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Voices of Secondary School Leaders: Perceptions of the relationship between Distributed Leadership and Student Achievement

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posted on 2023-08-30, 20:10 authored by Gillian Thomas
Strong and successful leadership remains a key feature of Government policy on schools and academies and the literature suggests that effective leadership is vital for effective schools. There is an implicit assumption that student achievement is at the core of a successful school (Earley, 2012) and yet there is a relative lack of research exploring the relationship between leadership and student achievement. This research explores distributed leadership through school leadership participation and considers how participants think distributed leadership influences student achievement. Set within an interpretative paradigm, this research adopted Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider and Whitney, 2005) as a methodological approach to explore the views of a purposive sample of 19 academy leaders from three secondary academies in the southeast of England. These academies range from the Ofsted categories of ‘outstanding’ to ‘good’ and ‘requires improvement’. The research powerfully illuminates practice by focusing on participant voice. Within this small-scale qualitative study, participants were encouraged to explore and recount their own perceptions of experiences relating to student achievement. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and member checking was through participant feedback. The research findings are summarised through a set of possibility statements in line with Appreciative Inquiry. The ultimate aim of this research is to determine the effective elements and qualities of distributed leadership that influence student achievement, through the perceptions of leaders, so that success can be repeated in the future, which is a central aim of conducting an Appreciative Inquiry. Participants perceived that together, the key elements of distributed leadership of trust, collaboration, shared accountability and moral purpose are significant. Combined, these elements result in creating the qualities of increased agency and leadership capability within distributed leadership teams, leading to influencing a broad range of student achievement. The set of possibility statements from this study provide significant insight for educational professionals.

History

Institution

Anglia Ruskin University

File version

  • Accepted version

Language

  • eng

Thesis name

  • PhD

Thesis type

  • Doctoral

Legacy posted date

2022-08-16

Legacy creation date

2022-08-16

Legacy Faculty/School/Department

Theses from Anglia Ruskin University/Faculty of Health, Education, Medicine & Social Care

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