Analysis of the Distributed Leadership Model in Public Education: A Mixed Methods Study

This research analyzed the Distributed Leadership Model (DLM) application in four public schools. The research problem links up to three research questions. The premise of the research lies on the assumption that the DLM when applied in concert with other leadership may provide educational leaders and researchers with pathways for enhancing leadership problem solving and decision making, and student performance. The DLM from MIT contains four interrelated competencies, three lenses, and a component for individual generated change. This research analyzed the DLM’s application to principals, assistant principals, and teacher leaders that coalesce into distributed leadership praxes. Via a mixed methods and the embedded design, the quantitative data supported the qualitative data.

The findings revealed that the DLM potentially is a conceptual tool to assess a school’s propensity for distributed leadership. Additionally, a possible benefit of the DLM is enhancing the leadership capacity of public school leaders.