Is Distributed Leadership Universal? A Cross-Cultural, Comparative Approach across 40 Countries: An Alignment Optimisation Approach

Nurullah Eryilmaz, Andres Sandoval-Hernandez

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Distributed leadership (DL) is defined as the degree of contact and involvement of various people in making choices or carrying out responsibilities, and is an increasingly used concept among researchers, policymakers, and educationalists worldwide. However, few studies have investigated the cross-cultural comparability of the distributed leadership scale for school principals, and few have ranked countries according to their levels of distributed leadership. This study employs an innovative alignment optimisation approach to compare the latent means of distributed leadership, as perceived by school principals, across 40 countries, using data from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS, 2018). We found that South Korea, Colombia, Shanghai (China), and Lithuania had the highest levels of distributed leadership in school decisions, from the perspective of school principals. In contrast, the Netherlands, Belgium, Argentina, and Japan had the lowest levels. Our findings may serve as guidance for education stakeholders over which nations they could learn from in order to enhance school principal distributed leadership.

Original languageEnglish
Article number218
JournalEducation Sciences
Volume13
Issue number2
Early online date15 Feb 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Feb 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was funded by the Ministry of National Education, Turkey.

Keywords

  • alignment optimisation
  • cross-cultural comparability
  • distributed leadership
  • measurement invariance
  • principal
  • TALIS 2018

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science (miscellaneous)
  • Education
  • Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation
  • Developmental and Educational Psychology
  • Public Administration
  • Computer Science Applications

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