Transcending tensions of the school system with distributed leadership: lessons from a Change Laboratory intervention

As an alternative to the traditional focus on individual leaders, educational researchers have increasingly turned to investigate collective and distributed forms of school leadership (e.g. Brown et al., 2020; Hallinger and Kovacevic, 2021; Mifsud, 2024; Torres, 2019; Gronn, 2000). The focus in school leadership research has thus shifted from individual principals guiding teachers and teachers instructing student groups to the interaction of multiple actors and patterns or varieties of school leadership practices (Spillane et al., 2001). Distribution of leadership across the school organization is considered a key factor for, e.g. multi-agency working (Hartley, 2009) and innovation mobilization in educational settings (Brown et al., 2020). It can also be pivotal for envisioning and developing education for the future (Aas, 2015; Douglas, 2012; Hartley, 2009; Ho and Ng, 2017; Kajamaa and Tuunainen, 2022). Despite the growing number of studies on distributed leadership in educational research, empirical explorations on the mechanisms of developing practices of distributed leadership are insufficient. While a vast literature describes various distributed leadership practices in educational settings, it remains understudied how educators analyze and aim to transcend the tensions of schoolwork (see Duif et al., 2013). Even less explored is the educators’ own conceptual reflection on distributed leadership as well as the collective creation of representations and models to support the development of distributed leadership practices. Thus, to better understand how distributed leadership emerges and evolves as part of concrete educational change processes, new approaches, such as dialectical and interventionist, are called for (Harris et al., 2022).

Taking a dialectical approach (Il’enkov, 1982), we trace the collective, teacher-led conceptual exploration of distributed leadership to transcend tensions underlying schoolwork and enrichment of the concept into new school practice with the help of a new activity model created in the process. Transformation of the school’s leadership practice was jointly achieved by a group of teachers and a principal in a developmental workplace intervention called Change Laboratory (CL) (Virkkunen and Newnham, 2013), which is based on the dialectical tradition of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) and the theory of expansive learning as its application to the study of work and organizations (Engeström, 2015). We view organizations as networks of interconnected activity systems that share a general object of activity (e.g. Foot, 2002). From this perspective, a school community, for example, is seen as a network of teachers, principals and various school staff (such as school psychologists), whose activities are oriented towards their specific objects, but at the same time they function together, negotiating and working on a broader local object (Engeström, 2001). In our definition, leadership is embedded in, and inseparable from, the historical formation and present functioning of this network of collective activities (see also de Jong et al., 2023) and is therefore inherently distributed. This paper explores the mechanisms of how a concept and practice of distributed leadership dialectically emerge and develop in a CL intervention in a Finnish teacher training school.

Our research question is: How does a conception of distributed leadership emerge and develop during a CL in a teacher training school?

This study will (1) argue for distributed leadership to be understood as a socially constructed discursive practice, directed toward forming a meaningful purpose for the future; (2) describe the emergence and development of distributed leadership as a tension-laden, dialectical process involving the formation of collective resolutions across professional groups and (3) highlight the significance of co-created representations or models for converting and operationalizing complex discursive leadership processes into a concrete educational practice.

Distributed leadership has become an increasingly common topic in educational research, especially concerning schools (Hallinger and Kovacevic, 2021; Harris et al., 2022; de Jong et al., 2023). However, the notion, which covers a range of “post-heroic” perspectives steering away from individual leadership behaviors remains elusive with different meanings depending on the context (Youngs, 2020) and theoretical underpinnings. The key literature concerning the kind of leadership, which is not limited to formally appointed leaders but is distributed across multiple actors, may be divided into three partly overlapping approaches based on how the notion of leadership is conceptualized: (1) as actions of people doing leadership work, (2) as skills and personal attributes of people doing leadership work, and (3) as practice, which is inevitably found in work communities and manifests in the interactions of its members. Moreover, a fourth, still emerging literature views leadership as a collaborative, object-oriented undertaking.

The first, action-oriented approach is concerned with what kind of leadership work is being done in an organization and who is doing it. The central question is thus how to substantively define “leadership work” or “leadership action”. For example, Spillane et al. (2001) see the essential functions of instructional leadership work as “constructing and selling an instructional vision; building norms of trust, collaboration, and academic press; supporting teacher development; and monitoring instruction and innovation” (p. 24). On the other hand, Hairon and Goh (2015) mention leadership actions of “influencing others, making decisions and communicating the vision” (p. 700). In the action-oriented approach, distributed leadership, for example in school organizations, is chiefly conceptualized as subordinates performing these leadership actions. The process of distribution, however, is typically seen as a responsibility of formal leaders through empowerment of subordinates and building their various leadership capacities, such as influence or authority (e.g. Galdames-Calderón, 2023).

