Implementing the new educator evaluation system into practice at an urban elementary school through distributed leadership

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20196967

Educators are facing increasingly more demands in today's public schools. One of the reasons is because of the state and federal mandates that resulted from Race to the Top, which are intended to improve professional growth and student learning. Distributive Leadership and Organizational Change Theory are the two theories that informed the design and analysis of the case study. The purpose of this study is to describe how informal and formal leaders work with teachers in one K-5 elementary school to support and guide staff to build capacity. The case study design was used to identify and describe the perceptions of teachers and administrators about the construct and use of distributed leadership to achieve organizational change through interactions. Taking a collaborative approach, the multiple leaders and followers were able to adopt, adapt, and implement the mandate of a new educator evaluation through reciprocity and interdependence. The findings of this study support and identify how distributed leadership leads to sensemaking of organizational change and how the approach of peer training led to shared resources, responsibility, and taking ownership of the new initiative. This study demonstrates how informal leaders take on the role of culture carriers to implement the mandated change into practice at one urban K-5 elementary school.