaries than traditional models draw, is
actually a different understanding of what leadership activities are as well as a different
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understanding of the structural arrangements within which they are carried out. Instead of
being located in a hierarchical setting and relating to forms of instruction and direction that
derives its legitimacy from a person’s formal role, “leadership” becomes more concerned with
promoting collaboration and sharing expertise in a wider interest. Distributed leadership
assumes a willingness to debate possible actions openly and concede others’ points of view.
This analysis re-emphasises the potential for generating calculative compliance as a
basis for deeper commitment. It also stresses the importance of knowledge power, which
must be to the potential advantage of IT specialists whose work is not only complex but also
curriculum-wide. However, as mentioned above, the headteacher or principal is likely to play
a pivotal role in determining the boundaries within which distributed leadership can take
place. What he or she does not do is determine how tasks should be carried out, or by
whom.
This point is picked up by Leithwood, Mascall, Strauss, Sacks, Nadeem, and Yaskina
(2007). They assign the jobs of deciding on the organization’s vision, including its core
values, determining the overall strategy to achieve the vision, and ensuring that the structure
of the organization supports the strategy to the so called “top leaders” (Locke, 2003, cited in
Leithwood et al. 2007, p.46). Leithwood et al. refer to this process as one of “planful
alignment”(p.40). In their analysis, distributed leadership moves towards the work of giving
advice and developing creative and collaborative responses to strategic decisions that are
taken by senior staff (“top leaders”). Instead of widening the boundaries of leadership, it
moves us towards a concept of distributed leadership in which collaboration occurs within
clearly defined limits. This conceptualisation can be viewed as closer to task delegation, and
has striking similarities with the view of management articulated by Mintzberg in the 1970s
(see Mintzberg 1990), which sees management not as the faithful implementation of the
requirements of policies laid down from “on high” but as an essentially creative activity that
includes leadership within it.
4.3. Leadership on the Basis of Expertise, not Role
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Distributed leadership on the basis of expertise, not role, resonates very strongly with
the concept of knowledge power resources and emphasises that they can be widely spread.
Indeed, Hales’ analysis of power prepares the ground in many ways for the concept of
distributed leadership by differentiating between power resources that are likely to be
exercised by senior individuals, who work within a tightly-drawn leadership boundary and
achieve compliance through formal systems, and those that are likely to be exercised within
a much broader leadership boundary and achieve compliance through the consent of their
colleagues without reliance on formal systems. However, it also re-emphasises the
collaborative or, in Spillane’s terms, “co-enacted” nature of leadership, as demonstrated in
his example (Spillane et al., 2003, p. 539) of a meeting between a school principal and the
language arts co-ordinator and a teacher, at which the teacher’s instructional plans for the
year were discussed. He shows how the two senior staff drew on different kinds of technical
knowledge power resources to “execute the leadership task”: the principal knew of the
district’s accountability measures whilst the language arts co-ordinator was familiar with
instructional strategies and subject resources.
4.4 The Question of Accountability
The three characteristics of distributed leadership - co-enactment, “stretched”
boundaries of leadership and leadership on the basis of expertise - have important
implications for both the structure of organizations and the relationships between the
individuals and groups that make them work. First, there is the issue of accountability. A
formal bureaucratic structure creates clear lines of accountability through a line management
system from the “front-line workers” through to the chair or chief executive officer and thence
to the external body that exercises overall governance: shareholders in a public company;
the school governors and the local authority or school district in education. This is typical of
western capitalist systems; in other cultures this arrangement may be unknown. Bryant
(2003) reports on decision making among Native American peoples in which the position of
“the leader” was a transient one, and moved between individuals dependent on the situation:
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a structural realisation of the analysis of power provided by Hales (1993). In these peoples,
accountability was to the community as a whole, not through some form of representative
democracy but on the basis of the community as a “polis” analogous to the political system of
ancient Athens (but without the slavery).
This raises the question of who or where one is accountable to in a system of
distributed leadership. Bickmore (2001) examined this in a study of “peer mediation” in
elementary schools, where pupils were given the roles of helping to sort out problems
between fellow-students. Where the peer mediators were appointed by the students and
given “scripts” – formal procedures – that they had to follow, they were seen by their peers
as just a preliminary stage in the process of referral to the teacher and on through the system
to the principal, and they were neither respected by their fellows nor seen by the teachers to
be effective in reducing behavioural problems. However, in two schools where the principal
decided to let the pupils elect their own mediators, gave them room to define their own
procedures, and made it clear that a problem could be referred to the teaching staff if the
mediators decided this was the right way to handle it, Bickmore’s data suggest that the pupils
respected the mediators they chose (some of whom were pupils whom the teachers would
never have dreamed of selecting) and abided by their decisions. She also found that these
mediators set themselves and their colleagues much stiffer standards than the teachers in
other schools believed were achievable.