The second, skill- and attribute-oriented approach is especially interested in these capacities and personal leadership attributes of various actors in different roles and on different organizational levels. The central question is thus how to define leadership skill, attribute or capacity. Building on Hairon and Goh (2015), Brown et al. (2020) define leadership as responsibility, intelligence, sense-making and influence, either as a personal or group property. On the other hand, an oft-cited paper by Harris and DeFlaminis (2016) see leadership simply as a combination of individual responsibility and authority, which becomes distributed when dispersed across the organization.

These two individualistic approaches, based on classifications and categorizations of specific tasks, skills and attributes, make a clear distinction between the roles of formal leaders and subordinates. Developing distributed leadership is seen as the duty of formal leaders and as a process in which subordinates gain the (culturally pre-existing) skills deemed necessary to become informal leaders and start to perform what in the given context are seen as leadership tasks. Distributed leadership is seen as a horizontal structure of influence and responsibility, distinguished from a vertical, top-down leadership process, but still dependent on it (Mifsud, 2024; Youngs, 2020).

The third, collective and interaction-oriented approach views leadership as practice, mainly based on Spillane et al.'s (2001) definition of distributed leadership as interactions between leaders and followers in a situation, which is roughly understood as the sociocultural context (Spillane et al., 2004). The oft-quoted definition of leadership being “a distributed practice, stretched over the school’s social and situational contexts” (Spillane et al., 2001, p. 23, original italics) has been widely used for describing the distribution of leadership in many organizations. However, Spillane et al.'s model of leadership practice (Spillane et al., 2004, p. 11), with rigid, dyadic leader-follower roles, has only limited potential to portray leadership as embedded in historically evolving collective activity. Instead, it relegates to a “role-driven influence relationship” (Raelin, 2016, p. 142) concerning only a set of actions and interactions in a statically conceived context.

To transcend these conceptual challenges of defining distributed leadership, some organizational scholars have turned to dialectics, which they employ to reconceptualize distributed leadership as a form of collaboration inherent in object-oriented activity (Hirsh and Segolsson, 2019; Kajamaa and Tuunainen, 2022). Gronn (2000) already argued for a conception where the “potential for leadership is present in the flow of activities” (p.331), deviating from the action-oriented approach and without relying on leader-follower roles. While Gronn (2000) aligned with the skill- and attribute-oriented approach by identifying leadership through individual attributes such as responsibility (p. 332) or influence (p. 334), his systemic view placed leadership in the context of an activity system (Engeström, 2015), specifically its division of labor. In a similar vein, Hauge et al.'s (2014) view distributed school leadership as a collective endeavor of the organization with two central aspects: developing interfaces of leadership between different organizational levels and developing sustainable teacher leadership practices. Hauge et al. conducted a developmental project with the principal and the school development leader team to search for new purposeful tools and leadership designs for the school, analyzing leadership practices with the help of the activity system model (Engeström, 2015). Despite the predetermined goals of the project, they took the needs of the local work community as a starting point and did eventually arrive at various new tools and shared leadership practices for school improvement. In a more recent study, Torres (2019) also takes a systemic, collective and processual approach on distributed leadership, looking at how various stakeholders within an organization enact leadership. While Torres argues that distributed leadership requires shared goals and shared context, she does not consider the tensions and conflicts inherent in the development of concrete activities.

Adding to the stream of dialectical studies paying special attention to deep-seated organizational tensions (Aas, 2015; Ho and Ng, 2017; Tay and Lim, 2016) that provide mechanisms for organizational change (Hirsh and Segolsson, 2019; Kajamaa and Tuunainen, 2022), our study focuses on exploring collective learning that contributes to the emergence and development of distributed leadership. We investigate the emergence and development of distributed leadership through the dialectical lens of CHAT and the theory of expansive learning (Engeström, 2015) by employing the interventionist CL method (Virkkunen and Newnham, 2013).

Research within CHAT views practices as collective, historically formed and constantly evolving activity systems, which are object-oriented and mediated by a rich array of instruments (tools and concepts). An activity system consists of the elements of subject, object and community as well as their mediating relationships, i.e. instruments, rules and division of labor (for details, see Engeström, 2015, p. 63). The object of an activity gives it its meaning, sense and purpose (Foot, 2002) and distinguishes one activity from another (Leont’ev, 1978). In schools, for example, the object of teachers’ instructional activity is generally pupils and their learning. However, the object of activity is not fixed and stable, but historically evolving and a topic of negotiation and contestation. Therefore, CHAT regards the relationship and boundary between school leadership and instruction fluid and context-specific. Moreover, the general object of activity of the national educational systems, to which local activities relate to through their specific objects, is a matter of historical political debate embodying the contradictions (see Il’enkov, 1982) of our economic and political system, ultimately concerning the societal purpose of schooling.

In dialectical thinking, the development of an activity is driven by contradictions, which cannot be accessed directly by empirical means but can be identified as tensions within or between activity systems (Kajamaa and Tuunainen, 2022). Tensions here refer to conflicting motives and interests of actors or activities. From the CHAT perspective, teachers’ work is inherently contradictory in the sense that it is autonomous but at the same time part of the total societal activity of school education. This dual nature is the essential source of tensions in school instruction (see Engeström, 2015, p. 66), in which the societal general object is pursued locally by individual teachers or teacher teams. An example pertaining to the general object of schoolwork is to what extent should learning outcomes be influenced by economic growth or classical education in the Bildung tradition. A local example, emerging from our data, is the tension between teacher autonomy and instructional collaboration. These historically accumulated tensions and contradictions are crucial for understanding the developmental potential of activities (Engeström, 2015).

By working to resolve its tensions and problems, an activity system is constantly re-organizing itself around the persistent, historical contradictions. When practitioners collectively face their problems, they can gain agency and act to transform their social circumstances. This kind of collective learning process, called “expansive learning” (Engeström, 2015), can be conceptualized as an expansion of the object of an activity system and redefinition of its mediating relationships (remediation), known as ascending from the abstract to the concrete (Engeström et al., 2012; Il’enkov, 1982). It is a qualitative transformation of an activity and thus fundamentally different from learning processes of individual actors, such as teachers, gaining new skills or competencies.

Expanding on Gronn’s (2000) ideas of leadership as inherently present in a flow of collective activities, beyond role-based task enactment or capacity development, we build our definition of distributed leadership on the concept of activity (Engeström, 2015; Leont’ev, 1978). In other words, we examine leadership as embedded in and as an indivisible part of purposefully organized human practices. Thus defined, leadership is always and inherently distributed and processual, as it takes place within collective interactions and negotiations, comprising multiple actors, both formally appointed leaders and experts without a managerial status.

In a similar vein with Aas (2015), Ho and Ng (2017) and Kajamaa and Tuunainen (2022), we extend our examination of distributed leadership into the cultural and historical formation of local manifestations of leadership and the systemic contradictions related to their historical development. This starting point also allows us to trace the developmental logic of leadership (Engeström et al., 2012) and the envisioning of its potential future manifestations in transformative developmental efforts (Sannino et al., 2016). Through a dialectical lens, the concept of leadership therefore seems concerned with how activity systems negotiate what their objects are and how they orient themselves towards these objects. More broadly, leadership is about re-organizing activities and the interactional and mediational relationships involved in them, around historical contradictions. Such transitional, tension-laden and even critical moments for organizations – when “something needs to be done” – are fruitful for researching the emergence of distributed leadership, which we see chiefly as associated with problems, conflicts and tensions. We next introduce the CL intervention method, which offers a tool to study these kinds of complex change processes involving tensions and negotiations around the purpose and arrangement of concrete practices.

CL is a research-assisted workplace intervention method, based on activity theory (CHAT), for promoting practice renewal (Virkkunen and Newnham, 2013). The focus is, on one hand, intervening in an activity to change it by employing the key principles of dialectical development (see above) and, on the other hand, studying the collective expansive learning process involved in the change. Six to twelve CL sessions are typically held, offering practitioners a space for reflection, co-creation and experimentation, followed by follow-up sessions for studying the concrete implementation of the intervention’s outcomes. Researcher-facilitators are not to have an agenda or predetermined goals for the intervention other than promoting the process of expansive learning, which consists of specific learning actions (Engeström, 2015) taken by the practitioners (see Figure 1). In other words, both the problems and their solutions are defined by the practitioners, which makes CL essentially a tool for facilitating practitioners’ own conceptual research of their practice.

