Distributed Leadership in Irish Post-Primary Schools: Policy versus Practitioner Interpretations

School leaders have faced significant challenges since the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic. Distributed leadership has become default response implemented by schools to manage increased pressure. While Irish traditionally operated behind a ‘closed-door’, there recently been movement towards shared model leadership, and school policy currently endorses adoption distributed model. Increased interest endorsement notwithstanding, remains an elusive concept. The aim this study was explore post-primary personnel’s interpretations analyse these through teacher empowerment lens with respect policy. This reports results thematic analysis 363 survey responses provided personnel. Short’s six dimensions were utilised inform framework for thematically analysing participants’ interpretations. An initial enacting outlined. Interpretations found diverge regarding (i) what is shared, (ii) who it with, (iii) how shared. paper adds corpus knowledge concerning understood in practice will aid informing future documents.