Toward a More Empirically Useful Conception of Teacher Leadership

• In Event: 32.047 - Teacher Leadership: New Conceptualizations for Research and Practice

Abstract

As a theoretical concept, teacher leadership presents the education research community with a paradox. On the one hand, the research literature is rich with examples suggesting that teacher leadership is an important component of educational change. On the other hand, it is a concept that indexes so many kinds of teacher action that has been difficult to accumulate knowledge about how teacher leadership works. This paper draws upon artifacts created by a community of researchers and practitioners to identify key dimensions of teacher leadership. It conjectures that scholars’ use of these dimensions to communicate their understandings and assumptions about teacher leadership would create stronger conditions for accumulating a body of knowledge about teacher leadership.

Authors

• Jill Harrison Berg, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Bill Zoellick, Schoodic Institute