We Really Do Mean It: Implementing Language Arts Standard #3 with Opinionnaires

For school improvement, more teachers need to function as leaders. Understanding the various dimensions of teacher leadership is requisite knowledge for encouraging the development of more teachers as leaders. Teacher leaders can fulfill multiple roles as they encounter obstacles in schools. The author addresses the challenge of supporting teachers in leadership roles, presents a model, and recommends ways for administrators and teacher educators to shape teacher leaders.     

Towards an understanding of dynamics among teachers,teacher leaders,and administrators in a teacher-led school reform

A substantial amount of professional development and implementation has moved towards teachers and teacher leaders in recent years. Previous works have examined how teachers, teacher leaders, or administrators perceive teacher leadership in school reforms, but few have advanced all three perspectives simultaneously. Drawing upon over 200 interviews, we examine how leadership is distributed and the tensions and dynamics arising among these three groups in a teacher-led school reform. Two main themes emerged from our analysis: minimizing conflicts with teachers was important to teacher leaders, and the distribution of leadership between administrators and teacher leaders changed the status and normative roles of teacher leaders.     

Teacher Leadership and Organizational Structure

Traditional models of school organization favor peaked hierarchies that concentrate power and leadership responsibility on the office of the principal. As these models struggle to effectively meet the needs of education in the new millennium, leadership structures that distribute leadership influence and empower teachers to play a greater role in the leadership of the school, are slowly being implemented. This study examines the restructuring of school leadership at a school making the transition from a traditional elementary school to an Edison charter school and investigates the impact the new organizational structure had on teacher leadership. Qualitative data were collected over a four-year period during annual visits to conduct over 50 interviews with district administrators, school administrators, teachers, and the school support staff. The research findings indicate that the structure implemented at the Edison school differed greatly from traditional school leadership structures, as it successfully distributed leadership influence and enhanced the nature and scope of teacher leadership.     

Recognizing and Supporting the Critical Roles of Teachers in Special Education Leadership

Most discussions about special education leadership address the work of principals and district administrators, without reference to the collective and distributed forms of leadership that have taken center stage in contemporary discussions about improving schools. To explore the contributions of and roles for teacher leadership in special education, selected teacher leadership literature in general education is reviewed, including the emergence of new teacher roles in schools, roots and meanings of teacher leadership, and possible benefits of teachers as leaders. Although no studies were found that specifically investigated the work of special education teacher leaders, illustrations of their work are provided as they lead through school-wide collaboration, participate as clinical faculty in Professional Development Schools (PDSs), serve as mentors to new colleagues, and work in district-wide professional development. After a review of several examples of teacher leadership in special education, barriers to teacher leadership and ways of supporting the work of teacher leaders are considered.     

Exploring classroom interaction with dynamic social network analysis

This article reports on an exploratory project in which technology and dynamic social network analysis (SNA) are used for modelling classroom interaction. SNA focuses on the links between social actors, draws on graphic imagery to reveal and display the patterning of those links, and develops mathematical and computational models to describe and explain those patterns. Dynamic SNA extends SNA and builds on previous research on network change. Utilizing data from six videos from the TIMSS video study and a convenience sample of five observations of one teacher in a secondary school in the south of England, a methodology for dynamic SNA was applied to classroom interaction data. The results are in two ways relevant for this journal. Firstly, they show that recent developments in SNA might be usefully applied to furthering knowledge about the dynamics of classroom interaction. Secondly, the results provide an example of the use of tablet technology for fieldwork data collection.     

Transforming administration to support science in the schoolhouse for students with disabilities

I examine the role that administrators play in facilitating the development, adoption, use, and evaluation of scientifically based interventions within the school culture to support the educational outcomes of students with learning disabilities (LD). Two ways of transforming the administrative role to support science in the schoolhouse are presented; one considers the importance of including language in future legislation that acknowledges the role of administrators in school reform, and the other focuses on establishing a national research agenda addressing issues of leadership and special education. I argue that these 2 venues should serve to identify and to stimulate the use of evidence-based administrative practices that ultimately increase educational outcomes for students with LD, improve teacher instruction, and transform the leadership mission.     

