Sharing Leadership in Chinese Primary Schools: Teachers' Participation, Feedback Mechanisms, and Strategic Silence

Sharing Leadership is widely promoted as a key approach to enhancing teacher participation in school governance. However, evidence from Chinese primary schools suggests that the practical enactment of Sharing Leadership remains limited. Drawing on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analysis conducted in three public primary schools in China, this study examines the challenges teachers encounter when engaging in leadership-related participation. The findings reveal three interrelated challenges. First, teacher participation is often constrained by limited access to substantive decision-making opportunities, resulting in formalistic involvement rather than shared governance. Second, weak feedback adoption mechanisms reduce the perceived effectiveness of teacher expression, undermining teachers' sense of influence and willingness to participate. Third, a culture of silence has gradually emerged, in which teachers strategically withdraw from expression due to perceived risks associated with speaking up in hierarchical and stability-oriented organizational contexts. The study argues that these challenges are not primarily rooted in teachers' professional capacity, but are shaped by organizational structures, institutional arrangements, and cultural expectations within primary schools. By highlighting how participation mechanisms, feedback processes, and expressive norms interact to constrain Sharing Leadership, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of teacher leadership practices in centralized education systems. The findings suggest that improving teacher leadership requires not only expanding participation opportunities, but also strengthening organizational responsiveness and creating conditions that support meaningful engagement.