A Contemporary Review of Research on Teacher Leadership (2003-2016)

Author(s):

Thanh Dong Nguyen(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

26. Educational Leadership

Format:

Paper

Session Information

26 SES 14 B, Teacher Leadership and Leadership Teams

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-26

15:30-17:00

Room:

OB-E1.19

Chair:

Helene Ärlestig

Contribution

Background

Teacher leadership, which has emerged as a prominent topic in the international discourse about educational leadership and management, has established itself as one of the core models of leadership (Bush & Glover, 2014). Teacher leadership has been defined as “the process by which teachers, individually or collectively, influence their colleagues, principals, and other members of the school communities to improve teaching and learning practices with the aim of increased student learning and achievement. Such a team leadership involves three intentional development foci: individual development, collaboration or team development, and organizational development” (York-Barr & Duke, 2004, p. 287-288).

Scholarly works on teacher leadership started being published in the early 1980s (York-Barr & Duke, 2004). Numerous studies on this topic were conducted between 1980 and 2003. Together with an array of empirical studies, several critical reviews were published that offered a critical examination of teacher leadership (e.g., Smylie, 1997; Harris and Muijs, 2002; Harris, 2003; York-Barr & Duke, 2004). Particularly, York-Barr and Duke (2004) conducted a comprehensive review to summarize findings and offer suggestions for the subsequent scrutiny. This review has been frequently cited (cited by at least 781 times, to the 12^th January 2016).

It has been more than one decade since York-Barr and Duke’s insightful 2004 review. Research on teacher leadership has been burgeoning with hundreds more studies published in various journals. On the one hand, these studies undoubtedly contribute to accumulating knowledge on teacher leadership and addressing the research base on this leadership model. On the other hand, it is timely to generate a comprehensive review that provides a new insight on teacher leadership and its research trends. This will help to guide the future research on teacher leadership and educational leadership and management.

During the past decade, several reviews pertaining to teacher leadership have been published. Such reviews have added valuable discussions on aspects of teacher leadership. However, these reviews delimit their scope to either a specific geographical locus or a certain aspect of teacher leadership (e.g., Harris, 2005; Billingsley, 2007; Bond, 2011; Poekert, 2012; & Neumerski, 2013).

For the aforementioned reasons, conducting a systematic and comprehensive review is of paramount importance in suggesting the agenda for the future research on teacher leadership.

Objective and Research Questions

The current review aims to investigate the overall trends in the research on teacher leadership between 2003 and 2015. Within this paper, three main research questions (RQ) are addressed as follows.

RQ1: What types of papers (Empirical, Review, or Non-Empirical) have been published? What research methods have been utilized to study teacher leadership? How have patterns in methodological preference changed?

RQ2: What are the research contexts (specifically, geographical locus & school context) of teacher leadership?

RQ3: What are the central themes of teacher leadership research?

Method

Review Process At the onset of the review, three key criteria were established to shortlist studies for review. Accordingly, a selected study must: (1) address at least a certain aspect of teacher leadership; (2) be reported in English; and (3) be published in a scholarly (peer-reviewed) journal between 2003 and 2016. We utilized EBSCOhost Research Databases; ProQuest Databases; and Google and Google Scholar. Keywords entered in the search were “teacher leadership” and “teacher leader(s)”. We set the optional default in the search engine such that a publication, any part (title, abstract, or the entire body) of which contains any of these key phrases was shortlisted for review. We had an initial number of about 1,641 hits. In the first round, the titles and abstracts of those 1,641 hits were scanned in a thorough manner. We accordingly selected 672 articles that seemed to meet the criteria. The second round of selection entailed skimming the entire full texts of 672 articles several times. As a result, 463 articles meeting all of the inclusion criteria were shortlisted for review. Of those reviewed 463 articles, there are: 289 empirical articles; 8 review articles; and 166 non-empirical articles (including conceptual articles and opinion articles). A MS Excel spreadsheet was developed to collect and summarize information about the characteristics of each study. Data stored in the spreadsheet included: author(s); year of publication; methodology (specifics about data collection & data analysis); geographical locus (if applicable); nature of teacher leadership (if applicable); key relevant findings and school context (if applicable); and journal.

Expected Outcomes

Preliminary Findings Most of the studies are predominantly based on the Anglo-American context (Australia, Canada, UK, USA, etc.). Particularly the number of articles drawn from research in the USA context constitutes about 65% (302 studies); 45 articles (nearly 10%) focus on the European context. Surfacing indigenous knowledge in non-Anglo-American societies is a need to expand the global knowledge base on teacher leadership. For example, findings from different contexts may help to better conceptualize the construct ‘teacher leadership’ and define its dimensions/factors and facets. Of 289 empirical ones, 200 articles (around 69%) adopt a qualitative research approach; 50 articles (17%) employ a quantitative research approach; and 39 articles (14%) utilize a mixed-methods approach. Most of these articles are still confined to the mere description with either using small-case qualitative case study designs (mostly) or some descriptive survey designs. Future research might need to make more efforts at offering theoretical perspectives to construct teacher-leadership-related theories. Most of the reviewed articles discuss teacher leadership in the school settings; only 6 studies address this leadership model in the higher education contexts. Investigating teacher/faculty leadership in higher education institutes might be a potentially interesting theme to expand the scope of teacher leadership research. The author hopes to offer more detailed findings and discusions over the presentation.

References

Billingsley, B. S. (2007). Recognizing and Supporting the Critical Roles of Teachers in Special Education Leadership. Exceptionality, 15(3), 163-176. Bond, N. (2011). Preparing Preservice Teachers to become Teacher Leaders. Educational Forum, 75(4), 280-297. Bush, T., & Glover, D. (2014). School leadership models: what do we know?. School Leadership & Management, 34(5), 553-571. doi:10.1080/13632434.2014.928680 Harris, A. (2003). Teacher Leadership as Distributed Leadership: heresy, fantasy or possibility? School Leadership & Management, 23(3), 313-324. Harris, A. (2005). Teacher Leadership: More than Just a Feel-Good Factor? Leadership and Policy in Schools, 4(3), 201-219. Harris, A., & Muijs, D. (2002). Teacher Leadership: a Review of Research. London: GTC. Neumerski, C. M. (2013). Rethinking Instructional Leadership, a Review: What Do We Know About Principal, Teacher, and Coach Instructional Leadership, and Where Should We Go From Here?. Educational Administration Quarterly, 49(2), 310-347. doi:10.1177/0013161X12456700 Poekert, P. E. (2012). Teacher Leadership and Professional Development: Examining Links between Two Concepts Central to School Improvement. Professional Development in Education, 38(2), 169- 188. Smylie, M. A. (1997). Research on teacher leadership: Assessing the state of the art. In B. J. Biddle, T. L. Good, & I. F. Goodson (Eds.), International handbook of teachers and teaching (pp. 521-591). Dodrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer. York-Barr, J., & Duke, K. (2004). What Do We Know About Teacher Leadership? Findings From Two Decades of Scholarship. Review of Educational Research, 74(3), 255-316.

Author Information

Thanh Dong Nguyen (presenting / submitting)

Nanyang Technological University

National Institute of Education

Singapore

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