Leadership Impact on Elementary School’s Effectiveness and Improvement

Abstract

Distributed leadership is engrossed by the global research community. It is the leadership which is distributed within the organization. According to Arrowsmith (2007, p.22) " distributed leadership is an emerging form of power distribution in schools which extends authority and influence to groups or individuals in a way which is at least partly contrary to hierarchical arrangements ". The present study examines the distributed leadership in the school environment. The new public management led to the self-based school management. Consequently, school accountabilities became more, a fact that hindered the work of the heroic leader. As a result, the leadership started to be distributed among different individuals. The author argues that distributed leadership is the kind of leadership that can lead to school improvement and effectiveness. This study investigates how distributed leadership is viewed, distributed and exercised. It also examines whether distributed leadership leads to school effectiveness and improvement. The present project presents a small scale case study which took place in an elementary school in a district of Cyprus, in Paphos. The researcher used combined methods for the collection, analysis and presentation of the data. He conducted questionnaires, interviews and observation. He has also used minutes of meetings, logs and shadowing in order to gain validity of data. The study pointed out that distributed leadership is viewed as stretched leadership within the school and it is distributed to 18 different roles. The author presents the 18 roles and their main responsibilities. The present study has also led to the 5 major leadership capabilities for distributed leadership. Moreover, the research proved that distributed leadership is the kind of leadership that leads to a) the improvement of students' outcomes in Maths and Greek language, b) organizational effectiveness and c) job satisfaction. The writer presents his findings but he also challenges that distributed leadership has to be investigated in more depth and other concepts of it, have to be explored.