Distributing leadership to establish developing and learning school organisations in the Swedish context

Leadership is considered to be significant for creating a developing and learning school organisation. In Sweden, distributed leadership and teacher teams are an ‘institutionalised practice’; despite this, sustainable school improvement is difficult to achieve. This article presents findings from a case study of three schools that examined the influence of distributed leadership when establishing developing and learning school organisations in the Swedish context. The study investigated the differences and similarities in the organisations and highlighted the emerging tensions. The article argues that support from the school’s principal is vital and that teacher leaders must focus on development instead of management, learning instead of quick solutions and be challenging instead of confirming. But above all, for a developing and learning school organisation to be created collaboration needs to be expanded and a professional attitude firmly adopted. This article provides in-depth descriptions of how leadership is distributed in ‘natural school contexts’ and its impact on school improvement outside the Anglo-Saxon school setting.