Examining Schools’ Distributed Instructional Leadership Capacity: Comparison of Elementary and Secondary Schools

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to elucidate the fundamental differences between elementary and secondary schools in distributed instructional leadership practices by comparing results determined by the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) survey. The data set used in this study was derived from the 2011-1013 CALL survey: a 360-degree, on-line, formative assessment and feedback system for K-12 school leadership. A total number of 4311 voluntary teachers, school administrators and other school staff participated in this study. The analysis included three integral steps. First, descriptive statistics were carried out to explain how distributed instructional leadership was rated on the CALL survey. Second, an independent-samples t-test was employed to compare the mean scores of elementary and secondary schools on the CALL survey. Third, ratios of elementary and secondary school staff in the top scoring 20 percentile and bottom scoring 20 percentile were compared to each other. The results suggested that all five distributed-instructional leadership domains which were addressed in the CALL had very close mean scores, indicating that none of the broad leadership areas was being ignored and elementary and secondary schools differ only in terms of the leadership practices related to monitoring teaching and learning.