Navigating the education bureaucracy: How principals make sense of distributed leadership in practice

Abstract

Distributed leadership has been accepted as the term used to describe various forms of shared or collaborative leadership practices in schools (Harris, 2013; Leithwood & Mascall, 2008). Principals are charged with enacting this leadership practice, thus, suggesting a change effort that does not follow the typical hierarchical decision-making model which remains alive and well in most school districts today (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010; Every Student Succeeds Act, 2015; Harris & DeFlammis, 2016; Spillane, 2005). In this study, Weick's sensemeaking theory was used as a lense to understand the sense selected principals in a large urban, mid-western school district made of distributed leadership and enacting the practice within a large bureaucratic setting. Principal interviews, school leadership team observations, and local and state level document reviews emphasized the importance of clearly defining the term distributed leadership, recognizing what distributed leadership encompasses and creating a systemwide support for integrated implementation of the practice.