Teachers’ perception of distributed leadership in Hong Kong primary schools

What is it about?

The purpose of the study is to examine Hong Kong teachers’ perceptions of distributed leadership. Data were collected from six primary schools with a total of 155 teachers responding to a self-developed survey. Descriptive, reliability, and MANOVA data analyses were done with the application of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) programme. Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), 14 components were identified, including: (1) school organisation, (2) school vision, (3) school culture, (4) instructional planning, (5) improvement of learning and teaching, (6) teacher leadership, (7) principal leadership, (8) output effectiveness, (9) quality effectiveness, (10) change effectiveness, (11) organisation and planning effectiveness, (12) interpersonal relationship effectiveness, (13) value effectiveness, and (14) overall effectiveness. Inter-correlations were found among the identified components. Significant differences were found between teachers with different roles with the highest involvement and dimensions of school organisation, teacher leadership and interpersonal relationship effectiveness. Meanwhile, significant differences were revealed between teachers’ roles in the highest positions and dimensions of improvement of learning and teaching, as well as principal leadership. Such findings suggest that teachers’ perceptions of distributed leadership were related to teachers’ roles, including delegated responsibilities and degree of role participation in the schools. Implications for practice and research are discussed at the end of the paper.

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Why is it important?

To explore the relationship between role delegation and distributed leadership