Exploring distributed leadership from perceived organizational capacities and collaborative culture of schools in Hong Kong primary schools

This paper examines the results of an on-going current project led by Prof Philip Hallinger on distribution leadership in Hong Kong primary schools. The results obtained in the first wave of the data collected indicated that teachers were generally positive about organizational capacities of their schools in the sample. The composite mean scores of organizational capacities varied across schools, but the range was generally narrower than that for the student Math test scores and that for the composite mean scores on principal leadership practices. Thus, teachers seemed to have some consensus about the organizational capacities that their school had for organizational learning and change. Schools of high and low principal leadership differed in all organizational capacities, but most notably in Communication, Professional Learning, Alignment, Coherence and Structure, and Workload. Regarding the relationship between organizational capacities and collaborative culture, we found that strongly correlated organizational capacities and collaborative culture among key staff may be factors that lead to successful distributed leadership in schools. Among the organizational capacities and collaborative culture factors, there may be precedence of professionalism over collegiality. Strong leadership of the principal was strongly correlated with teachers’ commitment and cooperation. The commitment of teachers to school was most strongly correlated with both supports for students and internal alignment of work in schools. Factors affecting student outcomes in schools were more likely to rely on knowledge-based, student-oriented, highly-coordinated manpower.