New roles and relationships are ambiguous, time-consuming, and often uncomfortable. As expected, teachers are pleased when their views influence school decisions, leading them to feel both respected and empowered. It may take several difficult years before participants learn to work with the new approach, and the learning curve is not smooth. SDM is not a process that, once introduced, necessarily matures and flowers. In practice, the new behaviors can be elusive.
Participants often tend to shape their new roles with old assumptions.
Even when principals are committed to SDM, they still have a special accountability that makes it difficult to be consistently facilitative. Blase and colleagues found that some enthusiastic supporters of SDM took a more directive approach at key moments, exercising vetoes when decisions by teachers threatened to harm students. In short, SDM seems to be a complex process that does not lead to simple leadership strategies. Schools using SDM should be prepared for a long-term process requiring considerable training. It is also evident that while teachers may be closest to the classroom, they do not automatically zero in on substantive instructional issues.