Transformational, Teacher, and Distributed Leadership and Educational Innovation

Implications for Practice and Future Inquiry

Resumen

Transformational leadership by principles, teacher leadership, and distributed leadership have been associated with educational innovation, but the mechanisms and contextual conditions underlying these associations remain insufficiently understood. This structured narrative review examined how transformational, teacher, and distributed leadership are conceptualized, how they are associated with educational innovation, and which psychological, organizational, and contextual conditions recur across the literature. Records were identified through AI-assisted LeapSpace, a semantic search tool, and through backward and forward citation searching, using predefined search concepts. The date of the preliminary search was not recorded, and the search was not replicated in other bibliographic databases. The review considered English-language empirical studies published between 2018 and 2025 that examined transformational, teacher, or distributed leadership in relation to educational innovation in school or higher-education settings. Findings were organized narratively by leadership construct, educational setting, innovation outcome, and reported explanatory condition. No pooled statistical synthesis was conducted. Eleven selected studies are discussed; they comprise quantitative, qualitative, and case-study designs and are not a complete census of literature. Teacher agency, self-efficacy, trust in school leaders, knowledge sharing, professional learning communities, and organizational learning repeatedly appeared in relation to educational innovation. The two qualitative or case-study reports discussed pointed to three themes: leadership-supported professional learning and collaboration; teacher agency and self-efficacy; and distributed opportunities for teacher participation. Because a complete screening and extraction file was not available for independent verification, the total number of eligible studies is not reported. The reviewed literature generally associates transformational, teacher, and distributed leadership with educational innovation. The evidence does not establish causality, and it provides no basis for a pooled or representative effect estimate. Future research would benefit from preregistered searches across multiple databases, longitudinal and intervention designs, and objective measures of innovation.