Theorizing Teacher Leadership Development Through Personal and Professional Growth

• In Event: 18.071 - Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: 18.071-11 - Structural, Conceptual, Interpersonal, and Critical Challenges to Teacher Leadership

Abstract

Teacher leadership is increasingly being touted as a practical response to guiding teacher learning in school improvement and policy reform efforts. However, the field of research on teacher leadership in relation to personal and professional learning and development has been and remains largely atheoretical to date. This assertion is backed up by a recently published literature review by Wenner and Campbell (2016) that examines the theoretical and empirical basis of teacher leadership and picks up from where York-Barr and Duke’s (2004) seminal review of the teacher leadership literature left off. Heeding O’Brien’s (2016) clarion call for greater conceptualization and theorization in the field of professional development and learning, we present a theory of teacher leadership development that provides insight into how teachers develop leadership knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Our work is both empirical and theoretical in nature. Our empirical study proposes a grounded theory of teacher leadership development based on firstly, the lived experiences of self-selected teacher leaders in the USA that have secondly, been explored and validated through further data collection with teacher leaders from England, Scotland, Wales, Republic of Ireland and the Netherlands; and thirdly re-tested, further explored and validated with a group of Teacher Leader Fellows in the USA.
This work has been carried against the backdrop of major policy developments in education systems around the world. The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (2015) and Schleicher (2016) highlight that in many nations, the current state of affairs in education is marked by challenges and transition. In the United States, for example, there are policy efforts underway to raise educational standards to ensure students are college and career ready by the end of compulsory K-12 education; implement new assessments designed to measure students’ success in achieving these rigorous standards; and employ new teacher performance evaluation systems that are still in the process of being validated for wide-spread, high-stakes evaluation. The above-mentioned initiatives, no matter how much they are contested, demand an unprecedented human capital investment in the professional learning of teachers (Levenson, 2014; Schleicher, 2016). The question then becomes which approaches have demonstrated efficacy for significantly improving teacher quality in ways that align with these policy priorities.
The theory we put forward posits leadership development as an iterative and recursive, rather than linear, experience that centers on the construct of personal growth but also includes the overlapping constructs of growth as a teacher, researcher, and leader. Such growth is underpinned and guided by significant teacher development through various professional learning and developmental activities. Teacher leadership development is situated within the context of the classroom, school, and community. The interactions between teacher and context create feedback loops that either facilitate the achievement of specific impacts or challenge the teacher’s further development. The theory contributes a visual model of teacher leadership development to the field.

Authors

• Alex Alexandrou, Freelance Academic

• Philip E. Poekert, University of Florida