Date of Award

Summer 8-31-2025

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Education/Leadership in Urban Schools

First Advisor

Dr. Patricia Krueger-Henney

Second Advisor

Dr. Wenfan Yan

Third Advisor

Dr. Catherine O'Connor

Abstract

For nearly 20 years, researchers have studied distributed leadership—the interactive web of leaders, followers, and situation—as it occurs in schools around the world. Their studies have primarily focused on the interactions of leaders and followers in task-centric situations, highlighting distributed delegation, in which, upon task completion, leaders and followers return to their traditional roles. However, very few studies have focused on the reinterpretation of leader and follower roles through distributed leadership or how this reinterpretation can dismantle traditional hierarchical power paradigms in schools. By centering on distributing leadership as leaders and followers co-initiate leadership tasks to improve teaching and learning in an urban school, this qualitative study examined the agency needed to significantly shift traditional leader and follower mindsets as they move more fluidly between their roles while fully enacting distributed leadership rather than distributing tasks and delegations. Findings from participants’ written narratives and semi-structured interviews point to three “C’s”—culture, contributions, and challenges—and suggest a framework for what the author refers to as emancipatory distributed leadership: sets of interconnected practices, beliefs, and values necessary for reimagining traditional leader and follower roles and dismantling traditional power paradigms through distributed choice and decision making.

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