Educational leadership students’ understandings of leadership from a distributed perspective

The study’s aim was to investigate educational leadership students’ understandings of leadership in educational organisations through the perspective of distributed leadership. The purpose was to analyse the different understandings constituted in students’ worlds of experience including their educational levels and work experience. Data were collected through an electronic survey in three Finnish universities. Overall, 198 responses from respondents working, studying, or aiming to work in the fields of early childhood education, comprehensive school education or upper secondary education were analysed by a phenomenography method. The key dimensions of variation that emerged from the data suggest that the students’ understandings differ mostly regarding how deeply they understand the implementation of leadership as distributed or in an aspect through which they viewed leadership distribution in an educational organisation. Findings can contribute to the development of educational leadership study modules at universities.