Developing Teacher Leaders to transform Classrooms, Schools, and Communities

Abstract

All teachers are leaders by the nature of their work. They lead within their schools, whether implicitly or explicitly, for good or for bad, proactively or reactively. In this chapter, we present a framework of teacher leadership that is an assemblage of our previously published works. We use this chapter to provide a consolidated view of how to help all teachers to acknowledge, understand, and use their “awesome” power as leaders to transform their classrooms, schools, and communities. Schools are sites of social, political, and economic influence and teachers play key roles in either maintaining the status quo or creating environments that are transformative and equitable for all members. We argue that a teacher's power is essential both within and beyond the walls of the classroom. Teachers have the capacity and power to participate in change decisions and efforts that traditionally either have been tacitly assumed by them or deliberately defined by others. By having an understanding of critical leadership or leadership for social justice, teachers will be more prepared to identify and resist the variety of contexts which threaten their professional expertise and contexts that deliberately question their professional knowledge.

Citation

Neumann, M.D., Jones, L.C. and Taylor Webb, P. (2012), "Developing Teacher Leaders to transform Classrooms, Schools, and Communities", Miller, F.S. (Ed.) Transforming Learning Environments: Strategies to Shape the Next Generation (Advances in Educational Administration, Vol. 16), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3660(2012)0000016004