In chemistry, a catalyst accelerates change without being depleted. As we seek school improvement, we need sustainable, scalable changes, and therefore catalytic structures are ideal. From communities of practice to professional learning communities to Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) much has been made in the scholarly and consultancy…

Teacher leadership remains at the forefront of conversations in teacher education, with discussions on recruitment, retention, and effectiveness. Teachers are at the core of schooling, and the roles they assume and types of leadership they engage in are multi-dimensional. Teacher leadership comes in many shapes and definitions. In this sense, both…

Today, more than ever, teachers must work effectively and efficiently to meet seemingly contradictory demands placed on them by society. On the one hand, school personnel are tasked with attaining and publicly reporting high levels of student achievement in response to No Child Left Behind. On the other, school personnel must ensure that students…

It is a challenge for schools with large populations of students from low-income, migrant, and international families to ensure that every student reaches proficiency on challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic assessments. Traditionally, schools across the country have tended to cope with this challenge by offering a…

This paper reports on an ethnographic study of 25 teacher leaders in five schools within a large midwestern city school district. Data was collected through unstructured interviews and observations of teachers. Three central themes appeared repeatedly, and explain the presence of and support for teachers as leaders, including: (1) specific school…