On this basis, expansive learning achieved in a CL is distinguished from other kinds of learning by being primarily a process that “transforms and creates culture” and “leads to the formation of theoretical knowledge and concepts” (Engeström and Sannino, 2010, p. 2; also, Davydov, 1990). In other words, a CL is not concerned with individual acquisition of pre-existing knowledge or tools for predetermined purposes but a process of collective conceptual-practical exploration, which starts from the experienced tensions and problems of a specific local activity. In the process of ascending from the abstract to the concrete, with the help of theoretical models and other conceptual tools provided by the facilitators, the essence of the object of an emerging new mode of activity may be gradually grasped “by tracing and reproducing theoretically the logic of its development, of its historical formation through the emergence and resolution of its inner contradictions” (Engeström et al., 2012, p. 288). An initial abstraction that captures this tension-laden relationship, represented by a so-called germ cell, can then be elaborated and enriched into new modes of activity, which allow for practical experimentation to transcend the tensions.

Therefore, in dialectical tradition, the “messy” real world of practices that first appears to any observer, be they practitioners or researchers, in a “particular, fragmentary manifestation” (Il’enkov, 1982, p. 57), is only the starting point of forming and defining a concept. If definitions are based solely on this “diffuse sensory concreteness” (Davydov, 1990), research ends up producing an endless variety of “general notions” of phenomena but not a concept (Engeström, 2024). This fragmentary nature is visible in much of the recent literature attempting empirically to formulate a definition of distributed leadership based on categorizations and classifications of actions or attributes pertaining to what is perceived and thought of (by them or their research subjects) as distributed leadership.

What sets the CL apart as a research method is that it allows practitioners (not researchers) to construct a theoretical abstraction of a phenomenon by analyzing their own activity. As the CL progresses and expansive learning takes place, the germ cell abstraction has the potential to develop into a functional concept, “a cognitive entity that […] contributes to the way participants organize their understanding of what they are doing” (Greeno, 2012, p. 311), as it is enriched and experimented with in renewed concrete practices. Such a concept carries within itself the contradictions inherent in the activity that has produced it. Hence, practical applications of the concept involve a heightened sensitivity to the contradictions and the problems they create in practice. A dialectically emerging local functional concept that expands our understanding of a deeply practice-embedded and context-heavy phenomenon, such as distributed leadership, can therefore be more consequential for governance and policy than notions of the same phenomenon simply based on empirical classification (see Engeström, 2024; Il’enkov, 1982).

The Finnish educational system is historically grounded on the German tradition of Bildung, which deals with the questions of what it means to be human and what is needed to become one. In a school context, the counterpart of these questions is the tradition of Didaktik, the theory and practice of teaching, also influential in Finnish educational thinking and policy throughout history (Schaffar and Wolff, 2024). This background posits teachers in the Finnish educational system as relatively autonomous professionals who are trained to interpret the curriculum and use it as a basis of their individual instruction, rather than merely executing the predetermined curricular outcomes, and they also take evaluative control of students’ learning processes and outcomes (Sahlberg, 2011; Simola, 2015).

The Finnish National Core Curriculum (NCC) is a guiding framework on which municipal and school-specific curricula are based. Reformed roughly every ten years, the NCC exhibits a varying degree of centralization and guidance to schools and teachers in terms of learning outcomes and instructional practices – generally the level of leeway left to teachers, forming the basis of their professional autonomy. The most recent NCC of 2016, designed during the peak of Finland’s former Programme for International Student Assessment success, necessitates enhanced collaboration, teamwork and shared forms of practice with an overall aim of promoting student-centered and integrated learning. The curriculum reform of 2016 thus vividly reflects the tension within the entire educational system between centralized control and local autonomy.

As a crucial difference from preceding NCCs, the 2016 NCC adopted OECD’s 21st-century skills framework as a significant part of the curriculum. So-called transversal competencies, complementing and crossing traditional school subjects, were named as key learning outcomes, which were to be achieved through multidisciplinary learning modules (for a critical examination, see Schaffar and Wolff, 2024), requiring teacher collaboration in design, teaching and evaluation. Teacher autonomy, having in the preceding decades oscillated between individuality and curricular control, now became viewed through a new dimension, a novel contradictory dualism between individuality and collectivity. The NCC, being the main tool for imposing a national vision of education onto schools and teachers, thus plays a key role in aggravating problems arising from this contradiction.

It is this tension that drew the interest of our research group to conduct a CL intervention at the teacher training school, which is considered a flagship educational institution with highly competent, research-oriented teachers. Acting as a pilot school for the curriculum reform, it was subjected to especially demanding transformational needs and pressures. In April and May 2015, our research team conducted a CL intervention in the school’s primary school section. Six CL sessions were conducted weekly with twelve voluntary class teachers and the principal. Video recordings of these sessions, each about 1.5 h long and comprising a total of 4,594 speaking turns when transcribed, serve as our data.

