Leadership through fellowship: distributed leadership in a professional recognition scheme for university educators

Researchers in the field of teaching and learning in higher education have identified concerns with top-down leadership models. Distributed (or shared) leadership approaches may provide more successful engagement with institutional change agendas, and provide more options to reward and recognise staff leading teaching and learning initiatives. Through empirical research, Jones and colleagues have conceptualised the key criteria, dimensions and values that constitute effective distributed leadership in the Action Self-Enabling Reflective Tool (ASERT), together with benchmarks through which action taken to enable distributed leadership can be evaluated. Opportunities for distributed leadership were incorporated into the design of an Australian university’s professional recognition scheme for university educators. Through analysis of this case study in the context of the ASERT attributes and the benchmarks for distributed leadership, this paper explores the potential for systematic professional recognition of university educators to build institutional leadership capacity in the context of university teaching and learning.