Distributed Leadership and Secondary School Goal Achievement: Empirical Insights from Nigeria

In school settings, leadership plays a critical role in predicting student achievement. However, this study examined the perceived contribution of distributed leadership (DL) of principals to secondary school goal achievement (SSGA) in Ilorin Metropolis, Nigeria. Based on the partial least squares structural equation model, the study utilised a non-experimental research design to predict the contribution of DL and its components to SSGA. Fornell Larckers' approach was used to determine the discriminant validity in this study. The analyses indicated that all the components of DL had a positive contribution to the SSGA except in the areas of modelling and inspiring a shared vision. Also, all the DL factors in the model jointly contributed R² 0.315 to the total variance observed in SSGA. It thus indicates that adopting DL will promote the attainment of secondary school goals. DL constructs: driving innovation and change, and leadership support significantly contributed to SSGA (β=0.464 and 0.299). Meanwhile, coherent leadership (β=0.075), encouraging the heart (β = 0.0046), and supervision (β=0.041) have a non-significant positive contribution to SSGA. Consequently, inspiring a shared vision (β=-0.21) and modelling the way (β=-0.14) have negative, non-significant contributions to SSGA. Therefore, principals should be empowered with DL in their leadership development to attain SSGA. Also, each DL component should be considered when developing a curriculum for the principalship development programme to enable the participants to acquire holistic knowledge and capacity to attain SSGA.