In our discursive analysis of the CL data, we first watched through the video corpus as a whole and then focused on selected events associated with distributed leadership. In addition to speech, we analyzed the video recordings for material, spatial and embodied aspects of interaction involving external stimuli, such as drawings and other mediating artifacts provided in the CL space as well as gestures and facial expressions.

We approached the emergence and development of the concept of distributed leadership in the CL by focusing our analysis on the events in the CL sessions in which the participants took expansive learning actions (see Figure 1) oriented to school leadership. In other words, we coded the participants’ explicit initiatives to (1) question, criticize or reject current school leadership; (2) analyze the origins and evolution or present systemic relations pertaining to leadership in the school; (3) model new modes of leadership, which offer potential solutions to the school’s tensions and problems, in a tangible medium; (4) examine and experiment with the leadership model to grasp its potentials and (5) ideate the model’s practical applications (implementation). For the sake of focus and scope, this paper will not consider the sixth and seventh learning actions.

As the participating teachers started critically discussing their current practices, the main target of criticism quickly became school leadership. The notion of distributing or sharing school leadership became a key discussion topic during the second session after the principal, who was not present in the first session, emphatically denounced “stronger” (meaning more centralized and authoritative) leadership as a viable solution to the school’s problems. This theme was then developed throughout the intervention’s remaining sessions, ending up with the teachers drawing a new teamwork and leadership model for the school, with a mandate from the principal. We shall next navigate the expansive learning process, focusing in each subsection on instances of specific expansive learning actions oriented to school leadership.

At the very beginning of the first CL session, teachers began articulating and naming the various problems they were facing in their daily work. These included, most notably, constant rush, feeling of a lack of commitment, lack of a guiding vision and lack of support from the work community. An overarching reason for the problems was seen to be the inconsistency and weakness of school leadership. This was seen as a reason for the general lack of focus in school development, including the development of instructional practices. The leader’s duty was seen as knowing the varying interests of the employees and guiding them to the appropriate developmental tasks: “The [teachers’ varying needs and interests] is why we need a strong pedagogical leader. […] A property of a good leader, in my view, is that they learn to know new employees’ [interests and needs] […] then they guide you, like, ‘are you interested in this type of thing’. […] We are lacking that” (Teacher, 1st session, speaking turn 318). The lack of unified focus and communication between individual interests were also seen as a problem for the assimilation of new employees into the school community. This had resulted in the formation of small, inward-turned professional cliques.

Another teacher saw the “wise leader” as responsible for organizing the school’s division of labor, which in the teacher training school is critical due to its several duties beyond providing basic education: “[…] about those duties of ours – instruction, supervision, research and development, and continuing education […] everybody cannot do everything […] of course someone can be a superhuman who can […] but the point is again that the wise leader oversees what people should do, like okay […] ‘you have done a PhD’ and so on […]” (Teacher, 1st session, 343–346).

In summary, it was apparent in the way the organizational need state was formulated that leadership issues concerned several aspects of the school’s activity. For example, the current leadership was criticized for problems associated with focus (object of activity), the rules and practices based on which various developmental duties were taken up by teachers (rules) and the specific distribution of tasks for individuals (division of labor).

A gradually deepening analysis of the school’s leadership was evident in how the teachers and the principal (who participated in the second and third sessions) identified dilemmas and other paralyzing situations for which there seemed to be no straightforward solutions. For example, the autonomous teachers found it difficult to bear responsibility for and develop the entire work community: “When nothing ever changes […] you turn inward […] you [only] want to develop your own work” (Teacher, 1st session, 156). Furthermore, committing to shared goals was experienced as difficult due to a lack of a unified vision: “Somebody should make the decision that […] this or these are the goals that we pursue […] then I would know what part my contribution is playing in this shared thing” (Teacher, 1st session, 217). On the other hand, “stronger” principal-driven leadership, while appearing to some teachers as an easy remedy, was realized to be only a partial solution, mainly because of the dispersion of the teachers’ instructional and developmental interests. The result was a paradoxical, paralyzing dilemma of teachers wanting to commit to shared goals of the work community but being unable to do so: “… you want to [commit], but you cannot […] the instructional leadership is one thing, but there’s also responsibility for the work community […] that’s a concept not so well defined here.” (Teacher, 1st session, 448).

