Keywords
distributed leadership
teacher professional commitment
longitudinal analysis
educational management
Abstract
Sustainable school development requires leadership approaches that strengthen organizational capacity and sustain teachers’ long-term professional engagement. Although previous research has established a positive association between distributed leadership and teacher professional commitment, limited attention has been given to their reciprocal relationship across time. This study examined the longitudinal relationship between distributed leadership and teacher professional commitment using a three-wave panel design. Data were collected from 1,384 primary and secondary school teachers in China and analyzed using an autoregressive cross-lagged panel model. The results demonstrated that distributed leadership significantly predicted subsequent teacher professional commitment, while teacher professional commitment also positively influenced later distributed leadership. The reciprocal model showed superior fit compared with alternative directional models, indicating that leadership practices and teacher commitment mutually reinforce each other over time. This study contributes to sustainable educational management by extending distributed leadership theory from a leader-centered perspective toward a relational and dynamic framework. The findings highlight the importance of developing participatory leadership structures and cultivating teacher agency to promote sustainable school development.
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