Cultivating Collective Agency in Instructional Leadership Teams: Tracing Development at the Next Level of Work

• In Event: Leadership Supports for Teacher Efficacy and Well-Being

Abstract

Instructional leadership teams (ILTs) have become popular reforms, described as teams of teacher leaders and administrators who collaborate to lead instructional improvement. While ILTs can be important vehicles of distributed leadership, their potential rests, foundationally, upon developing collective agency— or group capabilities to accomplish tasks and solve problems together. Little empirical research has focused on ILTs and how they may develop such capabilities. Drawing on literature about group development, work teams, teacher leadership, and professional learning, we conceptualize multiple domains that may pose developmental challenges for ILTs’ development of collective agency. From over 250 hours of participant observation, we trace how collective agency became constrained, enabled, or expanded over two years in five ILTs participating in a research-practice partnership.

Authors

• Elizabeth Zumpe, University of Oklahoma

• Corrine Aramburo, University of New Mexico