| dc.description.abstract | Once upon a time in the domain of post-primary education, principals reigned supreme assisted only in matters
of management by their deputies. The time for this heroic, hierarchical style of leadership has long passed,
however, and we are now in the era of the horizontal and unstratified where leadership has been levelled and
distributed leadership (DL) - it would appear– is the latest trend. DL is a relatively recent addition to the leadership
lexicon, having only begun to gather momentum in policy and in practice since the dawn of the new millennium
(Bolden, 2011), and has varied and often interchangeable interpretations, sometimes being used synonymously
with ‘shared leadership’, ‘team leadership’ and ‘democratic leadership’ (Spillane, 2005, p.143).
The consensus would appear to be that leadership does matter (Buck 2016) and has a significant role to play in
contributing to school performance and school improvement. Despite this widespread recognition of the
relationship between leadership and school improvement, however, there are still many questions that remain
unanswered and many gaps in the literature that remain to be filled. Foremost among these is the fact that much
of the leadership literature has hitherto tended to focus on formal leadership roles, notably that of the principal,
thereby disregarding the forms of leadership roles and functions that may be distributed throughout the school
(Harris, 2004). In the light of the above, my research explored the perceived relationship between DL and school
improvement and effectiveness in a single-sex, second level school in Ireland. In pursuing this research, I hoped
to establish whether the DL model could indeed lead to an educational happily ever after, or whether its
adherents are merely indulging in a fruitless expedition through the rabbit holes of leadership Wonderland. This
paper provides a snapshot of the research and endeavours to encapsulate some of its key findings. | en |