This example shows that accountabilities that are recognised by members of a group
or organization are likely to be more powerful in defining “proper” behaviour than those
imposed upon them. Distributed leadership has to acknowledge the tensions that may arise
from competing perceptions of accountability. Most teachers acknowledge their formal
accountability through the school to the educational system, but it is commonly the case that
they also feel a professional accountability to their colleagues as educators (Kogan, 1986).
This has the potential to provide opportunities for significant leadership outside the formal
structures of the school; it also provides a strong basis for rejecting such leadership if
professional accountability is interpreted as individual professional autonomy. It is in the
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relationship between knowledge power resources and individual needs for them that this
particular tension gets addressed.
4. 5. Teacher Leadership: Is it the Same Thing as Distributed Leadership?
This discussion of distributed leadership has indicated both its broad characteristics
and the potential for interpreting these in different ways. Leithwood et al. (2007) elide teacher
leadership and distributed leadership by differentiating between leadership being exercised
by “non-administrative leaders” – defined (pp.49-50) as teachers – and holders of traditional
administrative roles – principals and staff at district level. Firestone and Martinez (2007) use
the term distributed leadership as an analytical construct to discuss how school districts
influence practice, but their analysis focuses almost entirely on teacher leadership within the
district. Harris, a leading English scholar in the field of distributed leadership now
differentiates between them, arguing that teacher leadership is more of a subset of
distributed leadership, sharing the characteristics of fluid and emergent collaboration but
being “concerned exclusively with the leadership roles of teaching staff…[whereas]…many
practical operationalisations of distributed leadership…have often concentrated on formal
positional roles” (Muijs & Harris, 2007, pp. 112-113) – a characterisation of distributed
leadership that is well reflected in the examples from Spillane et al. (2003) we have cited.
However, this is not universally shared. Patterson and Patterson (2004) present a litany of
tasks for teacher leaders that are concerned with creating a school culture that can “face
down and survive challenging circumstances” by staying focused on what matters most,
remaining flexible about how you get there, taking charge, creating a climate of caring and
support, maintaining high expectations for students and adults, creating meaningful and
shared participation, and maintaining hope in the face of adversity (Patterson & Patterson
2004, as summarised by Bennett 2005). This view of teacher leadership differs profoundly
from the emphasis on distributed leadership needing to be developed within clear moral
boundaries and in pursuit of a vision clearly articulated by the principle that underpins
Harris’s (2002) discussion, the comments of Locke (2003, p. 273, quoted in Leithwood et al.
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2007, p. 45) that “no successful, profit-making company that I know of has ever been run by
a team,” and the emphasis on the active encouragement of distributed leadership by
principals that is widely emphasised in the literature (e.g. Day & Leithwood, 2007).
It is appropriate at this stage to revisit our earlier discussion of power resources and
consider how these might be deployed. This involves our examining the distributed/teacher
leadership issue in the light of the organizational structure within which they are located.
4.6. Distributed Leadership, Teacher Leadership and the Structure of Schools
An important element of the apparent disagreement about the nature of distributed
and teacher leadership just outlined lies in the structure of the English and American
educational systems. The division between administrative and teaching staff in the USA,
which leads to the principal being defined as an administrator rather than a teacher, creates
a tendency to distinguish much more sharply between the two sets of roles than is the case
in England. One consequence of this divided set of responsibilities is that, as Patterson and
Patterson (2004) state, principals are seen as part of the district office staff rather than
members of the school staff, and tend to be moved from school to school much more
frequently than the teachers in response to the need to address perceived problems which
arise from the unsuitability of the principal to deal with the particular needs of the school (or,
perhaps, their incompetence). Consequently, it is the teachers rather than the administrators
who give the school its stability and continuity. Further, by creating the stronger division
between teacher and administrator, the degree of hierarchy within the teaching staff is
reduced compared to that found in England. The English system shares with the USA the
role of departmental chair or subject leader, but roles with a wider, whole-school role, which
are more typically taken by administrative staff in North America, are part of the career
progression of English teachers through Assistant Headship to Deputy Headship and
eventually to Headship. The National College for School Leadership, which has overall
responsibility for school leadership training in England, reflects this structural framework in its
five-stage leadership development model (NCSL, 2002). Another relevant distinction
17
between the two systems is that in England the school governing body makes all staff
appointments, including that of the headteacher. Consequently, headteachers are members
of the school staff, and not members of the district office. An important consequence of this is
that it can reverse the source of staff stability. Headteachers in England typically stay in post
for as long as individual members of staff, if not longer, which gives them more opportunity to
promote distributed leadership – increasingly referred to as “building capacity” (see Mitchell
& Sackney, 2000; Harris & Lambert, 2003). Thus any study of distributed leadership that
looks across two or more school systems has to recognise the implications of differences
that might emerge as a result of the very substantial differences between them.
