SHARED LEADERSHIP: HOW IS THE PHENOMENON UNDERSTOOD IN THEORY AND PRACTISED IN THE SCHOOLS?

Abstract

Leadership affects the success and failure of every type of school, and the complexity of today’s school environments makes leadership even more challenging. Therefore, it is becoming more difficult for any single individual to possess all the skills and abilities required to competently lead a school. Shared leadership has been identified as a key governance base for the future that offers ways to make the role of principals more manageable through collaboration and teamwork. A review of the literature indicates that while shared leadership has been practised in some form for centuries, it is still not well understood, not well accepted and not valued by those who practise or study leadership. This study investigates the current understanding and practice of shared leadership in secondary schools. A qualitative case study approach was selected, incorporating a series of semi-structured interviews with school principals. The findings affirmed that there is still little agreement on what shared leadership actually means, ratifying the point that shared leadership is still not well understood. The variation indicates a range of practices that fall under the general umbrella of shared leadership but differ in the manner and extent in which leadership is shared in schools. This study gives a better insight into how shared leadership is understood in theory and practised in schools. This contribution could be used as a training ground for future and existing school principals.

Keywords

• Shared leadership, school principals, implementation, change management