Distributed Leadership, Teacher Autonomy, and Power Relations Between Headteachers and Teachers Under Low-Stakes Accountability Conditions: An Ethnographic Account from Switzerland

Abstract

Distributed leadership is propagated internationally as an effective means to improve teaching and learning in schools. Increasingly it is acknowledged that practices of distributed leadership depend on their context and governing conditions. Based on ethnographic research, this article discusses how distributed leadership is put into practice within a “loose” governing regime with low-stakes accountability. The example is taken from Switzerland, where the strengthening of leadership is one of the core instruments of New Public Management (NPM) reforms, while high-stakes accountability instruments have not been implemented. The analysis discusses tensions that distributed leadership generates between headteachers and teachers in a primary school. It argues that a “loose” accountability regime produces an opaque field of power relations, in which the self-governing imperative of distributive leadership meshes with claims of traditional teacher autonomy.