Empowering school leaders and local school communities through distributed leadership in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

A series of crisis events over the last two years, including COVID-19, has challenged school leaders and highlighted the need to implement effective policy and strategies to sustain their school communities.

This research project uses a mixed-methods approach designed to examine, develop and empower school leadership capacity in two ACT Directorate schools—Narrabundah College and Mount Stromlo High School. The approach taken involves a strong collaboration between school leaders from the two schools and staff from the ACT Education Directorate, in order to design and implement the research project. Distributed leadership is the theoretical model which will inform the research focus.

This project involves a mixed-methods study. The qualitative data will be collected by using focus groups and semi-structured interviews. The quantitative data will be drawn from an electronic survey.

The project will have significant impact by leveraging the research findings to benefit the two participating schools and the broader school community in the ACT. This will be achieved through the provision of evidence and strategies for building school leadership capacity, especially through Professional Learning Community (PLC) groups. The research project will result in a number of outputs, including a professional report, two academic journal papers, professional learning presentations, and a conference presentation.