Distributed Leadership in School: A Brief Review of the Literature

Several forms of leadership are discussed in the literature and have been practiced within schools and across different school levels. Some of those include transformative leadership, strategic leadership, distributed leadership, and participative leadership, among others. While each form of leadership has its own strengths and weaknesses and is more or less applicable depending on organizational contexts, distributed leadership has risen as an alternative form of today’s school leadership. Unlike other forms of leadership, distributed leadership is primarily concerned with the interactive and interdependent practice of leadership rather than the roles and responsibilities of those who have a formally assigned leadership position. To better understand the concept of distributed leadership, this article first reviews some literature on the topic and then offers some recommendations for practice.