Why is it difficult to foster Distributed Leadership in Chinese education?

Presented by Professor Leslie N.K. Lo, Beijing Normal University

As a concept that has been in circulation for almost twenty years, Distributed Leadership appeals to educators who advocate a more equitable distribution of power and opportunities among stakeholders in school settings. In the main, the concerns of Distributed Leadership have been centred on the empowerment of teachers for enhanced pedagogical practice, a key advancement toward achieving the broader objective of school improvement.

The study of Distributed Leadership in education is now an international endeavour. The growth of interest in governance issues in education, as well as the continuing quest to raise the quality of schooling, have led educators to take a closer look at the developmental potential of Distributed Leadership. For a concept that is rooted in the Western democratic traditions, however, Distributed Leadership has remained an aspiration rather than a reality in the more hierarchically structured systems of education, such as that of Mainland China.

In this seminar, Chinese political and sociological theories will be used to illuminate the forces that sustain the administrative structure of Chinese education. With examples drawn from research findings and participatory observations in Mainland China, it is argued that while there are indications that certain state-imposed changes have afforded opportunities for Distributed Leadership to play a more significant role in educational development, existing structural constraints will undermine its authentic adaptation in the management of schools and higher institutions.

Leslie N.K. Lo is a professor and senior research fellow at the Center for Teacher Education Research at Beijing Normal University in the People’s Republic of China. Since 2008, he has served as a specially appointment professor at the University of Nottingham. In the last decade, his research interests have been focused on teacher studies and school improvement. He has served on the editorial boards of many educational journals, including Comparative Education Review, Teachers College Record, Teachers and Teaching, and Jiaoyu Yanjiu. He founded the Quality School Improvement Project in 2004, the largest university-school collaborative project of its kind in Chinese societies, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he was the founding dean of education and the director of its Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research