Richard DuFour, a leading advocate for creating professional learning communities in schools, shares his insights on why teaching has become an "embattled profession" and the steps teachers and school leaders can take to enhance teachers' practice and their working lives. DuFour explains how recent reforms aimed at educators themselves…

This article argues that while notions of collective leadership, such as distributed or shared, are nominally more inclusive, barriers to inclusive ways of thinking about and relating to one another will be multi-faceted (past and present) and formidable to change. This argument emanates from a critical review of research literature and an…

Over the past two decades, numerous textbooks have been published on teacher leadership; however, this is the only volume that provides a definitive overview of the scholarship and writing being done in the field of teacher leadership. This book introduces the reader to the scholarship of over 35 authors, and thus, becomes an essential tool needed…

The need for educational administrators at all levels has been the subject of much attention for many years now. The shortage seems evident. The numbers of qualified applicants for principal and superintendent vacancies seems at an all time low according to local personnel departments and human resource officers. Where there previously had been 20…

This letter to the future president of the United States urges her to conduct herself as president as if she were a role model of an educated person and the nation's principal teacher. This obligation entails the need always to be clear about the reasons why her decisions are taken, the evidence or values that support those decisions, the…

This article discusses how schools and school districts across the U.S. face a growing "leadership deficit." Accelerating retirements and reportedly shallow pools of applicants for administrative positions are raising alarms about future leadership. And all of this is happening just when schools will need the best leaders ever. Four…

This article considers the issues of teacher leadership in subject-based online communities across ten geographically dispersed schools with respect to authority, volunteerism, and sustainability. The conclusions drawn are that such leadership must be shared if the community is to be sustained and that, while the use of ICT facilitates the…

Cultivating the "professional knowledge landscape" of schools (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995) from the perspective of insiders can enrich the leadership and curriculum fields. Toward this end, the author offers a map for becoming oriented to one teacher group's vision for improving school environments. During the summer of 2001, 33…

Discussions with 13 teachers nationwide examined what they thought about their roles as teacher leaders, highlighting benefits of teacher leadership, necessary supports, finding time, who to talk to for support, and what has been helpful in their role as teacher leaders. Respondents were genuinely concerned about their students, eager to…

Teachers and students must become empowered to be active participants in educational improvement and school decision making. They need opportunities to develop professionally. Empowered schools and their principals are very different from schools with little empowerment. Their principals understand how to foster empowering environments. Empowered…

Superintendents, principals, and teachers can no longer work in isolation or on parallel tracks. Leaders must be role models, engage in meaningful dialogue about children, and create new learning opportunities for the adults teaching them. Schools must cultivate talented leaders, not managers, to create what does not exist. (MLH)

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…

Identifies a set of change leadership functions including sustaining a vision for change, encouraging staff, modifying standard operating procedures, and monitoring progress. Suggests that these functions do contribute to change, but are also performed redundantly by persons in a variety of overlapping roles, including central office personnel,…

Examines several issues related to job security for physical educators, such as how to gain support from principals and administrators, how to gain support and be involved in the total school program, how to identify the qualities of a successful physical education program, and how to seek help from higher education. (SM)

Employs the image of "contested ground" to characterize tensions surrounding the evolution of teacher leadership in order to illuminate the ways in which traditions of subject specialism shape assumptions about the exercise of leadership among secondary teachers. Challenges the stereotypes of the "subject-centered" teacher and…