This is the third report by the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) that examines leadership development programs supported by The Chicago Public Education Fund for Chicago public school principals and teachers. This current study, like the previous two, is not a comprehensive program evaluation. It is more descriptive in nature,…

Leadership for literacy coaching is evolving in both the skills of the literacy coaches and the skills of those they coach. Issues of role clarification, communication with administration, and hesitancy to provide authentic feedback are consistently identified. Trends associated with literacy coaching indicate that they continue on their…

This article focuses on teacher leadership, an important dimension of the work of the Leadership for Learning network which is the focus of this special issue. More specifically, the article focuses on the launch of a journal--"Teacher Leadership"--as a strategy for promoting key values: shared leadership, teachers' leadership of…

With a national drive in England for the development and restructuring of services encouraging interdisciplinary approaches and multi-agency working, the question remains as to how services should be developed and why it is perceived as so important. This study by Pearl Barnes, who is an Every Child Counts Teacher Leader and a member of the…

A rich literature--both within education circles and in other kinds of labor markets--links teachers' sense of efficacy and collective responsibility to their teaching effectiveness and improved student achievement. Prior research has found that a teacher's self-efficacy as an instructional leader is strongly and positively associated with…

After 2 years of progress, the literacy initiative at Donaldson Elementary faces challenges because of a disagreement between Principal Joanna Jackson and Literacy Coordinator Loretta Sullivan over whether Sullivan's role should include evaluative classroom observations and whether teachers should be mandated to receive coaching. The case is…

This article explores how organizational cultures shape workplace learning for those learning to be educational leaders. The discussion is illustrated with the data from an ethnographic case study which explored the workplace learning of five school leaders. The findings suggest that workplace boundaries were constructed in response to perceptions…

This study examined teachers' positioning of English language learners (ELLs) and instructional strategies to support them within the Problem Solving Cycle professional development program. Using a communities of practice lens (Wenger, 2000) and building on literature related to supporting ELLs in mathematics, Mathematics Knowledge for Teaching…

Never before has the need been so great for classroom teachers to become agents of change and position themselves as problem solvers at the school building level. Teachers are uniquely positioned to assume leadership roles on a variety of tasks that could transform schools from more traditional workplaces into professional learning communities.…

Many schools are organised into departments which function as contexts that frame teachers' professional experiences in important ways. Some educational systems have adopted distributed forms of leadership within schools that rely strongly on the departmental structure and on the role of the department coordinator as teacher leader. This paper…

The numbers are in, and they are not rosy. According to the "Schools and Staffing Survey," 64,954 public schools reported vacancies during the 2003-04 school year. Even more alarming is the fact that projections suggest teacher attrition rates will continue to soar, while student enrollments climb, well into the 21st century. American schools have…

This article discusses the step taken by various states to create endorsements to licensing systems that would formally recognize teachers who have taken on leadership roles outside their own classrooms. Louisiana is one of a handful of states that have created or are considering adding endorsements to their state licensing systems. Illinois also…

Educators in New Zealand (NZ) stand poised to shift from a humanistic to a pedagogical viewpoint in their induction practices. Survey results discussed in this research brief are part of the first study to combine qualitative and quantitative methods in low-socio-economic primary schools. As part of her research for the New Teachers Center in…

In this article, we consider the complex and dynamic inter-relationships between individual science teachers, the social space of their work and their dispositions towards teacher leadership. Research into the representation of school science departments through individual science teachers is scarce. We explore the representations of four…

With the growing demand for early childhood teachers, Teach For America (TFA) is helping college graduates become early childhood educators. This article reports how TFA trains college graduates to be prepared for the demands of early childhood classrooms. TFA, which was founded in 1990 by then-college student Wendy Kopp, has prepared 17,000…