Teacher as Researcher, Teacher as Scholar, and Teacher as Leader

• In Event: Developing an Inquiry Stance Toward Instructional Leadership: Teacher Leader Action Research

Abstract

Because school cultures are static (Kennedy, 2005; Opfer & Pedder, 2011; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999) and high stakes testing dominates, teachers’ professional learning is often determined by administrators and policy. These initiatives are often facilitated by outside consultants who offer pre-packaged programs (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Elmore, 2004; Lieberman & Miller, 2011; Talbert, 2010). This tradition counters how teacher inquiry could be conceptualized and impedes teachers’ potential for school leadership.

Authentic inquiry instead offers teachers opportunities to enhance their understanding of students and learning and, ideally, develop new teaching practices (Borko, 2004; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Cochran-Smith, & Lytle, 2009; Darling-Hammond, 1997). It encourages teachers to problematize their work (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Dewey, 1904) and casts teachers as active learners who tend their professional lives by reflecting upon their work with students and teachers (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Grossman, et. al. 2009, Opfer, & Pedder, 2011).

We argue that teachers who engage in authentic teacher inquiry through action research become teacher leaders. Our definition of a teacher leader is not narrow or static. Rather we envision teacher leaders as mutually negotiated with collaborators on the basis of context-specific instructional and improvement needs (York-Barr & Duke, 2004). Teacher leaders generate new knowledge for themselves (Reason & Bradbury, 2008), which emerges from action but also leads to new initiatives (Taylor, Goeke, Klein, Onore, & Geist, 2011).

We focus on how teachers participating in action research begin to position themselves as teacher leaders. Specifically, a Network for Educational Renewal located in the Northeast section of the U.S. annually invites teacher teams from partner schools to participate in a year-long action research project. Teams propose a project that focuses on the Agenda for Democracy criteria (Goodlad, 1988) and examines an authentic question that leads to practice transformation. They are provided research methods/writing workshops, individualized feedback, substitute release time, and funding. Finally, teams submit a report and present at a summer conference. One author has advised these teams for the past eight years.

Our qualitative study examines these data: the teachers’ final written reflections, retrospective transcribed interviews, and the advisor’s field notes and reflections. Our data analysis is reflective, participatory and recursive; we analyze the data inductively using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and look for emerging categories across data (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998).

The data indicate that participating in action research and generating new knowledge has the potential to foster teacher leaders who enact Dewey’s (1929) vision of schools as inquiry sites, where they collaboratively investigate practices through observation, reflection, analysis, and dialogue. Engaging in research-informed discussions about theory and practice in university, district, and policy settings begins to position teachers as leaders and allows them to embody what Lieberman and Miller (2004) describe as “the shifting conception of teacher leadership” toward “teacher as researcher, teacher as scholar, and teacher as mentor” (p. 28).

Authors

• Michael Gerard Ryan, Montclair State University

• Monica Taylor, Montclair State University