Providing an equitable education for English learner (EL) students continues to challenge educators. Existing research suggests that instructional leaders, such as teacher leaders, play a central role in improving the teaching and learning of EL students. Using a distributed leadership framework, this study examines how 2 teacher leaders…

The United States is facing a bilingual teacher shortage, a fact that is particularly troubling as the emergent bilingual population continues to grow nationwide. Prior research suggests that the shortage of bilingual teachers may affect the quality of instruction emergent bilinguals receive, yet little is known about the potential effects of this…

The role of principals, especially in rural schools, where educational outcomes fall below the national average, is significant in implementing changes in the school. The focus of this qualitative study was to explore factors that principals deem most crucial to establishing and maintaining Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). Moreover,…

In this article, professors share how the district/university partnership model thriving at Kansas State University was successfully replicated in North Dakota, and was adapted to match their own department goals. While teacher leadership has become a theme among Kansas State academies, their model was created out of principal preparation efforts.…

Teachers matter. Do our actions show that we believe this to be true? When treated as professionals and given the opportunity to participate in building and extending the profession, teachers rise to the occasion. Beyond Our Own Walls, a series of cross-school instructional rounds, was born out of a conversation that focused on what would happen…

This article investigates district-level administrators' perceptions regarding the value of the partnership academies. The article uses input from seven district administrators who provided feedback regarding the value of the district and university partnership, specific benefits to the district, the differences between participants who envision…

Currently, there is limited research examining the barriers that immigrant professionals experience when becoming a bilingual teacher in the United States. This study examines the trajectory of a Mexican national, trained as a teacher in his home country, who became a bilingual dual-language educator in a Central Texas school district. Drawing on…

The past several years have seen a growing interest in, and adoption of, Teacher Leader (TL) programs throughout the country and among TIF 4 grantees. Often, these programs have been embedded within large- scale career ladder compensation systems. Several recent writings describe this recent growth surge, design issues in the creation of a total…

During recent years, literacy coaching has become a widespread model of professional development for teachers in schools across the United States. However, there is a shortage of research and policy to inform the preparation and ongoing work of literacy coaches. In this article, the researchers use a modified version of Gee's identity framework to…

Leaders exist at many levels. Within the educational arena, studies have shown the correlation of leadership styles among principals and the school culture (Pepper & Thomas, 2002; "Perspective", 2012; Williams, 2009). This study attempted to extend Bass's Transformational Leadership Theory (1985) and Hersey and Blanchard's…

This article presents findings from a multi-year, qualitative study of K-12 science teacher fellows involved in a grant-funded professional development program. This research hones in on Year 2 where we examine the actions our fellows have taken in their districts as science teacher leaders and their sense of agency. The following main themes…

Background/Context: Most educators have had little if any preparation in racial literacy, the understanding of social identity related to race and the ability to recognize and negotiate racism. In fact, they may view race as irrelevant. Yet teachers and school leaders hold deep-seated racial ideologies that shape their day-to-day practice and have…

Research can be a powerful tool in education, but it's an even more powerful tool when that research is created, implemented, and reflected upon by the education experts themselves--classroom teachers. This research mobilized a cadre of STEM teacher leaders to help unpack the overarching research question: How does the collective leadership of…

This paper describes an ongoing Professional Development (PD) program that aimed to prepare teacher-leaders for rural English learner (EL) students. We delineate the theoretical underpinnings of the PD design and describe the two-year graduate coursework program with onsite coaching in rural schools in detail. We define rurality and the context of…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to employ confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to compare the four-factor model of teacher leadership with three alternative models. The alternative models of teacher leadership include: (a) a two-factor model investigating teacher leadership as teacher-driven and principal-driven factors, (b) a…