Paradigms: How Far Does Research in Distributed Leadership ‘Stretch’?

Abstract

Burrell and Morgan’s widely-cited ‘Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis’ is applied here to research on distributed leadership in education. Nearly all of the extant research is regulatory, not radical; and the evidence which it has generated falls broadly within the paradigm of interpretivism. Few studies have generated the ‘scientific’ instrumental knowledge which would place them within the paradigm of functionalism. Even fewer studies fit the paradigms of radical humanism and radical structuralism. In passing, Burrell and Morgan’s typology is compared to Ribbins and Gunter’s knowledge provinces and groups within school leadership studies.