Distributed leadership and its impact on relationships and campus culture in a minority-majority high school

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to gain a greater understanding of how the practice of distributed leadership impacts relationships and campus culture in a minority-majority high school. This study and its results are based on semi-structured interview questions and observations of five participants at an urban high school in south-central Texas. Campus artifacts were also studied to provide supporting data. The participants included the campus principal, academic dean, an assistant principal, a department coordinator, and a teacher. The theoretical framework for this study was based on prior research that examined how formal and informal leaders as well as followers interacted and communicated with each other due to the situational aspects of education, and how leadership power was distributed within a network of campus community members. This study found that the distribution of leadership from formal to informal leaders was situational, but that the distribution was also tied to an interdependent cycle of relationships, trust, accountability, student success, and campus culture and climate. Each one of these was needed for distributed leadership to occur. This study also found that distributed leadership, and the campus culture and climate it helped foster, led to a shared perception of colorblindness, which the participants felt was justified because of a belief that all students should be treated the same, regardless of race and ethnicity. Further, the participants perceived that student success was also a result of a positive, distributive culture that helped create a high teacher morale that trickled down to students.