The Future Is Shared: AI and the Evolution of Distributed Leadership in Schools

Abstract

This study examines how school leaders use artificial intelligence (AI) in their professional practice. Through semi-structured interviews with 15 school leaders from a Midwestern state, the study found that participants used AI primarily to streamline administrative work, support data analysis, assist with communication, and generate instructional resources. Across roles, participants described their ability to deepen instructional support, mentoring, and collaboration with teachers, practices that align with core dimensions of distributed leadership such as collaboration, capacity building, and shared instructional leadership. The findings suggest that participants viewed AI as a tool that supported aspects of their leadership work, particularly instructional support and efficiency. The study contributes to emerging scholarship on AI in educational leadership by offering an exploratory qualitative case study of how school leaders are currently integrating AI into their work and conceptually by illustrating how these emerging practices are situated within a distributed leadership framework.