172 distributed leadership is positively associated with teachers and school principals with a collaborative spirit to improve education together. This spirit is explained below. 6. Answering the main research question with three overarching themes In Chapter 6, we answer the main research question using three overarching themes that we distinguish based on the four studies. The first theme is about how school principals lead collaborative innovation. School principals who describe their leadership as fitting the Team Player leadership pattern have a positive influence on collaborative innovation. However, most school principals seek a balance in steering frameworks and providing professional space to teachers (Chapter 3). The second theme is about leading collaborative innovation with distributed leadership. Teachers and school leaders note that leading collaborative innovation is a process of distributing leadership practices between school principals and teachers (Chapters 2 and 3). We find differences between schools in the degree to which they actually distribute their leadership (Chapter 4). We define distributed leadership as a “collective, dynamic, and relational” process, independent of formal leadership roles (Chapter 4). For school principals, this means that they lead as TeamPlayers. For teachers, this means they can enact leadership by providing others with advice. Specifically, coach-teachers can enact leadership by preparing collaboration sessions and connecting teachers and school principals in collaborative innovation processes. The third theme is a collaborative spirit to improve education. This spirit supports teachers and school principals in distributing their leadership in collaborative innovation. This spirit has three components, referring to (1) ‘how’, (2) ‘why’, and (3) ‘what’. We describe the spirit as team members who (1) interact with each other independent of formal leadership roles (2) and with intrinsic motivation (3) jointly aim for school-wide improvements to education (Chapter 5). 7. Suggestions for future research and practical suggestions for schools In Chapter 6, we mentioned a number of suggestions for future research and practical suggestions for schools. We encourage future research on collaborative innovation in schools to broaden the scope of study of horizontal and vertical working relations. In broadening horizontal relations, one might think of studying school principals from different schools (Honig & Rainey, 2020). To study vertical relations more broadly, we recommend also studying school board members in relation to school principals and
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