Assorted forces including technological advancements, discovered new information, evolving phenomena about daily routines, and globalization coerce to organizations for change (Lüscher & Lewis, 2008). Hence, adaptation of swift altering conditions has become a crucial for organizations in order to not stay outside the race (Neves, 2011). Actually, organizations try to catch up with changes of external world in order to survive (Burke, 2013). Educational organizations also face some forces of change originating from their internal and external environments (Levin, 1993) and they are expected to build strong ties with society and communicate effectively in order to adopt changes (Kaya, 1986). Essentially, education is influenced by changes which occur in the environment and it recreates itself for development of the society (Tabancalı, 2003). Thus, educational institutions have performed various change implementations to adopt daily life alterations in their education systems.

Unfortunately, teachers’ opinions are omitted by change implementers although individual demeanors and personal attitudes of teachers are significant for success of change duration (Kondakçı, Zayim, & Çalışkan, 2013). Actualizing effective organizational change needs to perceiving attitudes and behaviors of organization members toward change interventions (Oreg, Vakola, & Armenakis, 2011). It is indispensable that comprehend teacher’s attitudes towards change interventions because teachers have a major influence for achieving successful change implications at school setting (Özmen & Sönmez, 2007).  In this instance, presence of employee readiness for change supports positive attitudes toward change interventions (Self & Schraeder, 2009).

Conducting successful change management influences positively the outcomes of change and organization members’ attitudes toward change process (Rafferty, Jimmieson, & Armenakis, 2013). There is a positive relationship between effective leadership behaviors in schools and success rate of reaching goals of educational organization (Özdemir, 2012). It is essential that educational organizations leave aside customary and ordinary administrative structure, in fact contemporary educational approaches should be embraced (Çankaya & Karakuş, 2010). As it is considered change and enhancement duration in schools, it can be recognized that distributed leadership regarded as lodestar due to its nature (Jacobs, 2010). Schools that promote distributed leadership have active working teams consist of parents, students, teachers, and administrators (Lambert, 2002). Furthermore, distributed leadership assists to prosper change course in organizations (Spillane, 2012). Additionally, distributed leadership needs communication network by composing all members’ knowledge and experiences (Harris, 2004). Knowledge sharing among organization members foster change interventions in the organization and it is also necessity for effective change continuum (Barnes, Camburn, Sanders, & Sebastian, 2010). Moreover, the employee readiness level for change is related with frequency of active participation in decision making in their organizations (Cohen & Caspary, 2011).

Distributed leadership is a transition to the model which invites all stakeholders to the decision making process and sharing power instead of one leader authority (Hughes & Pickaral, 2013). Likewise, creating circumstances that provides teacher participation in decision making about change process leads to increase teachers’ readiness for change in educational settings (Kondakçı, Zayim, & Çalışkan, 2010). Especially, distributed leadership that helps to enhance knowledge sharing in school environment (Jäppinen & Maunonen-Eskelinen, 2012) has a significant role on the change process when it is considered that organizational change is ineluctable (Duignan & Bezzina, 2006). Thus, distributed leadership and knowledge sharing can be considered as determinants that improve effectiveness and process of educational change interventions positively in schools.

Based on the discussion, purpose of the study was to investigate the mediating role of knowledge sharing on the relationship between distributed leadership and readiness for change among teachers. The study answered the following research question. Accounting on the mediating role of knowledge sharing, what is the relationship between distributed leadership and readiness for change among teachers?

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