This paper presents the stories of two urban middle school science teachers, both identified as leaders in their districts. Both bring substantial expertise to science education, though neither has experienced optimal conditions for flourishing as teacher leaders. One teacher has strong content knowledge and a deep understanding of standards. The…

Examined learning's role in the working lives of 51 teacher-leaders in the Pacific Northwest, focusing on in-depth case studies of nine individuals. Predictable hindrances to adult learning emerged from subject interviews: lack of time, collegial tolerance, and administrative support; family pressures; and inappropriate inservice. Despite decades…

Proposes new forms of teacher leadership emerging in professional development schools. Suggests that teacher leadership is inextricably connected to teacher learning and can be embedded in tasks and roles that do not create artificial, imposed, formal hierarchies; such approaches may lead to greater profession-wide leadership, thereby improving…

Although teachers are increasingly expected to work with colleagues, administrators, and parents to achieve schoolwide reforms, the existing professional socialization of new teachers does little to encourage acquisition of collaboration skills. Preservice education must help beginning teachers develop the commitment, skills, and knowledge…

Changing conditions in teaching and national and state policy environments have dramatically increased the distance between undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs and ways that inservice teachers are being educated, reeducated, trained, and retrained. The paper highlights: comprehensive school reform and its meaning for new…

Over the past two decades, scholars and practitioners in a variety of industries have considered work redesign among a constellation of strategies to promote employee recruitment and retention, development, motivation, and performance. Although educational policymakers in the middle to late 1990s shifted their attention to standards, systemic…

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…

Examined leadership roles that classroom teachers filled within the University of South Carolina's Professional Development School (PDS) network. Focus-group discussions with participating teachers indicated that mentor teachers worked with preservice teachers in nontraditional ways, engaging in meaningful teaching experiences and instructing…

Computer-based multimedia technologies have great potential for providing rich learning opportunities for school leaders in the context of their work. One promising avenue is the development of hypertext narratives of practice that can capture and communicate the complexities of exemplary leadership practice. This paper discusses the construction…

This is the 2011 Yearbook of the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA). This Yearbook contains five parts. Part I, Invited Chapters, includes: (1) NCPEA President's Message, 2011 (Gary W. Kinsey); (2) Shadows and Images II (Lloyd Duvall); and (3) Micropolitics in the School: Teacher Leaders' Use of Political Skill…

The Chicago Public Education Fund operates as a venture philanthropy: It raises capital from individual and institutional donors and then provides grant funding and direct, hands-on assistance to grantees. With a grantmaking budget totaling $25 million between 2000 and 2008, it seeks to recruit and develop high-potential new teachers and aspiring…

This study examined what teachers needed to learn to teach in new ways and how teachers developed those capacities. It also investigated the additional skills and orientations teachers needed to take on leadership roles and how teacher leaders acquired their ability to lead their colleagues. Data came from a 2-year study of 10 exemplary teacher…

Explores the need for teacher leadership in the context of national trends in teacher education, portraying the teachers-as-leaders concept as a natural outgrowth of the convergence of several forces in educational change. The article describes two professional education programs at Johns Hopkins University that prepare teachers for new roles as…

This report presents the results of a study that examined the role and activities of reform coaches. Positions for reform coaches have been developed in a number of schools and districts in the San Francisco Bay Area through the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC). The study examined the reform coach role, the functions it provides to the…

Describes one principal's success at helping teachers guide reform in a Wisconsin elementary school by creating, with the help of his teachers, a school that abolished age-based grade levels and traditional grades for some students. The paper describes what it takes to create a successful program that encourages teacher collaboration. A sidebar…