In 1963, President Obama's parents could not have married legally in a number of states. Mary Catherine and the author graduated from Corning Free Academy in Corning, New York, in June 1963. The lessons they learned were wrenching: "Someone is going to get hurt." Doors that opened for the author slammed in Mary Catherine's face. Holding Mary…

Teaching Quality (TQ) Source Tips & Tools: Emerging Strategies to Enhance Educator Quality is an online resource developed by the TQ Center. It is designed to help education practitioners tap into strategies and resources they can use to enhance educator quality. This publication is based on the TQ Source Tips & Tools topic area "Enhancing…

Viewing teachers as leaders requires a paradigm shift about the concept of leadership in a school system. The Teachers as Leaders program of the Mountain Brook, Alabama Schools represents that shift and is empowering teachers to utilize their leadership skills and contribute to the system as it fulfills its mission to offer education to its…

Terms such as "leader", "manager", "teacher" and "student" prevail in most schools and, accordingly, school hierarchies are viewed as rational ways of organizing teachers and their work that institutionalize authority. We are deeply concerned that the term "teacher leadership" has crept into…

This study focused upon the micropolitics of teacher leadership, namely the knowledge of tactics, influencing factors and consequences of teacher leaders' daily political interactions with others within the school setting. Blase (1990, 1997) and Blase and Anderson (1995) acknowledge that teachers are not passive actors in the politics of schools,…

English primary schools are considered quasi-collegial institutions within which staff communicate regularly and openly. The activities of staff, however, are bound by institutional norms and conditions and by societal expectations. Wider agendas of governmental control over the curriculum and external controls to ensure accountability and…

Service-learning is promoted widely by professional organizations (NCSS, 2001), but often with little reflection on the nature of meaningful student participation and the impact of teacher leadership styles. The authors studied mixed-age "small school" advisory groups involved in service-learning at one elementary school; observational, interview,…

During the course of this study, I examine the effective uses of professional learning communities in relation to building leadership capacity among teachers. The literature reviewed illustrates and addresses the need for teachers to see themselves, not only as professionals, but as leaders. This study addresses the effects of this much needed…

This report synthesizes what has been learned about how leaders in urban systems focus their leadership on the improvement of learning, and what it takes to support their leadership in these settings. The report brings together findings from three sub-study strands, concerned with efforts in seven urban districts to: a) invest staffing and other…

In 2003, a curriculum reform of education was initiated in mainland China to improve the quality of senior secondary education. The major purpose of this reform was to move from a teacher-centred to a student-centred approach in teaching. In order to find out how teachers coped with the challenges of the reform and how their work was affected, an…

There is very little argument that one of the major developments to have impacted in schools in the past decade is the rapid and world-wide development of information and communication technologies (ICT), particularly the Internet. In Hong Kong, reforms in the ICT teacher training policy, and the fact that Hong Kong is a "wired" city,…

Across the United States, mainstream and English as a second language (ESL) teachers have been sharing their expertise using coteaching and collaboration strategies gleaned from their counterparts in special education inclusion classrooms. These teacher leaders are working together to enhance instruction for their English language learner (ELL)…

Framed by sociocultural learning perspectives, this study examines whether embedded learning opportunities for teachers are more supportive of reflective practice than traditional professional development. All schools in this study implemented a comprehensive school reform program. The designs of the programs introduced embedded learning…

Increased emphasis on content coverage and test scores can be an obstacle to many middle level practices, such as curriculum integration and differentiated instruction. While an increasing number of well-prepared, exemplary middle grades educators know and understand this situation, these educators are often not the ones leading school change.…

Great leaders make great schools. The most successful school leaders create a school climate of high achievement and continuous improvement, give teachers a voice in decision-making, use data to drive curriculum and instruction, and assure students and parents that everyone at the school is focusing on student success. They know what is going on…