Schools and districts face continuing pressure to implement educational reforms that will bring about improved academic outcomes for all students. Successfully implementing these needed reforms requires individual administrators to distribute leadership activities throughout the network of leaders present at the site and district level, more specifically, to teacher leaders. Teacher leaders are uniquely positioned to create meaningful change, but they need training and support in order to successfully enact their role. This study examines the extent to which teacher leaders are prepared for and supported in their role by site and district administrators. To answer this question, we engaged 11 participants: six administrators and five teacher leaders, through a series of interviews to explore how teacher leadership is defined, understand how teacher leaders integrate within the distributed leadership network existing in their context, and explore the processes administrators utilize to prepare and support teachers in leadership roles. Our results demonstrated that a lack of a uniform definition for the teacher leadership role, misconception of how teacher leaders fit within the larger extant leadership network at the secondary and district levels, and misalignment of expectations for teacher leaders from participants in each sampled category, contributed directly to an ineffective system of preparation and support for teacher leaders and a decrease in the overall efficacy of teacher leaders within the district. The results from this study underscore the need for educational leaders to develop a clear and aligned definition of teacher leadership and use their definition to design a career-long system of preparation and support which will position teachers to successfully drive educational reforms. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]