An examination of leading change: a longitudinal multiple case study of the leadership experiences of two public school principals in a school improvement project

Abstract

This study explored the perceptions of two public school principals who have been part of the capacity-building program of TAMAM about the process of leading change in an improvement project that promotes a distributed leadership approach. Its goal was to understand how their participation in TAMAM impacted leading change perception and practice as well as whether, from their perspective, the developed leadership practices promoted school improvement practices. The study was guided by Spillane’s distributed leadership model, the TAMAM leadership model, and its theoretical framework, which hypothesized that distributed leadership is seen as an effective model to facilitate school improvement and its impact on school improvement is facilitated through the distribution of leadership, building leadership capacity, promoting organizational learning, building teachers’ capacity for improvement, and promoting non-positional teacher leadership. The study adopted an interpretivist, longitudinal, qualitative multiple case study design. Data included video recordings, narrative reports, and semi-structured interviews. The findings of the study revealed that distributed leadership is an effective means for school improvement when leaders let go of the urge to individually lead, leadership capacities of staff is built, non-positional leadership is promoted, and leadership work is divided per expertise. Moreover, it was found that the developed leadership practices were able to create and sustain school improvement practices. Finally, recommendations for future research were also proposed.