Describing and measuring leadership by applying a social network perspective 4 71 Thirdly, among others Gronn (2002), Harris and DeFlaminis (2016), and Pitts and Spillane (2009), conclude that distributed leadership revolves less around individuals and personal leadership acts, and more around relations, interactions, and dialogues between team members in complex school organizational and professional environments. It is concernedwith reciprocal interdependencies between members through which tasks are accomplished, since “one leader’s practice becomes the basis for another leader’s practice and vice versa” (Spillane, 2003, p. 344). We consider this to be the relational aspect of distributed leadership. Spillane and Sherer (2004) noted that knowledge is generated through the interactions of teachers and school principals. For instance, a literacy coordinator within a certain school depended on examples given by teachers in order to move forward with ideas for literacy lessons. In conclusion, based on literature we define distributed leadership as a contextually embedded social interaction process between all team members, which is collective, dynamic, and relational. We continue by proposing a social network approach to measure these three core aspects of distributed leadership from literature. 4.2.2. Social network perspective on distributed leadership Distributed leadership develops in social interaction and involves relations between persons in a network, such as a school team. Social network theory is concerned with relations between persons or groups and interactions of organizational and relational processes (e.g., Freeman, 2004; Wasserman & Faust, 1994). This social network perspective is argued to be a fitting point of view to study interactions (e.g., Keim, 2011), and is promising for studying distributed leadership practices (e.g., Azorín et al., 2020; Liou & Daly, 2020). The relations between persons and resources of each person, such as information, knowledge, and support (Coleman, 1988) shape a social network structure. Within this structure, persons have access to and can mobilize resources (Lin, 1999), which is interpreted as social capital and mobilization of social capital (Brouwer et al., 2020; Coleman, 1988; Lin, 1999, 2001; Liou &Daly, 2018, 2020). Coleman (1988) explains that these valuable resources, social capital, can help persons to attain individual goals that they could not reach without these resources. Social capital is often studied in network research by using relational questions, which can target various types of interaction (e.g., advice, (information) exchange) (Brouwer et al., 2020; Liou & Daly, 2018). Pitts and Spillane (2009) state that an advice question “allows us to move beyond an exclusive focus on the formal organization to attend to the informal organization such as informal interactions that are intended or understood by school staff to influence their practice” (Pitts & Spillane, 2009, p. 187). Persons reach out for advice, such as information, knowledge or support (Brouwer et al., 2020; Coleman, 1988), to others who they may perceive as someone who can lead their professional development and have
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