Evaluating the impact of distributed culturally responsive leadership in a disadvantaged rural primary school in Ireland

This paper suggests that distributed leadership is a vital first step in making schools flexible enough to respond to new pressures. However, it is then argued that distributed leadership per se does not necessarily imply a commitment to a particular stance on issues of social justice, such as equality, but rather that this can only flow from leaders becoming culturally responsive to the diverse traditions and needs of the changing populations of their schools. We define this combination as ‘distributed culturally responsive leadership’. The second part of the paper attempts to illustrate this argument by closely examining the philosophy and actions of a particular principal who is regarded as an exemplar of good practice. The methodology used in the school case study is described and, finally, we provide a presentation and analysis of the data followed by a discussion of the research findings.