Distributed Leadership For Learning And Teaching - 1362 Words

Traditionally, leadership had been thought of as a single person that leads or directs a groups or many groups as described in Peter Gronn s article Distributed Leadership as a unit of analysis.† However, according to Gronn, this conventional form of thinking, where one person or unit rules all (â€Å"leadership is basically doing what the leader wants done†) is faulty and ultimately leads to a counterproductive performance from the group as a whole, since everything falls upon one level of responsibility. In addition, he identifies three major chinks in the solo-style leadership model’s armor: the almost-too simplistic dualism of the â€Å"leader-follower† set-up; the exact qualifications of what constitutes a leader and said leaders and†¦show more content†¦It happens most effectively when people at all levels engage in action, accepting leadership in their particular areas of expertise. It requires resources that support and enable collaborative environments together with a flexible approach to space, time and finance which occur as a result of diverse contextual settings in an institution. Through shared and active engagement, distributed leadership can result in the development of leadership capacity to sustain improvements in teaching and learning (Jones, Harvey, Lefoe, Ryland 2013, p.21).† in other words, distributed leadership is the opposite take on the classical model of leadership where individuals can all contribute to the organization under an setting that values equality where all skills, ideas, and effort is appreciated. Although it may appear to sound that the idea of distributed leadership is simply delegating tasks, it is not. Rather, it is the nature of the interconnectedness of the leader(s) and followers in the group that is the core point of the theory. For instance, the most common observed evidence of distributed leaderships’ effectiveness lies within school reforms (Camburn et al. 20 03) and their creation of new leadership positions through hiring coaches and faculty to facilitate the tasks in the schools. Another example is the Command and Control doctrine followed by the United States military. According to U.S. Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated