scholarly journals Teacher Leadership Begins with Self-Leadership

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Louis Langdon Warren
Keyword(s):  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Cassata ◽  
Elaine Allensworth

Abstract Background The Common Core Standards for Mathematics and Next Generation Science Standards were adopted by states with the goal of preparing students with knowledge and skills needed for college, careers, and citizenry. Adopting these standards necessitated considerable changes in instructional practice. While teacher leadership is known to be important for instructional change, there is little research that articulates the processes through which that influence occurs, and how contextual factors constrain or support those processes. This paper provides a case study of efforts in the Chicago Public Schools to promote widespread instructional change around standards reform through a teacher leader model using retrospective from 2013 to 2017 interviews with 16 math and science teacher leaders serving grades 6–12, along with quantitative analysis of district-wide data showing patterns of change and professional learning. It builds off prior research to articulate a framework of how teacher leaders promote instructional change. Findings There were five patterns of teacher leader action: inspiring others, sharing with colleagues, working in collaboration, advocating for change, and providing individual support, and an interplay between teacher actions and school-level contextual factors, with some contextual factors more important than others for different types of actions. In particular, sharing and collaborative work were facilitated in schools with designated collaboration time, trusting relationships, and colleagues who were also trained and knowledgeable about the new standards. The degree of collective efficacy the teacher leaders felt seemed to be driven mostly by the presence of other knowledgeable change agents in the school. Conclusions and implications The study adds to the existing literature on teacher leadership by articulating the mechanisms through which teachers exert influence around instructional improvement of their school peers and providing examples of each. Further, the study illustrates how these mechanisms are facilitated or constrained by the larger school context. Together, the articulation of mechanisms and contexts, along with illustrative examples, provides a guide for supporting instructional change through teacher leadership in schools and districts.


Author(s):  
Jan A. Yow ◽  
Christine Lotter ◽  
Brett Criswell

Author(s):  
Natalia L. Baydikova ◽  

The aim of the research is to identify the parameters for a multidimensional model of teacher-student interaction styles in the framework of the teacher's management activity. Literature analysis shows that all the models of teacher-student interaction styles can be divided into two groups according to the ways of classification criteria distribution. The first group comprises onedimensional models which assign certain characteristics to the teacher leadership styles. The example of such an approach is the traditional classification of styles into authoritarian, democratic and laissez-faire modes of teacher's behavior. The other group of classifications of teacher-student interaction styles includes two-dimensional models. They use two parameters in different combinations to result in four leadership styles. The author states that teacher-student interaction is so complex and multi-level that two criteria are not enough to describe teacher leadership styles. She proposes a multidimensional model of teacher-student interaction styles based on six components of teacher's organizational activities: target, stimulation and motivation, content, operation, control and regulation, assessment. According to these components, the author identified six parameters of teacher-student interaction styles which a teacher can exhibit to a different extent within the two opposite characteristics: 1) formulation of tasks to learners (implicitly - explicitly), 2) stimulation of learners' autonomy (directive behavior - delegating behavior), 3) variability of content (predetermined -available for choice), 4) interaction with students (detachment - involvement), 5) intensity of control (continuous - dispersed), 6) type of assessment (standard - essence-based). All the six parameters are independent dimensions of an individual teacher-student interaction style. To empirically verify the proposed multidimensional model of teacher leadership styles, a questionnaire was developed. It consists of 18 statements, three statements assessing each parameter. The display of characteristics was measured by values with assigned numbers: ‘never' -2, ‘no rather than yes' -1, ‘sometimes' 0, ‘yes rather than no' +1, ‘always' +2. The values -2 and +2 are the extreme poles of the behavior characteristics. The arithmetic average was counted out of the three answers on each parameter. According to the survey of school teachers, individual teacher-student interaction styles comprise characteristics of different polarity. The proposed multidimensional model of teacher-student interaction styles is a flexible, variational and open system.


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