Empowering Teacher Leadership

Introduction

The introduction section will give a background to the study, identify the problem that prompts the study, give the rationale of the study and outline the ultimate aim of the study. The background of the study will briefly discuss the role of leadership in schools and particularly focus on the role of teacher leadership as argued by different authors. For example, leadership being ranked second to classroom instruction in contributing to what students learn at schools (Leithwood 2003), teacher leadership in particular being widely regarded as an imperative strategy for school improvement as it mobilises the untapped potential of teachers as leaders of innovation (Mangi and Stoelinga 2009), teacher leadership emerging as an important aspect of school leadership given that teachers are uniquely positioned to promote change in schools as they are cognisant and well versed in the complexities involved with teaching (Curtis 2013), and teacher leaders having the capacity to lead the school through increasing teacher collaboration, encouraging professionalism and capacity development, spreading best practices, and addressing content-specific issues (Muijs and Harris 2003).

The problem statement will majorly focus on the challenges that teacher leaders face from the school management and how this affects their outcomes (Muijs and Harris 2006) and their attrition rate (Bush 2015). The section will also consider the role of the school management in developing the culture and working patterns of schools and how this affects the behaviour of teacher leadership and ultimately the outcome of teacher leadership (Stein et al. 2016). The section will also point out on team-working and the school management not engaging teachers and how this is adversely affecting teacher leadership (Lowery-Moore et al. 2016). In light of these challenges, the section will justify the need of a study that will focus on how teacher leadership can be empowered in order to overcome the challenges faced from the school management. The study is important because it explores how teacher leadership can be empowered to stand out as a path to effective leadership. Ideally, the study will investigate how teacher leads and the school management can work together to promote school leadership.

Literature review

In the past few decades, teacher leadership has attracted attention as a key aspect of school leadership, and therefore this section will review recent studies that focus on the role of teacher leadership in school leadership. First, the section will review how different scholars define the concept of teacher leadership and from these definitions; the paper will define the concept as it will be used in the study. Important points include lack of consensus around what constitutes teacher leadership (Wenner and Campbell 2017; Bush 2015) and lack of a common title for teacher leaders in different schools (teacher leaders are referred to as coach, coordinator, lead teacher, mentor teacher, department chair, or specialist among others) thus different scholars define teacher leadership differently (Cheng and Szeto 2016). Despite these differences, the key idea of teacher leadership is grounded in teachers being able to influence others to contribute to educational practice and school improvement (Cheng and Szeto 2016) and therefore this study will define teacher leadership from this perspective.

The chapter will also review literature on the role of teacher leadership in the school leadership. Important points will include teacher leaders being well-versed with the complexities involved with teaching (Curtis 2013), teachers having the capacity to focus on content-specific issues, teacher leadership having roots in distributed leadership (participation, learning and influence), and the expertise possessed by teacher leaders among others (Mangi and Stoelinga 2009; Leithwood 2003).

The chapter will also focus on the challenges that teacher leadership faces especially from school management and explore how teacher leaders can be empowered to overcome these challenges. Some of the points to be considered include cultures and rules enforced by the school management (Stein et al. 2016), increased workload that forces teachers to prioritise the tasks that need to be done rather (teaching responsibility) which is a major obstacle to teacher empowerment (Wenner and Campbell 2017), resistance and dismissal by the school management (Lumpkin 2016), norm of autonomy that permits the school leadership to dismiss teacher leaders and their efforts to participate in school leadership (Lumpkin 2016), interpersonal conflicts that are prevalent in the staff culture (Ghamrawi 2013), lack of support from the school management (Demir 2015), unwilling of the school management to relinquish control (Lukacs and Galluzzo 2014), and professional distance between teachers and the school leadership (Tondeur et al. 2016) among others.

Purpose of the study and research questions

The purpose of the proposed study is to explore the challenges that are facing teacher leadership with an aim of empowering teacher leaders for more effective school leadership. In order to achieve this purpose, the following research questions will guide the study:

1. What is the role of teacher leadership in enhancing school leadership?

2. What are the challenges that teacher leaders face from the school management that make it difficult for teachers to thrive as leaders?

