School Leaders’ Distributed Leadership and Organisational Learning Capacity in Secondary Schools: Evidence from South East Nigeria

This study examines the relationship between school leaders' distributed leadership practices and organisational learning capacity in public secondary schools in South East Nigeria, covering Enugu, Anambra, and Imo states. Distributed leadership, which disperses instructional leadership functions across formal and informal teacher leaders, is theorised as a mechanism for building institutional learning capacity, yet its relationship to organisational learning outcomes in the South East school context remains empirically untested. The study employs a cross-sectional survey design with mediation analysis, drawing a stratified random sample of 480 teachers from 24 secondary schools. Data were collected using the Distributed Leadership Inventory, the Organisational Learning Capacity Scale, and a Knowledge Sharing Culture questionnaire, all validated through confirmatory factor analysis in a Nigerian higher education context. Structural equation modelling using PLS-SEM tested a model in which knowledge sharing culture mediates the distributed leadership-organisational learning capacity relationship. The study extends Spillane's Distributed Leadership Framework, Senge's Fifth Discipline Learning Organisation Theory, and Nonaka and Takeuchi's Knowledge Creation Theory. Findings are anticipated to reveal that distributed leadership significantly enhances organisational learning capacity through its effect on knowledge sharing culture. Variation across states and school size as moderators is examined. Recommendations address the state secondary education management boards and teacher education institutions on preparing teacher leaders for distributed leadership roles and building professional learning community infrastructure in secondary schools. Keywords: distributed leadership, organisational learning, secondary schools, South East Nigeria, knowledge sharing