It will be clear from this that both the expectations that teachers have of their
principals, headteachers or other senior leaders and administrators, and their perceptions of
their own role and career, will be influenced by these structural differences. Literature from
the USA has a strong focus on principals creating a culture within which distributed or shared
leadership can develop. More than half of the case studies in Chrispeels (2004) are
concerned with principals trying, despite the restrictions of district structures and their own
formal accountability, to create school structures that emphasise teachers collaborating in
decision making. Chrispeels (2004) examples sometimes seem to resemble representative
democracies. Much of this appears to create formal arrangements that validate and
encourage what may previously have been informal and unrecognised leadership from within
the “nonadministrative” staff. It reintroduces the issue of accountability that we referred to
earlier: how much autonomy does a school principal or headteacher have to restructure the
school and distribute leadership, either as the distribution of tasks or through the co-enacting
of leadership activities discussed by Spillane et al. (2003).
Different internal organization structures create different valuations of power
resources and different degrees of power disparity. Formal hierarchies are likely to inhibit the
development of distributed leadership because they emphasise the degree of power disparity
between roleholders, whereas looser, less rigid structures tend to reduce power disparity
between individuals. Nevertheless, as the above discussion indicates, it is not only the
18
internal structure that matters: the wider structure within which the organization fits is also
significant. Spillane’s view of distributed leadership as co-enactment fits more easily into a
relatively flat internal structure that exists within a relatively tight external accountability
system than into a formal system because it emphasises knowledge resources more
strongly. Against this, external pressures can drive a strong formal hierarchy towards a
system that appears to distribute leadership more widely: the national inspection system in
England (Ofsted) emphasises school leadership and management and looks at both the
extent to which the head and the senior leadership are providing strategic leadership and
have a sound knowledge of practice and the ways in which subject leaders and others
provide leadership within the school.
4. 7. School Culture and Distributed Leadership
We have emphasised two issues in this later discussion: accountability and
organizational structure. We also need to draw together the several references we have
made to a third major issue: school culture. Culture, structure and power are inextricably
linked in any analysis of organizations (Bennett, 2002). Our discussion of structure has
implied that it is something static, but the reality is that organizational structures are created
and are susceptible to change. Without this, attempts to create distributed leadership or build
capacity would be inevitably doomed to failure. Similarly, organizational culture – “the way
we do things around here” (Bower, 1966) – is also a dynamic element that is susceptible to
change and development (Dalin, 1993; Bate, 1994; Fullan, 2007, Harris & Lambert, 2003).
Schein (2004) suggests that creating and managing culture can be interpreted as the only
key thing that leaders do, and that it is what differentiates leadership from administration. The
case studies in Chrispeels (2004) that are concerned with structural change are also
concerned with trying to create cultural change in the sense that attitudes and perceptions of
individuals’ roles are changed. This, again, indicates that the extent to which individuals have
the capacity to influence how others think and act – power – is a crucial dimension of school
development. Distributed leadership depends on the effective exercise of power. Authors
19
who see organizations as political arenas, such as Ball (1987) and Blase and Blase (1999),
see power as available widely through the organization. Others, who prefer to see
organizations in less conflict-ridden terms, may emphasise the importance of the formal
senior leader in culture creation. What is important for this chapter is that both structure and
culture must not be seen as fixed and immutable but as fluid and dynamic, and therefore
open to influence.