3. What actions can be taken to empower teacher leaders to overcome the challenges they face for optimal performance?

Research Methods

An epistemological stance will be adopted and in particular the interpretivist paradigm adopted. This study seeks to answer an open question (what is the role of teacher leadership in enhancing school leadership?) and therefore the interpretivist paradigm is the most appropriate philosophical stance. The qualitative approach will be adopted and therefore the study will follow the inductive research approach. Qualitative data will be collected and then analysed to form a theory in relation to the role of teacher leadership in effective school leadership. The survey strategy will be adopted so that the researcher is able to collect wide range of data in an economical way and within a short time. Semi-structured interviews will be used as the data collection instrument as they allow a researcher to collect qualitative data but also in an economic way depending on how spread the study sample is and the way in which they are administered.

The population of this study is all teachers regardless the education levels in which they teach. Nonetheless, this would be a very large number to collect data from and therefore a sample of 8 teachers will be selected preferably those in nearby schools (KINDLY NAME ONE OR TWO NEARBY SCHOOLS YOU CAN COLLECT DATA FROM). The convenience sampling technique will be adopted in selecting the study sample given time and resources constraints. However, the selected must be professional teachers in that they are perceived to have enough experience to provide the required information. The interviews will be conducted face-to-face or over a voice call depending on the availability and preference of the respondent.

Data will be analysed qualitatively using pattern matching and explanation building. Based on theoretical propositions and the research hypotheses, it will be possible to predict patterns of outcomes. This will involve predicting patterns using existing theory and explaining the generated data in these patterns. In cases where the generated data will not march the predicted patterns explanation building will be applied. This implies that the data will be analysed independently rather than testing it based on the predicted patterns.

References

Bush, T., 2015. Teacher leadership: Construct and practice.

Cheng, A.Y. and Szeto, E., 2016. Teacher leadership development and principal facilitation: Novice teachers’ perspectives. Teaching and Teacher Education, 58, pp.140-148.

Curtis, R., 2013. Finding a new way: Leveraging teacher leadership to meet unprecedented demands. Aspen Institute.

Demir, K., 2015. The Effect of Organizational Trust on the Culture of Teacher Leadership in Primary Schools. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 15(3), pp.621-634.

Ghamrawi, N., 2013. In Principle, It Is Not Only the Principal! Teacher Leadership Architecture in Schools. International Education Studies, 6(2), pp.148-159.

Leithwood, K., 2003. Teacher leadership: Its nature, development, and impact on schools and students. Leadership in education, pp.103-117.

Lowery-Moore, H., Latimer, R.M. and Villate, V.M., 2016. The Essence of Teacher Leadership: A Phenomenological Inquiry of Professional Growth. International Journal of Teacher Leadership, 7(1), pp.1-16.

Lukacs, K.S. and Galluzzo, G.R., 2014. Beyond empty vessels and bridges: Toward defining teachers as the agents of school change. Teacher Development, 18(1), pp.100-106.

Lumpkin, A., 2016. Key characteristics of teacher leaders in schools. Administrative Issues Journal: Connecting Education, Practice, and Research, 4(2), p.14.

Mangin, M.M. and Stoelinga, S.R., 2009, December. The future of instructional teacher leader roles. In The Educational Forum (Vol. 74, No. 1, pp. 49-62). Taylor & Francis Group.

Muijs, D. and Harris, A., 2003. Teacher leadership—Improvement through empowerment? An overview of the literature. Educational management & administration, 31(4), pp.437-448.

Muijs, D. and Harris, A., 2006. Teacher led school improvement: Teacher leadership in the UK. Teaching and teacher education, 22(8), pp.961-972.

Stein, K.C., Macaluso, M. and Stanulis, R.N., 2016. The interplay between principal leadership and teacher leader efficacy. Journal of School Leadership, 26(6), pp.1002-1032.

Tondeur, J., Forkosh-Baruch, A., Prestridge, S., Albion, P. and Edirisinghe, S., 2016. Responding to challenges in teacher professional development for ICT integration in education. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 19(3), pp.110-120.

Wenner, J.A. and Campbell, T., 2017. The theoretical and empirical basis of teacher leadership: A review of the literature. Review of educational research, 87(1), pp.134-171.