Servant Leadership Applying Distributed Leadership and Servant

Servant Leadership

Applying Distributed Leadership and Servant Leadership

In a Middle School Environment

The effects of distributed and servant leadership within a middle school environment is best measured and made most relevant when student achievement scores, both in the short- and long-range, significantly exceed regional and national averages. Only by creating an agile, strong and highly effective distributed leadership plan for continual learning process and training improvement can any middle school hope to create a strong catalyst of education that will enable students to excel beyond the average (Shakir, Issa, Mustafa, 2011). The traditional, hierarchic and often transactionally-based leadership models that rewarded didactic, often inflexible techniques of teaching are being proven incredibly out of touch with 21st century student needs (Sussan, Ojie-Ahamiojie, Kassira, 2008). Distributed and servant leadership needs to concentrate more on create a learning ecosystem that can quickly translate tacit and implicit knowledge shared among all members of a school's staff, and unify these many forms of knowledge and intelligence for the student's benefit. The role of the educator is to seek to find these synergies and commonalities across all members of a school's staff, orchestrate them in such a way as to deliver the greatest value to students, and measure that contribution by students' progress over time (Sussan, Ojie-Ahamiojie, Kassira, 2008).

Applying Distributed Leadership in a Middle School Environment

Distributed leadership requires any educational institution to take on the attributes of both transactional and transformational leadership, while also striving to create a learning ecosystem that continually capitalizes on the expertise of each member of the staff (Hargreaves, Fink, 2008). Distributed leadership is a participatory, highly interactive approach to creating an effective learning platform or framework on which students can actively rely on for support, engage with for guidance, and query for support and interactive learning (Sussan, Ojie-Ahamiojie, Kassira, 2008). While distributed leadership in many studies have shown that hierarchical and highly structured middle school environments are not as effective as entirely organically-based ones with a high level of egalitarian-based values, in actuality, transformational leaders are the most effective in making these frameworks function (Shakir, Issa, Mustafa, 2011).

The aspects of servant leadership that directly contribute to distributed leadership performance also have been shown to be a strong catalyst for enabling elementary, middle and high schools to improve their teaching, evaluating and promotion processes (Sussan, Ojie-Ahamiojie, Kassira, 2008). The development of programs and initiatives that go beyond the strategic to the individual student are essential if the fully value of distributed leadership is to be effective (Shakir, Issa, Mustafa, 2011). Foremost in these many programs is the ability to tailor specific learning programs and plans to the unique requirements of all students in a middle school, from the gifted to the remedial. This tailoring or scaffolding is designed to ensure each student has the opportunity to benefit from the shared expertise of the team comprising the school's framework of distributed leadership (Reed, Vidaver-cohen, Colwell, 2011). When this occurs through the development of scaffolding-based learning programs and student-specific academic objectives can the full value of distributed leadership be attained. The aspects of servant leadership are the catalysts that transform educational institutions of any level, from elementary school through colleges or universities, to focus first on the student and make a positive impact in their learning progress (Reed, Vidaver-cohen, Colwell, 2011). Servant leadership serves as the catalyst and distributed leadership is the framework which allows students to progress towards challenging, meaningful learning outcomes following learning plans specifically designed for their needs. A transformational educational leader will have the ability to create a distributed leadership framework and through collaboration and orchestration, enable all members of the staff to contribute to the success of each student.

Analysis of Articles -- A Literature Review

In completing a literature review of the concepts and frameworks of distributed and servant leadership, the following four articles were analyzed and assessed. There is a common theme across each, which is the hybrid nature of leadership when applied to distributed leadership models in elementary and secondary school environments which seeks to capitalize on both transactional and transformational approaches to leadership (Hargreaves, Fink, 2008) (Shakir, Issa, Mustafa, 2011) (Sussan, Ojie-Ahamiojie, Kassira, 2008).

All also share the aspects of servant leadership as an enabler of broad collaboration and a focus on creating value from knowledge sharing and open communication. In the first article Distributed leadership: democracy or delivery? (Hargreaves, Fink, 2008) the authors provide insights into how effective distributed leadership is for creating a highly collaborative framework for creating long-term value within an educational institution. The focus of this specific research is on the antecedents to effective distributed leadership, anchored with the development of programs and initiatives including scaffolding to support students to their long-term goals and objectives. The authors provide insights into how best to use distributed leadership to attain the strategic objective of increasing long-term learning.

In the article, A New Scale to Measure Executive Servant Leadership: Development, Analysis, and Implications for Research (Reed, Vidaver-cohen, Colwell, 2011) the authors present an assessment of how effective servant leadership is in the context of creating a foundation for distributed leadership over time. The focus of the article and research is to define how servant leadership often serves as a catalyst for transforming organizations through the development of greater authenticity, transparency and trust. The research completed by the authors also illustrates through example how schools can become more focused on the development of transformational leaders, creating greater levels of distributed leadership effectiveness as a result.

The article Perceptions towards Distributed Leadership in School Improvement (Shakir, Issa, Mustafa, 2011) illustrates how effective the development of distributed leadership frameworks are, and how they can be used effectively for creating significant gains in academic performance in primary, secondary and post-secondary middle schools. This article also concentrates on how effective the combining of transformational leadership skills are with the development of agile, highly collaborative distributed leadership systems and frameworks within a school. It is this article that also illustrates how transformational leadership is a solid catalyst for the development of a long-term distributed leadership model within a school.