The Leadership Group as a Means for Teacher Participation and Leadership Distribution

For decades, discussion around school development and leadership has emphasised various collaborative practices, active participation, and distribution of responsibilities. The sharing of responsibilities in the decision-making processes exists in many forms in Finnish education, and there are some forms of leadership distribution in most schools, despite the school size. One of the typical ways of sharing responsibilities is to form a leadership group. In our chapter, we examine what meanings are given to leadership groups as leadership structures in school communities, and through which discourses teachers’ participation in decision-making is constructed. The data comprise principals (N = 56), teacher-leaders (N = 125), and teachers (N = 130) responses to two open-ended questions in an electronic survey in 2019. In this study, teacher-leader refers to a teacher with experience of being a member of the leadership group, whereas teacher refers to a teacher with no leadership group work experience. A range/determination approach to discourse was employed to reach an understanding regarding the research problem. The discourses on the practice of the leadership group and teacher participation were formed around positioning the leadership group in the school context, and elements that functioned as enablers or hindrances to teacher participation in decision-making.