ABSTRACT
The final chapter discusses distributed leadership, which unusually was developed specifically for education research, although its underpinning concepts – activity theory, distributed cognition and ‘communities of practice’ – go back much further. It sees leadership as a social process that occurs at the intersection of leaders, followers and situation. Instructional leadership theory competes with transformational leadership theory, although distributed leadership owes much to the tradition of Belbin and the team advocates within the transformational paradigm. The chapter also reviews empirical research by Hallinger and Heck about the effects of principalship on student attainment. Finally, virtual team leadership is considered; something that came into its own during the Covid pandemic lockdown in 2020 and 2021.
