Building a Research Community, Developing a Coherent Field of Study

• In Event: 47.050 - Re-Visioning Teacher Leadership for the 21st Century: What's Next?

Abstract

While many researchers have studied teacher leaders, the corresponding field of teacher leadership has been slow to develop an organized research community. This contribution charts the strategic efforts to build a community of scholars capable of strengthening teacher leadership as a field of study. It documents the parallel development of two entities, the Teacher Leadership Congress, a grassroots movement, and Division K, Section 2, a formal, institutional structure embedded within the American Educational Research Association. Using a community of practice lens (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), the contributors examine the ways in which these two entities complemented each other and galvanized a collection of individuals into a research community. They found that collaboration between the Teacher Leadership Congress and Division K facilitated co-construction of new understandings and identities, furthered teacher leadership research, and enhanced our capacity to guide practice in ways that are urgently needed.
This contribution offers an example of how fields of study become legitimated within the structures that afford scholars benefits and advantages for growing the fields of research and practice. The contributors provide an account of the challenges of establishing teacher leadership as a distinct field of research within AERA, and offer a unique view on the growth of teacher leadership research and practices through tracking conference proposal submissions. As researchers trying to find a community of scholarship for their own work in the mid 2000s, they noticed there was no specific place devoted to scholarship of teacher leadership in the American research community. They describe their challenge to find a “home” where they might connect with other scholars to explore shared questions and co-construct new knowledge and practices. Thus, they set about to build a community of teacher leadership scholars, to bring coherence and legitimacy to what they were experiencing as a fragmented body of scholarship.
The contribution examines the challenges and obstacles of growing a community of scholarship for teacher leadership. This was no easy feat given the fact that teacher leadership research seems to be just slightly out of step with the fields in which researchers are trying to make their work public. These contributors will reflect on how teacher leadership scholars might further connect their research to the work of practitioners to grow deeper connections between theory and practice. Further, because this community is still emerging, there are exciting opportunities for this AERA teacher leadership community to model for other domains how to build and grow research with, for, and by the field of practice. In this way, the scholarly community of teacher leadership in AERA is well-positioned to offer significant connections between scholars and teacher leader practitioners toward improved teacher leadership practice and related student outcomes.

Authors

• Jill Harrison Berg, Educational Consultant

• Cynthia L. Carver, Oakland University

• Melinda M. Mangin, Rutgers University