Predictors of Distributed School Leadership in Croatian Primary Schools Iva Buchberger, Vesna Kovač and Branko Rafajac
Summary: This paper discusses the features of distributed school leadership (DSL) in Croatian primary schools with regard to its three central theoretical and practical dimensions: the participation of stakeholders in the process of school leadership, desirable social relations between the participants in the process of school leadership, and stakeholders’ influence over the decision-making process. The paper also assesses the development level of three selected groups of DSL predictors: supporting attitudes and activities of school principals, supporting characteristics of stakeholders participating in the decision-making process and supporting organisational and material resources. The results indicate that, in Croatia, the number of primary schools with less developed DSL is approximately equal to the number of schools with more developed DSL. The statistically significant positive correlation between the development level of all three predictor groups and the development level of the DSL features was also confirmed. These results suggest that introducing certain policy mechanisms could contribute to the enforcement of the DSL features in Croatian primary schools, which could in turn be of great help to policymakers at all levels of the decision-making process within the education system.