부산대학교 도서관

This thesis aimed to identify how effectively distributed leadership can contribute to school improvement as related to and experienced by middle managers (heads of department) at x school. The research drew upon both the theoretical and empirical literature pertaining to distributed leadership in order to provide the conceptual framework for the case study approach. A mixed methods approach was employed with data collected a focus group of five middle managers, 13 semi-structured interviews and 15 questionnaires. The findings demonstrated that school improvement was seen as clearly taking place at x school through the leadership practised by middle managers. This in turn aided the school in building the internal capacity for future development. However, the extent to which the middle managers exhibited distributed leadership was questionable and varied from one department to another. The school was seen as showing discrepancies between distributed leadership in theory and distributed leadership in practice and thus not benefiting from the advantages that distributed leadership theory suggests. There was also a lack of understanding surrounding the concept of distributed leadership amongst the middle managers. Recommendations are made which would enable distributed leadership to be developed at x school.