Understanding Democratic and Distributed Leadership: How Democratic Leadership of School Principals Related to Distributed Leadership in Schools?

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The purpose of this study was to determine democratic and distributed leadership perceptions of teachers in their school and to explore the relationship between democratic and distributed leadership. This study intended to enrich and expand scholarly reflections on democratic and distributed leadership as regards considering the association between them, thereby deepening our understanding of leadership. Correlational research design was used as a research design in the study. Study population included teachers working at high schools in Eskisehir district in Turkey. Stratified sampling was used as a sampling method. The study sample included 462 teachers working at high schools. Descriptive statistics for democratic leadership suggested that respondent teachers perceive democratic leadership in their school in moderate level. Support and supervision were perceived as distributed leadership functions of the leadership team in schools. Regarding the leadership team characteristics, it was concluded that leadership teams are moderately perceived as coherent. The study results also revealed that there is a strong relationship between democratic leadership, distribution of leadership functions and coherent leadership team characteristics.