Nurturing Distributed Leadership Environments in Schools: Creative Strategies for Increasing Community Engagement and Energizing School Turnaround Efforts

Abstract

This article highlights multiple ways in which kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) school leaders can work collaboratively with education stakeholders in elementary and secondary school settings to develop distributed leadership environments in their school communities to address the persistent and often seemingly intractable teaching and learning improvement dilemma challenges that plague many schools today. Insights gleaned from a brief examination of the distributed leadership attributes of one communal cultural tradition are utilized as the basis for generating some creative strategies for nurturing distributed leadership environments in school settings. These strategies may be useful to elementary and secondary school leaders working in a variety of educational environments who are interested in broadening their collaborative teaming and instructional support networks and energizing their school turnaround and improvement efforts.