The OECD's campaign for distributed leadership : The risks of pushing for more accountability and teacher responsibility

The OECD has advocated ‘distributed leadership’ to accommodate the increased number of tasks and responsibilities associated with accountability in schools. In the United States, new federal grant schemes are similarly promoting distributed leadership as a way for schools to increase student outcomes. This chapter problematizes the global campaign for distributed leadership within prevailing accountability discourses that value data-driven orientations of schooling over democratic ones. It draws on multiple sources of data—such as policy documents and reports by the OECD and the US federal government—to trace the evolution of distributed leadership as a product of contemporary modes of educational governance. This historical analysis demonstrates how distributed leadership has emerged as a key element of the accountability era. Ultimately, it critiques the accountability-based promotion of distributed leadership as missing an opportunity to advance democratic ideals that could otherwise be achieved by including more participants in schools’ decision-making processes.