Teacher led school improvement: Teacher leadership in the UK

Teacher leadership is increasingly being seen as a key vehicle for school improvement and renewal. However, research on this phenomenon is limited, especially outside of the US.This article presents findings from an empirical study of teacher leadership in the UK, aimed at exploring both the ways in which teacher leadership can influence school and teacher development, and what in-school factors can help or hinder the development of teacher leadership in schools. The study was undertaken using a qualitative case study approach, purposively selected as being sites where teacher leadership was operational.Data indicated that teacher leadership was characterised by a variety of formal and informal groupings, often facilitated by involvement in external programmes. Teacher leadership was seen to empower teachers, and contributed to school improvement through this empowerment and the spreading of good practice and initiatives generated by teachers.A range of conditions needed to be in place in schools for teacher leadership to be successful, including a culture of trust and support, structures that supported teacher leadership but were clear and transparent, strong leadership, with the head usually being the originator of teacher leadership, and engagement in innovative forms of professional development.     

The importance of environment for teacher professional learning in Malta and Scotland

Current reforms in the Maltese and Scottish educational contexts can only be fully implemented if teachers radically transform the way they teach. Teacher professional learning is an important mechanism that policy-makers, school leaders and administrators have to achieve this. Teacher professional learning is, above all, situated within the specific social workplace environment of teacher practice. Thus, schools need to be recognised as important sites of professional learning for teachers. In Malta and Scotland teachers were asked about their professional learning to identify how the learning environment within individual schools affects professional learning. In both countries, collaboration and school leadership were key components in determining a school’s learning environment. Data analysis led to the production of examples of expansive and restrictive features. Policy-makers, school leaders and administrators can use these features to examine how schools operate in terms of helping or hindering professional learning in the school environment.     

The Future of Instructional Teacher Leader Roles

In response to increased performance expectations, schools and districts are turning to nonsupervisory, school-based, instructional teacher leader roles to help improve teachers’ instruction and enhance student learning. Increased opportunities to learn about teacher leadership may facilitate the implementation and institutionalization of instructional teacher leader roles. We discuss how institutions of higher education could develop programs for instructional teacher leaders, provide related coursework to school administrators and preservice teachers, and educate school communities about the potential usefulness of these roles.     

Administrators' Roles in Helping Teachers Use Formative Assessment Information

Research on formative classroom assessment practices and professional development is richer at the classroom/teacher level than at the building/administrator level. Yet administrator leadership is known to be critical for school reforms, including a change to more formative, learning-oriented assessment practices. The researchers conducted an exploratory study using two years of data from a large, rural school district to describe administrators' learning as they participated in a professional development project designed to increase their knowledge and leadership of formative assessment. Teachers skilled at formative assessment, in the view of their administrators, shared learning targets with students in multiple ways and before, during, and after the lesson. The leadership of administrators was critical to the implementation of formative classroom assessment in their buildings. Administrators who became the leading learner focused their observations in classrooms more intently than before on what the students (not just the teachers) were doing. They understood formative assessment themselves, and their schools were the ones that made progress implementing formative assessment.     

分布式机制的教师领导

随着领导研究的推进,教师领导作为学校变革的新动力得到了研究者和实践者的广泛关注.本文从教师领导的定义、角色丛以及领导功能三个方面探讨了教师领导的丰富内涵,并认为学校内的教师领导功能是通过跨层级关系、托管关系、对等关系、权利分离关系以及友谊关系等分布式机制得以实现的.     

The Role of Teacher Leadership in Professional Learning Community (PLC) in International Baccalaureate (IB) Schools: A Social Network Approach

This study aims to illuminate how professional interactions among teachers form different types of teacher leadership in schools, which, in turn, shape different levels of teachers’ involvement in activities related to their professional learning community (PLC). To investigate certain patterns of teachers’ interactions that contribute to the formation of teacher leadership and thereby the development of PLC, two international schools that offer a full continuum of three International Baccalaureate (IB) programs were purposively chosen. The schools have similar numbers of students and are located in two different countries in East Asia. Using a mixed-methods research approach, the patterns of teacher professional interactions were first examined using social network analysis. Next, the degree to which teachers in the case study schools enact practices related to PLCs was assessed and compared through a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) test. Further, based on findings from social network analysis, in-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with selected key participants to understand the linkage between teacher leadership and teachers’ involvement in their PLC in each case school. From the findings, we propose four conceptual types of teacher leadership that explain how teacher leadership shapes different levels of teachers’ engagement in PLC in the two case schools.     

