title: Distributed leadership and the implementation of blended learning: An exploratory case study of international faculty staff at a Middle Eastern university
Creators: name: Garba, Ibrahim
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2024

description: Abstract
Distributed leadership and the implementation of blended learning: An exploratory case study of international faculty staff at a Middle Eastern university
Ibrahim Garba 
This qualitative exploratory case study focuses on how international faculty staff working at a Middle Eastern university’s (henceforth MEU) English Department used distributed leadership to implement blended learning during the 2018-2019 semesters. My case study explores the support that an international faculty staff need when teaching in blended learning where the international faculty staff teach their face-to-face and online classrooms at a higher education university in the Middle East. Recently, the international faculty staff have begun to provide their students with instruction and assessments online. However, the teachers need support from leadership to continue teaching online because, in the past, the teachers were not able to sustain their teaching online. This study focuses on the use of distributed leadership as the support for teachers who need to use blended learning for teaching English at MEU.
The case study conducted interviews with the faculty staff who described their practices in e-interviews over Zoom. In addition, the faculty staff needed to acquire certain skills, which they were then required to use in a blended learning environment as part of their English Department. On the basis of their work on this programme, I position the faculty staff as professionals. I also use a case study methodology in the study to answer three research questions related to the focus of the faculty staff’s practice. The first connects to the type of skills required for assessment, instruction, and feedback. The second and third relate to the process and influence of distributed leadership, respectively. These elements bind the faculty staff I needed to gather the data from with their blended learning work in this study. I use the qualitative aspects of the research design to capture the fluid positionality, power, and culture within the practice. A purposive convenience sampling technique is used to gather semi-structured interview data from the faculty staff, who taught English to Foundation Year students. I also use documentary data to understand how the faculty staff worked at MEU. The semi-structured interviews help to provide reliability and consistency by asking the same question of different participants, thereby generating rich data relevant to the focus of the study. Apart from the interview data, documentary data was gleaned from a training questionnaire; course-related content on WhatsApp, Google, and Workplace; and Blackboard activities used between 2018-2019. 
I employ thematic analysis to generate findings. The first theme on blended learning skills deals with the product view of assessment, troublesome instruction, interaction, and wicked feedback. The second and third themes relate to distributed leadership processes and influences. Processes in operation include power-distance decision-making and decentralising blended learning, which in turn are influenced by turning-point, sustainability, and engaging leadership. I offer three recommendations under the heading of “institutional presence”. My exploratory case study makes its contribution through foregrounding and affirming the value of distributed leadership in response to blended learning scholars’ calls to use leadership support for faculty staff’s acquisition of blended learning for teaching online.