At the beginning of the second session, it was the principal who questioned the very idea of individual-driven “strong” leadership: “[…] what does it mean in practice? And is it a positive thing that ‘strong’?” (Principal, 2nd session, 660). He saw leadership as multifaceted and taking on different meanings when examined in practice. Moreover, rather than a “specific model of practice”, leadership was something that “is created here in our processes” (Principal, 2nd session, 660) of the school, in other words, context-dependent and escaping universal classifications. In response, a teacher identified curriculum as a core element of instructional leadership, as it sets the framework and boundaries within which even autonomous teachers must operate. “So, one key area of instructional leadership is that we adhere to the curriculum and work along it in pedagogically the most sensible way […] what’s best for the pupils” (Teacher, 2nd session, 668). However, due to the multiplicity of tasks and the multifaceted expertise of teachers, the school would develop more efficiently if “a pair or a team would focus on that instructional leadership” (Teacher, 2nd session, 668), this being the first time that a distributed approach to leadership was mentioned during the CL.

With the NCC brought into the conversation as a mediator of all school activity, a teacher connected it to the discussion about the tension between personal and collective interests and the related leadership needs: “[…] with all these changes taking place, what we need is some kind of shared instructional leadership in the direction of the curriculum” (Teacher, 2nd session, 672). A concrete example of what this could be was given by another teacher: “[…] are we then focusing on developing evaluation on all levels […] or learning environments and work practices […] or multidisciplinary study modules […] you can’t do everything full-on” (Teacher, 2nd session, 784). The curriculum reform, with new demands for the school community, appeared to challenge both the principle of teacher autonomy and conventional conceptions of leadership.

In the third session, teacher collaboration and teamwork were suggested by the principal as a way of enacting distributed leadership in practice: “[…] it is not really forbidden, and people already collaborate anyway […]” (Principal, 3rd session, 1,420). Teamwork, with a degree of autonomy for planning and decision-making, was also seen by others as potentially beneficial for this school with so many tasks and overlapping work currently being done separately: “[…] we should harness that synergy benefit of what others do […] the more you share in teams, the easier it becomes” (Teacher, 3rd session, 1,422–1,424). However, the dilemma of fitting differing individual interests together was still present: “[…] the team members must then subscribe to certain basic premises […] forced collaboration will end up as nothing” (Teacher, 3rd session, 1,667). Well-functioning teams, with decision-making power and a clear agenda, were thus emerging as a crucial aspect of distributed leadership, with an unresolvable tension between individual and collective interests embedded in the emerging concept.

During the fourth session, a notion of an “instructional steering group” as a potential new organizational leadership structure emerged in the discussions, especially in relation to the administrative push for unification of education: “If we are a unified K9 school, it’s quite odd that we don’t have a steering group with representation from the primary and secondary levels. That would be significant for that instructional leadership” (Teacher, 4th session, 2,130). The current corresponding organizational body, a planning group comprised of principals, vice principals and union representatives, had long historical roots and had mainly an administrative function. At this point, the need for a new body solely focused on instructional leadership was recognized. In the fifth session, the teachers were already planning a new mode of action in which teachers would take part in the steering group, responsible for initiating the instructional practice development taking place in the teacher teams.

The sixth and final CL session began with the researcher-facilitators prompting the participants (only teachers were present) to draw the ideas created so far on paper, as the third expansive learning action of “modeling” involves producing a tangible model. This session was spent jointly drawing four preliminary versions and a final fifth version of a model. While drawing, the teachers adopted each preliminary model version as an artifact mediating the modeling process. For example, rejection of the first version as too traditional and hierarchical sparked a vivid dialog involving all participating teachers, rich in metaphors for distributed leadership: “ring” as a general shape instead of top-down hierarchy, “dartboard” (circular structure opening outwards from the center), “heliocentricity” (circulation around a central object) and “donut” (rather than a line, a disc-shaped layer inhabited by the teams). Leadership and teamwork were now conceptualized as a constellation of metaphorical abstractions, with each metaphor also manifested in a tangible visual format in the consecutive model versions.

At this point, a researcher-facilitator offered yet another metaphor, which the group quickly embraced as a starting point of a fifth, and eventually final, model version: “Is that like a pedagogical compass then? So, it’s, like, dynamic and not a model like this [gesturing up-down movement], but moves like this [gesturing a rotating movement]?” (Researcher, 6th session, 3,850). The new model version based on the compass metaphor (see Figure 2) incorporated the essential logics of the preceding versions – which were not yet explicitly called “leadership models” but were rather depictions of various structural patterns for teams and the steering group – combining them in what was spontaneously named by one of the teachers as the “Compass model for shared instructional leadership”.

