Distributive Leadership Effects on Teachers' Sense of Empowerment

• In Event: 34.021 - Distributed Leadership Outcomes: Climate, Empowerment, and Transformation

Abstract

Existing empirical research offer limited insights on how distributed leadership practices affect teachers’ sense of empowerment. We find, based on data from two large Midwestern districts, that this relationship is rather weak with respect in administrative and instructional task domains in schools. Greater distribute leadership make little difference in influence over administrative and instructional task. However, it makes an important difference in the social domain, as it appears to increase perceived sense if empowerment in social tasks, such as determining rules and policies concerning student discipline, teacher evaluation, academic tracking, and evaluation of administrators. This finding suggests that distributive leadership effects may not be uniform and/or not equally desired by teacher in all task domains of school functioning.

Authors

• Argun Saatcioglu, The University of Kansas

• Eric William Shannon, The University of Kansas