School personnel across the United States are developing additional teacher leadership roles to improve professional learning and retain effective teachers. More information is needed concerning how middle school principals are guiding the development of teacher leaders in their schools. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore…

The aim of this study was to describe the trajectories of teacher leadership development by investigating the interaction between teachers' perceptions and practices of leadership at different career stages. A case study design was adopted. Data were collected from four primary school teachers in China through narrative-style, semi-structured…

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…

Purpose: Whilst professional learning communities (PLCs) have been widely explored at the school level, they have received less attention at the departmental level. The study takes the variance between departments and the role of departmental teacher leaders into consideration, and the relationships amongst departmental-level PLC dimensions, two…

Having survived the disruptive global pandemic, the higher education community is believed to grow to be more adaptive and resilient. As contributors to the new 'normal', yet evolving post-pandemic state, faculty have been painstakingly working to support students' learning and human needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research documents faculty…

This volume of the Perspectives on Mentoring Series explores the role of mentoring in promoting wellbeing of both mentees or proteges and mentors in K-12 school settings. At its core, mentoring is about helping, advising, supporting, and guiding mentees and proteges to gain a wide variety of skills, abilities, and/or attributes. Another outcome of…

The use of information and communication technology-based data systems to support teachers in data-driven decision-making (DDDM) remains limited. Despite the growing number of data systems available, their uptake remains limited, and there is a limited understanding of what data system characteristics increase and factors that influence teacher…

Union County Public Schools (UCPS) received a U.S. Department of Education Teacher and School Leader Incentive Program grant in 2017, supporting the EPIC program aimed at transforming education in 13 low-performing, high-poverty schools. The EPIC initiative had two primary goals: redesigning the Human Capital Management System and…

The number of low-performing schools has drastically increased since COVID-19. During the 2018-2019 school year, there were 488 low-performing schools (North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2024). The number increased to 736 schools during the 2023- 2024 school year, a 50.8% increase (North Carolina Department of Public Instruction,…

Writing is an essential life skill. It is a critical area of literacy instruction and high-stakes assessments. However, emphasis on writing instruction and assessment has not correlated with widespread writing proficiency. Within this context, teachers experience the phenomenon of writing instructional leadership. Teachers' preparation as writers…

Background: Developing a school as a learning community is a complex process necessitating active engagement from the entire school community. This paper reports on a study from Finland that focused on exploring learning community development grounded in a shared vision. Purpose: We sought to investigate the development of a school community with…

Teacher leadership has been defined by researchers as the catalyst for change, and the impetus for school improvement. In this study, the researcher investigated the experiences of teachers and administrators who participated in a nationwide teacher leadership pilot, the Teacher Leadership Initiative (TLI), and the effects that this yearlong event…

The current study adopted the Teacher Leadership Inventory (TLI) to understand the perceptions of mentor teachers and student teachers towards teacher leadership, and identify the variables which affected these perspectives. A one-way ANOVA was used to determine whether there were any statistically significant differences between their perceptions…

The current study explores teacher leaders' emotions and its relationship with teacher professionalism and collegial trust in the Chinese context. A sample of 477 teacher leaders in China responded to three measures, namely, teacher leader emotions, teacher professionalism and trust in colleagues. To analyse the data, confirmatory factor analysis…

Despite the abundance of decades of research into teacher leadership, uncertainty remains due to confusion around the notions of teacher leadership and the unity or at least the authenticity of definitions, and there is a need for a deeper understanding of this leadership process as the teacher works with students in the classroom. The existing…