The Role of Teacher Leadership in Scaling Up Professional Learning

• In Event: 18.071 - Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: 18.071-4 - Building and Leveraging Teacher-Leaders' Expertise to Improve Students' Writing: National Writing Project's College-Ready Writers Program

Abstract

The NWP has refined a model of teacher leadership development characterized by distinct social practices (Lieberman & Wood, 2003, Lieberman & Author, 2010)) and a dynamic cycle of teaching, learning, and leading (Author, 2009).The NWP has structured a national-scale “improvement infrastructure” that promotes teacher leadership through collaborative inquiry (Author, 2010). Most literature on NWP teacher leadership emphasizes the role of the Invitational Summer Institute, dedicated to leadership development. Much less visible is how the NWP promotes the emergence of teacher leadership in every facet of its work. Study of the CRWP permits new insight into the deep origins of teacher leadership and reveals multiple dimensions of scaling that are made possible when teachers are invited into learning and leadership. Using an illustrative case from the CRWP, with data collected over three years, the paper asserts the proposition that the development of teacher leadership is the scaling of teacher learning.

Core case: “Leann” is a 10th and 11th grade teacher in a school of fewer than 200 in a town isolated by geography and poverty. When she tried new approaches to teaching writing, she saw her students engage, read, think, and write in ways that neither she nor they had ever seen. She got excited and wanted to share her experiences. Similarly, “Hannah,” the CRWP teacher consultant working with Leann’s school, got excited when she saw Leann’s openness and excitement. They worked together to learn from new ways of teaching. Both Leann and Hannah were moved to share what they were learning with other teachers in Leann’s district, other teacher-leaders at Hannah’s Writing Project site, and CRWP participants in other states. Hannah invited Leann to learn to lead.

In this nexus of teacher-to-student interaction around writing, and teacher-to-teacher interaction around teaching, sparks of new professional energy caught fire for Leann and Hannah. Their story shows how teacher learning seeks expansion through teaching and leadership-- sparking more learning, creating more energy to extend learning through leadership. The paper cites additional cases, showing how these core processes occurred not only in CRWP districts, but in all corners of the program, from local Writing Project teacher-leader teams to the CRWP leadership team. The cases show:

Teacher leadership is the scaling, i.e., continuous expansion, of teacher learning. Leann and Hannah’s experiences stand as a microcosm of a generative process that we have observed in all rural outposts of the CRWP. They illustrate how a natural human excitement about learning seeks expression through sharing (a form of teaching), and how the NWP invites teachers to extend their learning through leadership.

Teacher leadership scales teacher learning in multiple dimensions and at all levels. Leann’s growth reflected a scaled-up classroom practice (a whole new way of teaching writing and relating to her students), and a scaled-up professional identity, purpose, and sphere of influence. Hannah’s growth reflected scaled-up leadership capacity and reach for her local NWP site. Multiplied by all participants, the CRWP scaled up learning for the NWP network, extending its lessons to many more teachers.

Author

• Laura M. Stokes, Inverness Research