Distributed leadership and learning achievement: The practices of principals in Eritrea's TVET schools

Daniel Jambo Ghirmai
Ministry of Education, Eritrea
Petros Woldu Fessehatsion
Asmara College of Education, Eritrea

This study explores the link between principals' leadership practices and learning achievements from a distributed leadership perspective, using semi-structured interviews with TVET supervisors, middle leaders, and teachers. A detailed discussion on how school principals actually practised distributed leadership (DL) and how these practices affected learning achievement is reported. Moreover, a comparative analysis was made between schools with high and low learning achievers. We found that the main features of distributed leadership practices implemented by the principals were inspiration of a shared vision, enabling followers to lead, motivating followers, participative decision-making, capacity building, and authority sharing. Besides, the study discovered that schools with high learning achievement tended to have a better attainment of distributed leadership practices. This study contributes to understanding the nature of distributed leadership and its influence.
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Authors: Dr Daniel Jambo Ghirmai is a researcher in the Department of Research and Human Resource Development, Ministry of Education, Eritrea. He specialised in educational economy and management at the School of Education, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. His research interest is school leadership and administration. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5890-5572 Email: danijam2@yahoo.com Dr Petros Woldu Fessehatsion is an Assistant Professor at the Asmara College of Education, Eritrea. He specialised in educational economics and management at the School of Education, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. He has served as Head of the Department of Educational Administration in Eritrea Institute of Technology, Eritrea, since 2015. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4227-6737 Email: wp4022@gmail.com Please cite as: Ghirmai, D. J. & Fessehatsion, P. W. (2023). Distributed leadership and learning achievement: The practices of principals in Eritrea's TVET schools. Issues in Educational Research, 33(2), 570-590. http://www.iier.org.au/iier33/ghirmai.pdf