Orchestrating Teacher-Led Change From the Top: Examining Administrators' Efforts to Facilitate Teacher Leadership

• In Event: Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Teachers' Perceptions of Leadership and Change

Abstract

District and school leaders play an important role in enabling teacher leadership. This paper aims to capture school leaders' roles in facilitating organizational conditions that enable teacher leadership as it emerges. This case study captures year one of a longitudinal mixed-methods study examining one school’s change initiative purported by district leaders to be “teacher-led.” Using the frame of teacher leadership as relational influence for school change, qualitative data and social network analysis offer stark contrasts between administrators’ goals for teacher leadership, how teachers envision teacher leadership, and the relational patterns within the school. Discussion offers practical implications for leaders’ efforts to construct “enabling conditions” within school change efforts and theoretical implications for future studies of teacher leadership.

Authors

• Michelle DeVoogt Van Lare, George Mason University

• Yi-Hwa Liou, National Taipei University of Education