Education systems in a variety of jurisdictions across the globe have increasingly been characterised by the influence of neoliberal and New Public Management (NPM) agendas (Apple, 2006, 2013, 2014; Mac Ruairc, 2010), and Ireland is no exception (Ball, 2016; Sugrue, 2015). While acknowledging that, to a certain extent, elements underpinning these ideologies do have a place in education, the associated restricted drive for efficiency and effectiveness has induced profound negative effects for students, teachers and school leaders. These include marginalisation of wider social and ethical values, such as wellbeing, care and inclusion (Tett & Hamilton, 2019), “restructuring of professional identities in line with technicist job requirements” (Lynch, 2014, p. 6) whereby “teachers increasingly teach to the test” (Anderson & Cohen, 2015, p. 5) and erosion of educational leadership (Niesche & Thomson, 2017; Sugrue, 2011). The situation has been compounded arising from negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic for students, as evidenced in research (Devitt, et al., 2020; Dressen et al., 2020; EEF, 2020; Flynn et al., 2020). This undoubtedly calls for new leadership approaches at local, national and international levels of education systems. The promotion and adoption of distributed leadership, “the dominant leadership idea of the moment” (Shava & Tlou, 2018, p. 282), deemed a necessity in the Covid-19 educational landscape (Harris & Jones, 2020), provides one such point of departure. In connection, literature suggests that significant benefits can accrue from distributed leadership when it is actualised in certain ways (e.g.: Harris & DeFlaminis, 2016; Leithwood et al., 2020). Yet, despite its inclusion in policy frameworks across a variety of countries including the USA, Australia, New Zealand (Klar et al., 2016), England, Malta, Wales (Mifsud, 2017b) and Ireland (Murphy, 2019), research shows that it manifests itself in highly structured limited forms of delegation (Mifsud, 2016, 2017a, 2017b) and “may actually function as a mechanism of control” over school leadership (Dolan, 2020, p. 181). Thus, the central tenet of this research centres on explicating implications for Ministries regarding employing an approach in respect of distributed leadership that would enable, rather than constrain, school leaders and teachers in exercising their “professional responsibility” to the common good (Solbrekke & Sugrue, 2011).

In connection, the theoretical framework unpacks the “chameleon-like quality” of distributed leadership, whereby it can accommodate a diverse range of interpretations and situations (Harris, 2007). More specifically, premised upon works of Gronn (2002a, 2002b) and Spillane (2005, 2006), the forefathers of distributed leadership in education, it explicates Hargreaves and Fink’s continuum of forms of distributed leadership (Hargreaves & Fink, 2006) with respect to autonomy, distinguishing in particular between frequently conflated notions of delegated leadership and forms of distributed leadership characterised by increased autonomy and reciprocal influence, while also elaborating on effects of these. This is complemented by consideration of Foucault’s concepts of discourse, comprising “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 1972, p. 54), and governmentality, that is “conducting the conduct of others” (Foucault, 2010, p. 4), as lenses for subsequently interrogating the nature and effects of extant ‘discourses of distributed leadership’ at national levels. Moreover, these concepts provide a basis for illuminating ways Ministries could contribute to “the formation of a “reverse” discourse” (Foucault, 1981), as appropriate, that would better enable school leaders and teachers to fulfil their professional responsibilities in the contemporary era of neoliberal and NPM influences in education.

This research centres on establishing implications for Ministries regarding supporting school leaders and teachers in actualising particular forms of distributed leadership practice, over others. Accordingly, taking Ireland as a case in point, the Whole School Evaluation (Ministry Inspection) reports of a sample of post-primary schools (n=12) were analysed to establish how discourses (Foucault, 1972) emanating from the Ministry pertaining to distributed leadership were manifest at the level of the school. This was complemented with reference to associated national policy documents on the leadership of post-primary schools. Taken together, this documentary evidence was published by the Ministry and, given its status within the education system in Ireland, its perspective is imbued with power and can exercise sway in shaping the practices of school leaders. Maximum variation sampling (Palys, 2008) was employed to ensure the sample of schools comprised each of the four types of post-primary schools in the jurisdiction, while also reflecting their distribution nationally. This culminated in a sample of six Voluntary Secondary Schools, six Vocational Schools and Colleges, one Community School and one Comprehensive School. Moreover, the documentary evidence included the inspection reports of each school published between 2007 and 2014 and from 2017 to 2021, thereby providing insight in both continuity and change in respect of Ministry policy and practice regarding school leadership over time. The documentary evidence was imported into the MAXQDA qualitative data analysis software programme. Strauss’s (1987) approach to coding data embracing three processes, open coding up, axial coding and selective coding, was utilised. The reflexivity of the researchers was fundamental to the data analysis process and enabled them to mitigate the major concern of “confirmation bias; of seeing in the case only whatever is brought to it in the prior theory” (Evers & Wu, 2006, p. 522). Data analysis also centred on the application of discourse analysis (Foucault, 1972) emanating from the work of Foucault. This was premised upon detailed examination of the relationships between statements and other social practices and how in the context of the exercise of power relations these elements function in constructing social reality (Foucault, 1972). This provided insight into how the Ministry was establishing a ‘truth’ of “good” (Foucault, 1982) senior school leaders and school leadership, while also illuminating possibilities for envisioning the establishment of alternative truths centring on educational leadership, and indeed ones that could result in alternative leadership practices in and effects of education.

Findings support and extend extant research (Dolan, 2020; Mifsud, 2016, 2017b) in providing insight into continuities and disparities between the incorporation of distributed leadership into national policy frameworks and its actualisation at schools. They demonstrate that while the Ministry was found to advocate for school leadership under the ‘umbrella’ term “distributed leadership”, this belies its advancement of “focused leadership” (Leithwood et al., 2009) in foregrounding leadership practice as a function of senior school leaders, while significantly attenuating the roles of other stakeholders. In so doing, emphasis was placed on enactment of “delegated leadership” (Hargreaves & Fink, 2006) in which senior school leaders delegate specific tasks and responsibilities to the formal middle leadership and management team. Notably, the associated reliance on formal positions is premised upon “Transactional leadership” (Bass, 1985; Burns, 1978). Moreover, the findings confirm the Ministry was specifying that the ends of school leadership centred on principals ensuring their schools were in compliance with its “policy” (Ball, 2006) priorities. As such, principals were being ‘constructed’ as ‘agents of policy compliance’, as opposed to agents of educational change reflected in leadership literature. Furthermore, it emerged that in recent years the Ministry has engaged in an ominous ‘discursive twist’ in conflating management activities of teachers and involvement of students in activities relating to their experience of a holistic education with leadership practice. This is tantamount to fabricating an image of leadership density across schools while enabling management to masquerade as leadership. Taken together, the associated discursive practices are likely to perpetuate, rather than mitigate, existing shortcomings in and of education. The findings have import for system leadership internationally vis-à-vis enabling school leaders and teachers to engage in “distributed leadership” (Gronn, 2002b; Spillane, 2006) to exercise their professionally responsibility to the ‘common good’ in jurisdictions characterised by neoliberal and NPM influences.

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