正式与非正式的教师领导对教师专业发展的影响

根据其定义不论职位或任命,教师对领导的行使,教师领导有正式与非正式之分,两者对教师专业发展有不同的影响。本文从正式与非正式的教师领导这一视角出发,剖析内地的正式的教师领导——骨干教师对整体教师队伍专业发展的影响,并将其与非正式的教师领导进行了比较,以期为内地教师的专业发展提出合理的建议。     

Five Essential Practices for Communication: The Work of Instructional Coaches

The work of instructional coaches, both general and discipline-specific, has become increasingly important as more schools rely on their leadership for improvements in teaching and learning. Much of their work hinges upon their effective communication with teachers and school administrators. This article outlines five practices for instructional coaches to use in order to achieve and maintain effective communication; these five practices draw upon the author's prior work as an instructional coach and upon her own research. The practices are presented by sharing the voices of three mathematics instructional coaches, their teacher colleagues, and their school administrators.     

Developing Teachers' Leadership Knowledge: Pillars for the “New Reform”

This work describes how teacher education programs can inform teachers' knowledge and practice of leadership. We introduce a leadership typology to illustrate how teachers can lead organizational reform for pedagogical excellence and socially just practices. The model provides teacher educators ways to identify and resolve conflicts generated by imparting innovative pedagogies to teachers who in turn use them in antiquated and inequitable school environments. The model can also be used to develop teachers' professional knowledge of the contexts that mitigate or marginalize their leadership potential. Several examples from current teaching practices in teacher education are used to illustrate how teachers develop leadership knowledge.     

The effect of social network diagrams on a virtual network of practice: a Korean case

This study investigates the effect of the presentation of social network diagrams on virtual team members’ interaction behavior via e-mail. E-mail transaction data from 22 software developers in a Korean IT company was analyzed and depicted as diagrams by social network analysis (SNA), and presented to the members as an intervention. Results showed that the SNA diagrams presented were effective in increasing the quantity of e-mail transactions among the members and in forming a community of practice. The findings suggest that SNA diagrams can be used as a cost-effective intervention strategy for virtual team members to actively share knowledge and collaborate as members of a network of practice.     

Computing as Educational Innovation: a model of distributed expertise

ABSTRACT

The introduction of innovation to a school doesn't just happen. Often it is the work of an interested and dedicated teacher. Such teachers are often frustrated in their efforts to change the curriculum because they lack both the leadership skills necessary for substantial change and an understanding of how innovation effects and spreads in an organization. School principals, in their position as curriculum leaders, should play a crucial role in bringing innovation to the classroom. Many, however, play an encouraging but less active role, supporting teachers’ efforts to change the curriculum. While this type of leadership has been sufficient in the past, the introduction of computer technology as an integral part of the instructional program requires active leadership because of its multifaceted nature and intense budgetary requirements. This paper suggests a model of school administration wherein already overburdened school administrators can share leadership in a meaningful way with interested teachers. It also presents a model for the diffusion of innovation by such leadership teams. The paper argues that innovation does not just happen; meaningful change requires both strong leadership and deep understanding of the politics of innovation. This is particularly true for the introduction of computers to schools because of the magnitude of the change required.     

Principal's Leadership as a Critical Factor for School Performance: Evidence from Multi‐Levels of Primary Schools 1

This study aims to investigate how principal's leadership is related to school performance in terms of multi‐level indicators such as school's organizational characteristics, teachers’ group‐level and individual‐level performances, and students’ performances. In the study, strong leadership represents that a principal can be supportive and foster participation for teachers, can develop clear goals and policies and hold people accountable for results, can be persuasive at building alliances and solving conflicts, can be inspirational and charismatic, and can encourage professional development and teaching improvement. The strong leadership is found associated with high organizational effectiveness, strong organizational culture, positive principal‐teachers relationship, more participation in decision, high teacher esprit and professionalism, less teacher disengagement and hindrance, more teacher job satisfaction and commitment, and more positive student performance particularly on attitudes to their schools and learning. The findings support that principal's leadership is a critical factor for school performance at multi‐levels. Implications are advanced for further study and development of leadership.

     

Leadership for school-based teacher professional development: the experience of a Chinese preschool

In recent years, the role of school principals in providing leadership, and the impact of that leadership in promoting teacher professional development for building school capacity has attracted increasing attention worldwide. The study described in this paper explores the practices of leadership for promoting school-based teacher professional development (SBTPD) through a case study of a preschool in Hong Kong, the Special Administrative Region of China. The case study examines leadership and SBTPD. Semi-structured interviews were used for data collection. The research participants were the management team and teachers from the case study school. The findings of the study indicate that direction setting, communication and collaboration were associated with the practice of leadership for promoting SBTPD. We argue that teacher participation in decision-making is an important factor influencing the practice of leadership and its impact on SBTPD. There are implications for developing a critical awareness of the constraints that limit the extent to which SBTPD can be empowering in the hierarchical school structure in a Chinese educational context.