Distributed leadership and the academic performance of International Baccalaureate (IB) World schools

The position of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Organization that distributed leadership is the most effective approach to manage its primary year, middle year, and diploma programs needs to be substantiated. A correlational design was applied to determine if the IB school teachers’ perceptions of distributed leadership, measured using the 40 item IB World School Distributed Leadership Survey (IBDLS) were related to the academic performance of IB World schools, measured by the IB Diploma average subject grade scores between 2005 and 2011. Following a pilot study with 13 teachers, the validity and reliability of the IDBLS was assured. The main survey involved 204 teachers recruited from nine IB World Schools in the Asia-Pacific region. Partial least squares path models were constructed to explore the correlations between the teachers’ responses to the IBDLS and the subject grade scores. Two facets of distributed leadership (School Organization and Institutionalized Practice) were positively correlated with the academic performance of the students at α = .05. Although the effect size was relatively low (R2 ≤ 8.5%) reflecting limited practical significance, the IB Organization may point to these findings as empirical evidence to indicate that distributed leadership is beneficial to the academic performance of IB students. Since statistical analysis could not prove the existence of causal relationships, it is recommended that qualitative research should be conducted to explore the non-quantitative outcomes of distributed leadership at IB schools. It is possible that other factors may confound the impact of distributed leadership on the grade scores of IB students.