Teacher leadership and teacher identity in turbulent times in Iraq

This article addresses the professional challenges faced by teacher leaders in Iraq. The country is beginning to emerge from a period of political unrest and violent threats to personal safety. This has seriously affected the educational provision; nowhere more so than in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city. The article examines three issues: how teacher-leaders describe and understand their empowerment to build inclusive education systems in the post-conflict city; how professional learning communities can support inclusive practices to optimise students’ learning and build community cohesion; and what role digital skills can play in the modernisation of an inclusive Iraqi curriculum. The naturalistic enquiry approach draws on interview data from two teachers, two headteachers and two inspectors; the latter work directly with the Iraqi Ministry of Education and local communities. The findings show that, as teacher leaders reframe their understanding of the role of educational leaders in the changing context of Iraq, they become better empowered to build sustainable learning communities. Digital skills are crucial in supporting learning within and beyond the school curriculum.

Micro-Credentialing Teacher Leadership

In this chapter, the authors explore the influence of a synchronous teacher leadership coaching design on supporting an educator's micro-credential experience within an established system. The authors include several experienced leadership coaches who had the opportunity to support teachers in this work. The coaching model created by this partnership was particularly interesting because it integrated established best practices of micro-credentials (e.g., tied to financial incentives), while also addressing some of the key challenges (e.g., communication). Findings include that coaching teacher leaders was especially useful to those teachers hesitant to start or complete a micro-credential on their own, thus making coaching a valuable tool for districts looking to implement micro-credentials districtwide.

Implementing teacher leadership in Malaysian schools: Exploring secondary principals’ perspectives

Objective: The purpose of this study is to explore principals’ perspectives on the concept of teacher leadership, the strategies that they employed to support teacher leadership practice and the challenges and issues that principals faced while implementing teacher leadership. Methodology: This qualitative case study uses interview sessions with 10 purposely selected principals from various types of secondary schools. All schools are public schools that are administered and funded by the Ministry of Education, Malaysia. Findings: The study reveals that principals had a comprehensive understanding of the concept of teacher leadership; in fact, principals were able to list teacher leaders’ characteristics and provide definitions for the concept of teacher leadership. In exploring principals’ strategies to support teacher leadership practice, five themes emerged: developing future leaders, a mentoring programme, involving more teachers as teacher leaders, practising an ‘open door’ policy and providing more opportunities for teachers to offer mutual assistance. In terms of the challenges for teacher leadership practices, principals shared particular issues such as the unwillingness of teachers to become teacher leaders due to their heavy workloads and challenges in eading senior teachers. Significance: This study supplements the literature that explores teacher leadership within the Malaysian schooling context, which has hitherto been understudied. Thus, the concept of teacher leadership needs more in-depth investigation and evaluation to ascertain its suitability within Malaysia's educational system. For the Ministry of Education, this study notes some practical implications for improving teacher leadership in Malaysian schools.

Leading as boundary crossing: How teacher leaders lead across a professional learning network in Shanghai China

This paper explores how teacher leaders enact leadership practice across a regional learning network, Master Teacher Studios, an officially initiated teacher learning program in Shanghai. It investigates the leadership strategies that are employed for cross-boundary endeavors in the network. The concepts of boundary and boundary crossing, as expounded by Wenger and others, are used to guide an examination of the process of teacher leadership enactment across a network, which is elucidated as interpreting the boundaries, selecting/designing boundary objects, and participating in communities of practice. The paper fosters an understanding of teacher leadership practice as boundary work in a network context, and delineates a process of teacher leadership enactment, as well as the importance of teacher leader identity in the process.

Transformative Intervention Strategies for Teacher Leaders During the Pandemic and Beyond

The Covid-19 pandemic has created an unparalleled catastrophe with significant challenges for leadership in schools all over the world. The efforts that schools have put in place for training and preparing for teachers prior to Covid-19 seem to be out of step, thus requiring a reimaging and significant transformation to remain relevant for aspiring teacher leaders. This conceptual paper aims at providing transformative intervention strategies (TIS) to empower teachers to become leaders during Covid-19. Having applied transformative leadership theory and integrative literature review (ILR) as method, this paper suggests that teachers should start with transformative listening and learning, whilst taking advantage of opportunities to be empowered to become leaders. To empower teachers to become leaders during the pandemic and beyond, prospective teacher leaders should embrace opportunities which might come from adjustments and which may enable them to better understand the reasons for transformation. As such, this paper aims to provide transformative intervention strategies to empower teachers to use opportunities afforded to them to become leaders in their schools amid the pandemic and beyond. TIS may assist schools in cultivating an environment where teachers actively work together to display transformative emotional intelligence, transformative autonomy and transformative inclusive leadership. The finding revealed that, if purposefully implemented, TIS may encourage teachers to see the value in growth towards leadership, making the process of transformation in schools that much easier.

Untrained Foreign English Educators in Japan: A Discourse on Government Education Initiative and Perceptions from Japanese Teacher's on Efficacy in the Classroom

Social scientists, teacher leaders, and academics, both Japanese and non-Japanese, have attempted to examine the phenomenon of unlicensed foreigners in the Japanese classroom environment. In an attempt to open a discourse on the intentions and subsequent failures of the JET programme, and to identify specific perceptions of Japanese teachers in relation to JET, a historical analysis of the JET programme coupled with a Likert Scale survey was utilized. In this ordinal scale survey, the opinions of both experienced Japanese teachers and inexperienced Japanese teachers on the challenges of working in conjunction with untrained foreign instructors during their career, were used to gauge teacher's attitudes and opinions. Results would suggest that teacher's with longer time in the field of education have stronger opinions towards untrained foreign educators in the classroom, while less experienced teachers are more apt to working with untrained foreign educators without expressing dissatisfaction.