Distributed leadership, collective responsibility
The purpose of my research was to contribute to the theory building work in distributed leadership initiated by Spillane and Diamond, (2007), adding clarity to the term "distributed leadership" by applying their theory to a particular setting. I performed a qualitative study that used the distributed leadership framework to examine leadership practices that occurred as people interacted in particular situations to improve instruction in a high school English department. The leadership activity that framed my analysis was the effort to achieve the goal of improving student achievement in a collaborative culture. Distributed leadership is defined by the interactions of school leaders, their followers and their situations (Spillane & Camburn, 2006, Spillane & Diamond, 2007 and Spillane, Halverson & Diamond, 2004). Distributed leadership practice is formed at the intersection of these three components; it is the active practice of co-constructing leadership (Diamond, 2010). The distributed leadership framework has three dimensions: (1) aspects of a situation or context, (2) ways in which leaders co-lead, and (3) the interactions of leaders and followers including switching roles. My study's findings demonstrated the framework's usefulness as an analytical tool to identify ways leadership was stretched over school leaders and followers to improve instructional practices in English/Language Arts, to examine how teachers were enabled to lead, how organizational routines and tools enabled leaders and followers to switch roles and how collective responsibility for student learning was cultivated. My study also examined how a principal enabled teachers to lead. Spillane and Diamond (2007) conducted research on distributed leadership in elementary schools. In their conclusions they cautioned against generalizing their findings to the secondary school level, stating that leadership is enacted differently depending on the grade level and subject area. They recommended further study of how leadership takes place by subject area. This study contributed to filling a gap in the research in that it was conducted at the secondary level, in an urban high school English department.
