Reimagining Leadership Through Teacher Leadership

• In Event: Borderlands: Constructing Educational Possibilities Across P–20 Systems: A Structured Conversation Between Educational Leadership and Teacher Education

Abstract

Serving simultaneously as teachers and leaders, teacher leaders (TLs) are in a unique position to use their expertise and leadership skills to lead within and beyond the classroom. A growing body of research suggests that teacher leadership has a powerful effect on student achievement and can influence how school improvement reforms are adopted and implemented (Bryk, Sebring et al., 2010; Leithwood & Riehl, 2003; Waters & Kingston, 2005) since it is teacher leadership teams that, at the grassroots level, generally advance initiatives, build capacity, and transfer knowledge to impact changes of practice within classrooms (Chrispeels et al., 2008).

Two examples from school-university partnerships : 1) The Teacher Leadership Academy which seeks to create a cohort of teachers who work side by side with principals to engage in educational change that supports teacher development and retention as well as student learning. The TLA enacts collaborative, job-embedded PL (Foster, 2022). Unique TLA design principles allow for the program to be dynamic and adaptable based on the needs of the context while integrating practitioner and university teacher educator expertise. The project explores work towards three primary goals including: (1) improving student achievement for students in high-need schools, (2) increasing access and opportunity for teacher career advancement, and (3) developing capacity to scale the TLA design. The curriculum takes TLs through the process of cultivating an equity lens to recognize opportunity or learning gaps in their contexts, and developing leadership practices that respond to and redress these educational inequities (Gorski, 2018; Jacobs et al, 2020).

2) The development of school-based teacher educators as site-based clinical supervisors. Recognizing the perspective that developing professional agency is situated as a socially shared, culturally, historically and socially shaped phenomenon (Hökkä, Eteläpelto & Rasku-Puttonen, 2012; Lasky, 2005), the development of “liaisons-in-residence” (LiR) provided a site for the negotiation of professional agency in context. LiR’s sought increased responsibility as mentor teachers to teacher candidates leading to development of a new position as mentor teachers to candidates in their classrooms and also serving as liaison with the building principal – essentially, a boundary-spanning space (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011) was developed.

Teacher leadership and educational leadership is not always so straightforward. At a time when U.S. public schools are under attack by conservative legislative policies, there are also ways in which leadership “flies beneath the radar.” In conversations with our graduate students and other practicing educators, we hear powerful stories of educators quietly defying these oppressive policies and practices to create more equitable and inclusive learning environments for all their students. Wang (2018) states, “In exercising ethics of subversion and critique, participants are more likely to use soft, rational, and bi/multilateral rather than hard, non-rational, and unilateral power tactics. Such tendency reveals their concern about causing relational harm and shows their strategic avoidance of direct confrontation” (p. 399). We offer specific examples from individual and collective ongoing research projects that center issues of equity in both teacher education and leadership to address our collective responsibility as scholars for the reimagination of our education system.

Authors

• Diane Yendol-Hoppey, University of North Florida

• Jennifer Jacobs, University of South Florida

• Jennifer L. Snow, Boise State University

• Jess Weiler, Western Carolina University

• Joy Howard, Appalachian State University

• Darrius A. Stanley, University of Minnesota