Sonja Sentocnik

The article presents recommendations for effective building of leadership capacity in the context of the educational reform in post-Soviet Georgia. The Government of Georgia has introduced several reforms since passing the educational reform law in 2005, among others also continuous professional development programmes to upgrade teachers’ competencies to face the evolving challenges of the modern classroom. Nevertheless, the practice of teaching has remained top-down and teachercentred,
the same as practised in the Soviet era. While teacher professional development is essential for successful educational reform implementation, this article also points to the importance of school
leadership in creating the conditions in schools that support teachers’ implementation efforts. The majority of Georgian schools lack such capable leadership. The recommendation for leadership training
that will support stretching the practice of leadership over multiple leaders in Georgian schools was made based on research, and on recognising the country’s systemic weaknesses in policy and practice of school leadership. While the presented recommendations are specific to Georgian context, they are also generalisable to the post-socialist countries that are facing similar policy and practice weaknesses, and could thus benefit from the application of a similar approach.

ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to examine the development and implementation of distributed leadership in high schools in Slovenia using Mayrowetz et al's Distributed Leadership as Work Redesign framework in order to contribute to the knowledge of how leadership can be deliberately distributed through job redesign. The study used an exploratory case study approach to investigate the characteristics of redesigned work in two schools included in the national pilot project in Slovenia designed to build school's capacity for instructional improvement. This study investigated the characteristics of redesigned work in each school and across schools to explore what facilitates (or constrains) the translation of redesigned work into learning opportunities, the sense made of work, and motivation. This exploratory study investigated how these transition mechanisms shape the performance of leadership practice, and how various contextual variables, in particular organizational structures, influence the formulation and performance of redesigned work. Findings suggest that while the existing organizational structures in schools constrain the formulation of redesigned work as significant for teachers, they are neverheless not prohibitive of leadership distribution provided that the principal understands his/her new role and acts as a catalyst for lasting dispersal of power among the capable members of the school community. It is imperative that the adjustments of the existing structures and the implementation of the new ones are aligned with common beliefs, expectations, and norms regarding decentralized decision making, capacity building, and collective responsibility for instructional quality. While leadership teams need professional training and continuous support of  a coach to build the knowledge and skills necessary for distributed performance of leadership functions, they also need to develop internal coherence, mutual trust and support within their team, as well as be entrusted with leadership authority by the teachers to be able to enact their new leadership roles.

The idea of school leadership has gained scholarly recognition as a perspective that can help generate insight into school leadership practice as it increasingly manifests in successful schools, and as a strategy that can potentially leverage instructional improvement. The paper sheds light on how distributed leadership actually developed in two high schools in a former socialist country of Southeast/Central Europe, requiring changes in relations, behavioural patterns, structures, and tasks for the transition to a more democratic form of leadership. It may be illuminating for the countries with the national curriculum and the assessment system as it sheds light on the misalignment of the requirement for greater autonomy of schools, conducive to distributed leadership, and the restricting power of the prescribed curriculum and assessment system that reduce school principal and teacher autonomy.