Didactics, the core in practical education, plays a vital role in schools throughout the world. Didactics focus on the actors in a learning situation. Didactic competence is described as knowledge of how to teach and communicate knowledge. This leads to the question of how teachers lead students’ learning—i.e., how didactic competence is reflected in the leadership or vice versa. Teacher leadership is complex, and the foundation for becoming a good teacher is to be a good leader. Teachers are now expected to be more professional than they previously had; to synchronously consider their own role in the relationships of teacher-student, teacher–subject, and subject-student; and to simultaneously manage both individuals and classes/groups of students to enable the learning process to work fairly consistently. This comprehensive and target-based approach requires formal "classroom management,” which includes the management of a variety of teaching situations.

Teacher leadership is often regarded as a distinct phenomenon from the community, and it is often neglected in leadership and organizational research in general (Berg, Sundh , & Wede, 2012). This type of leadership is distinct from teachers' organizational leadership, which may include, for instance, lesson plans and deviates from the traditional concept of “classroom management."

Based on aspects of didactics, there is a need for a comprehensive international overview of this type of teacher leadership and its impact on students' learning. We call this the teachers’ didactic leadership. The analysis unit is limited to the individual teaching situation, which we name the “didactic room,” where teachers indirectly or directly interact with students/student groups and subjects. Scoping teacher leadership to the didactic room fills an existing research knowledge gap that can be covered by the concept of “didactic leadership” (Augustsson & Boström, 2012). Didactic leadership regards the attitudes and behaviors that teachers use in the didactic room to influence student thinking, learning and behavior.

“Didactic leadership” relates to and complements the international research on “Educational Leadership” and “Classroom leadership.” The construction of the concept of “didactic leadership” is based on several important international sources of inspiration. Some are Spillane 's (2006) focus on leadership-situated individual practice, routines, and social interactions between leaders, followers, and the current situation; Harris ' (2008) emphasis on the relationship between distributed leadership and learning in both the school and classroom; Hargreave and Fink 's (2006, p.136) emphasis on leadership that extends “across individuals, communities, and networksand down organizational layers”; and  Hersey, Blanchard, and Natemeyer’s (1979) integration of situational leadership and power that enables a direct connection between teachers' subject knowledge, pedagogical skills, and leadership in the didactic room.

For prominent international research and cited ditto, tangential teacher leadership, refer to the following: Crowther and Olsen, 1997; Ertesvåg, 2009; Granström, 2012; Grogan, 2013; Hargreaves and Fink, 2006; Harris, 2008; Hersey, Blanchard, and Natemeyer, 1979; Muijs and Harris, 2003; Pounder, 2006, 2008; and Spillane, 2006. Other valuable international research is Hattie’s (2009) meta-analysis of influencing factors of learning and study achievements, Håkansson and Sundberg (2012) and the Swedish School Inspectorate’s (2010) reviews of research on success factors in Swedish and international Contexts, Nordenbo, et al. (2008) on teacher competence, and Granström’s (2007) overview of the work of teachers in the classroom.

By virtue of the foregoing, the purpose of this study was, from an international perspective, toidentify and classify findings from published research on teachers’ leadership in the didactic room. The objectives were to (a) identify patterns and trends in the research, (b) describe and compare the published findings, and (c) point to a future research agenda.

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