Teacher Leadership in (inter)Action: About Positioning and Receiving Legitimacy

• In Event: Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher Leadership and Teacher Agency

Abstract

Although teacher leadership is understood as a way to contribute to school improvement, professional development, and, in the end, better student outcomes, many concerns are raised about how teacher leadership may interfere with the existing working relationships in schools. In this article, we use Positioning Theory to study the (inter)actions of teacher leaders with their colleagues in order to examine how their position and the responsibilities attached to their position are negotiated. An extreme case-study design was adopted, using social network data to select our two cases. The results illustrate how teacher leaders only receive the legitimacy to act as a teacher leader when there is a fit between the ascribed position and thus when authorization and endorsement take place.

Authors

• Charlotte Struyve, KU Leuven

• Karin Hannes, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

• Chloé Meredith, University of Leuven

• Bieke De Fraine, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

• Sarah Gielen, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven