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mid-1990s and began with only three positions of responsibility: the Director, High School Principal and English as a Second Language (ESL) Coordinator who oversaw all aspects of administration and leadership and also subsumed in their roles Elementary and Middle School Principalships and IB Diploma Programme (IBDP) coordinator.

As the school grew, Secondary School positions of responsibility developed to include Middle School and High School Principals, and IBDP and IB Middle Years Programme (IBMYP) Coordinators. Development was not strategically planned and I could convincingly argue that it grew ad hoc and reactively.

Between 2003 and 2008, the position of Secondary Principal absorbed the roles of Middle and High School Principals and Deputy Director. The Secondary Principal became responsible for the following main areas within the Secondary School:

Academics

Student well-being (pastoral guidance and discipline)

Day-to-day management of the secondary school

Leadership of the secondary school (and whole school in the absence of the Director)

With the sudden, unforeseen departure of a newly appointed Secondary Principal, the Director put a partially distributed leadership model in place: a co-principalship of four people responsible to the director. This was constituted from two Deans of Student Well-being [2] and two IB Coordinators (fig.1).

Fig.1: Positioning of leadership roles within the co-principalship

Although this change led to a partial flattening of the hierarchical structure, there was no change in the overall outcomes expected between the two models (fig.2).

Fig.2: Change in hierarchical structure (former on the left)

Because of a need for speedy implementation, little time was spent on coordinating the job descriptions of the four individuals resulting in a lack of clarity of responsibilities in some areas and creating interesting challenges for the co-principalship.

To understand reasons to change from a hierarchical to heterarchical structure, it is important to explore the body of work regarding leadership practices and models.

3. Literature Review

Literature concerning shared leadership is awash with confusion because it is and has been extensively studied. Leithwood (1999, pp.6-7), refers to a survey of 121 journal articles on educational leadership that identified ‘six different approaches to school leadership’ and the ‘focus of 54 articles was on leadership, but no attempt was made to label the form or model of leadership in question.’

Pye (2005. p.32) mentions Dubrin (2000) as estimating ‘around 35,000 definitions of leadership in academic literature’ and refers herself to ‘the jungle of leadership literature’.

However, one recurring perspective is of division of labour. West (1978, p.242) wrote that,‘By reorganizing the available manpower and changing roles and responsibilities, the secondary school principalship can become manageable and workable with greater job satisfaction for administrators and increased benefits for pupils, teachers, the school board and taxpayers. Reorganization involves the establishment of a 'co-principalship' where each administrator has equal authority…’

This is still current thinking and a report, pu