TY  - JOUR
AB  - Purpose In recent years the benefits of distributed leadership have often assumed the status of an unchallengeable orthodoxy. There is a general acceptance that leadership is best when it is dispersed. In reality this is often little more than a form of “licensed leadership” in which those working in subordinate roles can only exercise their leadership in tightly prescribed contexts. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contribution of teacher professional development to promoting a more optimistic vision of teacher leadership and, ultimately, organisational change. It explores the role of leadership “from above” in supporting classroom teachers to engage with and sustain change.Design/methodology/approach The study, which was situated in the Republic of Ireland, employed a case study approach with 20 participants in five urban disadvantaged schools.Findings The paper seeks to demonstrate how a professional development initiative was used to promote significant and sustained change in four of the five case study schools.Research limitations/implications It argues that in order to understand sustained change in schools it is necessary to better understand the complex ways in which leadership from above can generate change agency from below.Originality/value This paper offers a critical perspective in relation to mainstream distributed leadership theory and practice.
VL  - 55
IS  - 6
SN  - 0957-8234
DO  - 10.1108/JEA-07-2016-0074
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-07-2016-0074
AU  - King Fiona
AU  - Stevenson Howard
PY  - 2017
Y1  - 2017/01/01
TI  - Generating change from below: what role for leadership from above?
T2  - Journal of Educational Administration
PB  - Emerald Publishing Limited
SP  - 657
EP  - 670
Y2  - 2024/04/25
ER  -