In analyzing the CL process thus far, we interpreted the key contradiction emerging through the teachers’ analysis of their work activity and tackled by modeling tentative solutions to be a systemic tension between individualistically oriented teacher autonomy (subject of the activity system and its instrument-mediated relationship to the object of activity, the pupils) and collectivity and unification, promoted by the curriculum-imposed collaboration and multidisciplinarity (the community of the activity system and its relation to both individual teachers, mediated by rules and to the object of activity, mediated by the division of labor). This contradiction manifested itself in various paralyzing situations of schoolwork, described by the teachers and was still present as an underlying tension in the very formation of teacher teams as a potential solution, as noted above.

Viewed as a dialectical process of concept formation, the “compass model” represents a visual elaboration of an initial germ cell abstraction of distributed leadership (see Figure 3), which captures the developmental logic and persistent contradictions of an emerging new mode of activity for carrying out schoolwork. The germ cell, carrying the foundational contradiction between individuality/diversity vs. collectivity/unification and the conflicting modes of action related to those, thus acted as a starting point for the collective formation of a new activity system and form of practice. However, the germ cell also contained seeds for transcending the contradiction; in other words, the potential to re-arrange the activity to best accommodate both the individual and collective interests of teachers.

The initial germ cell concept of distributed leadership and its transformative potential can be depicted in a schematic picture (see Figure 3). It illustrates the unsolvable systemic tension between interests and motives, originating from the inherently contradictory role of education in society, which manifests itself as various disturbances in daily schoolwork. An expansive solution to transcend the contradiction in the teacher training school was mainly achieved through two critical and mutually complementary actions: formation of potential organizational solutions and re-conceptualization of the problem with the help of metaphorical conceptual tools.

Towards the end of the sixth CL session, the “compass model” drawing (see Figure 2) began to act as a mediating tool for the teachers as they ideated and agreed on concrete new practices for their new mode of activity. These included responsibilities, duties and decision-making powers of each element of the system. Teachers’ “compass teams”, with voluntary participation, were tasked with preparing initiatives concerning research activities (“RESEARCH” in the model), teacher trainee supervision (“SUPERVISION”), continuous education of in-service teachers (“INSTRUCTION”) and matters of basic education per grade level (“1–2”, “3–4” and “5–6”). Decisions on the initiatives were to be made collectively in the teachers’ general meeting, chaired by the principal. Otherwise, the role of the principal was merely to participate in team meetings when needed and be informed about the teams’ duties by the instructional steering group, consisting of teacher team leaders and the principal. The “compass model” was taken into use at the primary school in the following autumn term 2015, coinciding with the implementation of the new NCC.

Our study provides insightful contributions to the broader educational landscape in the Nordic countries and beyond. It offers an alternative path to mainstream empirical research on distributed leadership practices, involving dyadic roles (such as formal/informal and leader/follower), tasks or personal attributes (e.g. Brown et al., 2020; Harris et al., 2022; Mifsud, 2024), by uncovering how distributed leadership emerged as a germ cell abstraction and was enriched into a functional concept in a developmental intervention in a Finnish teacher training school. It thus challenges the evidence-based approach to governance and policy development, based on objective measurability and the implementation of context-independent role constellations or “best practices” across various educational institutions.

Our study extends the theoretical and conceptual understanding of distributed leadership by positioning it within the dialectical tradition of CHAT. Rather than perceiving distributed leadership through empirical classification, we conceptualize it as a dynamic, practice-embedded concept (Greeno, 2012) that emerges from and transcends tensions in real-life practices. This perspective offers a more multidimensional and nuanced view that can inform educational change efforts, also providing ideas for addressing the complexities of leadership in educational settings. Specifically, our results problematize the mainstream distinction of influence-based leader-follower roles in conceptualizing leadership (Spillane et al., 2004; see also Raelin, 2016). Autonomous teachers hardly only “follow” teacher leaders or principals, but their interactions are complex, involving for example tools and systemic structures for better instruction. Similarly problematic is the conception of leadership activity as a unit separate from the (object-oriented) core activity of the school organization (Ho and Ng, 2017), namely instruction of pupils. The dialectical view of distributed leadership, outlined in this study, is processual in nature, involving collective negotiation and agreement on how the school’s activities should be organized. Leadership thus appears embedded in the constantly evolving flow of the school’s activities.

