We have designed and deployed a mapping framework to present and analyse knowledge production and distributed leadership in schools. Positions are identified from within the field: functional (descriptive and normative), critical and socially critical. For each position we examine the purposes, rationales and narratives within selected texts that illuminate knowledge claims about what is known, what is worth knowing, how it is known and who the knowers are. Analysis has identified the prevalence and political dominance of functional approaches and provides explanations regarding the interplay between the state, public policy and the preferred types of knowledge.