5. So What? Distributed Leadership and IT in Schools
This chapter has focused on the nature of distributed leadership, how it fits into wider
discussions of leadership, and how its development and exercise depends on the
interrelationship between individual power resources and organizational structure and
culture. It has pointed out that writers on distributed leadership argue that strong leadership
from the principal does not necessarily contradict the operation of distributed leadership, and
that some of them argue that it is essential. It has also pointed out that distributed leadership
differs from traditional forms of leadership, which are located in formal hierarchical structures
and rest on instruction and compliance, in that it presumes the possibility of collaborative
action and a willingness to seek consensus. To conclude, we should consider how the ideas
involved in distributed leadership and teacher leadership might assist the teacher(s) and
other school staff with responsibility for developing and implementing technology innovations.
In particular, how can technology innovations be introduced without the support and
understanding of the principal or headteacher? Clearly a school where the existing culture
and structure facilitates distributed leadership will be an easier place in which to achieve this.
However, the fluid nature of both structure and culture gives more room for change than
sometimes might appear to be the case. This chapter concludes by suggesting one or two
strategies that might assist IT-related staff in this task.
It is suggested that there are two key activities that IT-related staff should focus on.
The first is to review the nature and extent of their power resources and seek to increase
them; the second is to work through those resources to try and change how “leadership” is
20
understood by their colleagues, including the senior staff. Let us look at each in turn.
5.1. Exploit Power in Collaboration with High-Performing Staff (“Teacher Leaders”)
A review of the particular power resources IT specialists possess and their strength
will help to identify where in the school they might be used most effectively, and we have
given some examples of ways in which different resources might be used. It is important to
remember that they can derive from both formal role and personal capabilities and
characteristics. Increasing the nature and the strength of the power resources of IT
specialists makes it more likely that they will be able to influence the culture and structure of
the school. If the school has a formal goal of developing a stronger technological presence,
then an IT specialist or co-ordinator has a “handle” on cultural change even if the goal is not
being addressed in practice. Even if this is not the case, the teacher in charge of any subject
or curriculum area should be able to call on the knowledge resources of the IT specialist. In
the first place, therefore the IT specialist who is working alongside teachers, especially those
who are given senior roles as pedagogical experts, can provide an opportunity to deploy
those knowledge resources and begin to promote the perception of leadership as
collaboration that underpins distributed leadership. Working with and alongside such formal
role holders to deploy individual subject or technology-related knowledge power resources
can strengthen the status of an IT specialist in relation to the formal structure of the school
and start to put pressure on senior leaders to change their policies and provide more support
for IT development and use.
Assisting colleagues in the classroom is hardly an obvious and earth-shattering
suggestion, but put in these terms it indicates how individual knowledge power can be used
to augment the capacity of formal role holders and so improve performance. It does imply or
assume, though, that other teachers are willing to seek, accept and share suggestions.
Working forward from those colleagues who either seek or accept suggestions, and
publicising successful innovation, is one way of developing stronger knowledge power and
achieving more extensive and committed compliance. If the ideas or the technology work,
21
then more people will use it, and spread the word of its success among their colleagues.
Over time, this will generate a deeper commitment from colleagues, which will provide further
support for the IT co-ordinator who is trying to gain more resources for technology-related
activity..
5.2. Promote Pressure Through Success
A second possible approach that derives directly from the first is to work round any
concerns that senior staff or administrators may have through not understanding or
sympathising with new technology by demonstrating its effectiveness in terms of achieving
learning goals. If it is possible to demonstrate that individual teachers find it helpful, that it
improves student engagement and performance, and has wider effects on school activity,
then the power resources available to the technologist increase further. Knowledge of
technology then becomes knowledge of practices that improve overall performance, in terms
of both measurable outcomes and other aspects of school reputation.
5.3 And Finally …
Both of these strategies, if successful, will increase the potential of an individual or
group to promote change and a wider take-up of the kinds of technological innovations that
are being discussed. But something else is implied in the second. If suggestions are to be
successful, then the specialist must be ready to offer continuing support and advice. This can
be time-consuming, but as Fullan (2007) among others points out, innovation is only
successful when changed practice becomes institutionalised as the norm. To increase
influence and go beyond compliance to commitment to ideas and suggestions for changed
practice, it is essential to provide the ongoing support that will help demonstrate that ideas
work and continue to work.
These suggestions provide means by which individuals can to some extent decouple
their exercise of power resources from formal roles within the school. In this sense,
leadership becomes co-enacted on an informal basis. Effective leadership from outside the
formal structure, that does not challenge the structure and formal leaders but provides
22
support and demonstrates knowledge and expertise, is an important way of developing a
school culture from within that can promote the more formal acceptance and implementation
of distributed leadership within the school.
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