The CL intervention highlighted the critical role of expansive learning in transforming traditional leadership models. The participating teachers’ criticism of existing leadership practices triggered the collective expansive learning process that led to the creation and implementation of new distributed leadership practices. This demonstrates how bottom-up approaches can lead to significant shifts in school governance, challenging the top-down hierarchies that often dominate educational institutions. Our findings also emphasize the importance of the principal’s rejection of centralized authority in favor of a more dispersed vision of leadership. This fundamentally changed how the school’s leadership dynamics were perceived in the CL, empowering the participating teachers to co-create novel solutions of distributed leadership. Another key aspect of the expansive learning process was the teachers’ realization of the historical and systemic nature of the problems and tensions they were facing – not accepting them as self-evident facts but embracing them as drivers for breaking out of problematic practices (see also Ho and Ng, 2017). By illustrating the transformative potential of expansive learning, our study offers insights for educational leaders and policymakers alike: effective solutions for pressing problems may be found by promoting local collaborative learning and development processes and methods, such as the CL, that tackle local problems by reaching out to the historical, systemic level of contradictions to create better concrete practices for today.

The CL intervention showcased the potential of distributed leadership to navigate and transform the contradictions inherent in the Finnish educational system. By engaging in expansive learning, the participating teachers and principal collaboratively developed a practice-embedded concept and model of distributed leadership. This model successfully mediated the school community’s efforts to renew its practices, particularly in the realms of teamwork and leadership. By presenting a dialectical approach for conceptualizing distributed leadership, our study illustrates the potential of the concept for better understanding and transcending tensions in real-life practices. Ultimately, this conceptualization holds promising implications for broader educational transformation initiatives.

As a dialectical research method based on CHAT, the CL does not aim at statistical generalizability or empirical classification of a phenomenon such as distributed leadership. Instead, it aims at generativity (Sannino et al., 2016), in other words, the potential of generating further development – both for teachers in the school of this study and in other contexts – through the experiences and learning achieved in this CL. The promotion of collaborative learning in the CL, while respecting the participants’ individual interests and voices, points to the potential benefits of distributed leadership in creating a more dynamic and multivoiced educational environment. However, the inherent tension of the schooling system between individuality/diversity vs. collectivity/unification remains a critical aspect to manage, highlighting the need for the creation of powerful co-created leadership models. The new conceptualization of distributed leadership as a practice-based generative solution for school transformation can thus have effects beyond the walls of this school, offering valuable insights for educational leaders seeking to implement distributed leadership concerning these issues.

In sum, our study highlights the importance of promoting distributed leadership in Nordic educational institutions, emphasizing the need for collaborative and practice-embedded leadership models. By supporting expansive learning processes, schools can foster environments where teachers and educational leaders collaboratively develop innovative solutions to existing challenges, moving beyond traditional top-down hierarchies. This approach encourages bottom-up governance, allowing teachers and staff to actively participate in decision-making, thereby enhancing school management effectiveness. The emergence and development of distributed leadership in this study was facilitated by applying the CL method, a bottom-up driven work development method that aims at transcending systemic contradictions and promoting expansive learning among the intervention participants. Additionally, our study underscores the value of balancing individuality and collectivity within the schooling system. Policies should support diverse educational needs while fostering a unified approach to leadership and teamwork. By creating a multivoiced educational environment that respects the interests and voices of all participants, schools can develop more inclusive and effective educational practices. The findings suggest that developing local distributed leadership practices can lead to more dynamic and responsive educational management. These insights also offer valuable guidance for educational leaders and policymakers aiming to implement distributed leadership and improve educational outcomes.

Further research should elaborate on the concept of distributed leadership from the CHAT perspective by examining it from various processual perspectives, such as transformative agency or co-creativity. Further studies should also explore the possibilities and limitations of distributed leadership to address other aspects of school management beyond instructional leadership, such as administration.

The study’s limitations mainly concern generalizability of the results as guidelines for educational policy and governance. The study took place in a particular context, a Finnish teacher training school, during a single time-intensive intervention project. Furthermore, the CL is a demanding work development method and requires facilitators to have a deep understanding of CHAT and the dialectical development process, without which intended CLs risk turning into linear development projects, sub-optimization or even top-down strategy implementation. In fact, prior research has shown that not all CLs have been successful in promoting expansive learning or renewing practices. Moreover, with facilitators typically analyzing the data and publishing the results, there is a risk of bias. However, in our case the first author did not take part in conducting the intervention, allowing a critical outsider view and better triangulation of the results.

All the necessary clearances from participating practitioners have been obtained before conducting the intervention project in 2015–2017. Participants took part voluntarily and gave their consent for publishing scientific articles about the intervention, with their quotes anonymized. Participants were at any point free to withdraw from the study and were not obliged to take part in any Change Laboratory (CL) sessions. In both conducting the intervention and publishing its results, we have followed the ethical standards set forth by the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK).