This newsletter defines teacher leadership and offers concrete ways teachers can step forward, sometimes out of their comfort zones, into leadership roles. In most schools, traditional structures are in place that define certain teachers as leaders such as department heads and grade-level team leaders. Many schools also have a leadership team,…

This literature review describes ways of thinking about sharing school leadership and to examine the possible link between shared leadership and student achievement. This review examines four different approaches to school leadership that involve more than a single individual. These four were selected because they were most widely represented in…

This article explores the emerging discourse about teacher leadership in the UK. It draws upon the international literature in exploring a classification of forms of teacher leadership and discusses issues concerned with the policy context. It considers some theoretical perspectives on distributed leadership before going on to examine in detail a…

In The Netherlands, school management is no longer deemed senior management's exclusive preserve. This paper reports Dutch research into departmental teams carrying out middle-management functions in secondary schools. Departments offer relevant contexts for teachers' collective engagement and collaboration but can create barriers to professional…

This report presents information from discussions by the Institute for Educational Leadership Task Force on Teacher Leadership, highlighting dilemmas surrounding teacher leadership and suggesting that education's policymakers should exploit the experience and capacity to lead today's schoolteachers. Overall, the system has not been organized to…

Explores the benefits of teacher leadership as well as the barriers to and opportunities for making teacher leadership work in practice. Concludes that teacher leadership could have beneficial effects on school improvement, but that the right conditions need to be in place. (Contains 79 references.) (MLF)

Describes the objectives of teacher leadership, discussing related initiatives and literature. Suggests that leadership is an organizational phenomenon that can be understood only in the context of the structural, social, political, and cultural dimensions of school organizations. Presents an overview of this special issue, describing the authors…

Between 1996 and 1998, a team of teacher-consultants affiliated with the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project (KMWP), Georgia, used support from Project Outreach of the National Writing Project to develop a model for promoting teacher leadership within individual urban schools and for their writing project site as a whole. Their model is not a…

This paper addresses educational reform centering on teacher participation and leadership. Although schools have developed new mission statements and implemented strategic planning and site-based management in recent years, most schools are not set up to accept teachers in leadership roles. The literature suggests that our "new" schools…

This publication explores the future of schooling and the role of teacher leaders. Several questions are examined: (1) why teachers must take primary responsibility for creating a new context for teaching and learning; (2) how "constructivist leaders" create meaning out of learning; (3) how the roles of leadership with adults and with…

Discusses challenges to traditional views of school leadership posed by many school reform initiatives, curriculum innovations, and teacher incentive plans. Examines teacher leadership structures in light of the purposes and goals they seek to advance. Uses nonhierarhical theories of leadership from the general leadership literature to examine…

Provides an overview of key research findings that confirm that changes in teacher practices and external support for teaching and learning affect student achievement. Analyzes individual research-based classroom practices that affect student achievement and support a systemic, holistic approach: clear academic focus and frequent assessments,…