ABSTRACT
This chapter offers the Distributed Leadership (DL) Program proved effective in guiding leadership and change efforts in schools. The fact that the DL Program nurtured practitioner learning, interaction, and team collaboration among those called on to implement and execute initiatives was found to play a pivotal role in the program's success. The particular program element which ensured its success in schools was the emphasis on developing teachers' diagnostic capacity, enabling and informing greater practitioner insight into action planning and leadership activity in participating schools. The program's approach disrupted tradition and created space for change by introducing a networked rather than hierarchical leadership structure in schools that distributed risk, and mitigated the likelihood that particular improvement initiatives would fail in practice. In leading change in schools, educational leaders often must leverage innovative practices, culled from the latest educational research, to overcome practical challenges and barriers to student learning.
