Session Information
26 SES 06 B, Teacher Leadership and Teachers' Dealings with Educational Leadership
Paper Session
Contribution
1. Background
The concept of teacher leadership, which can be traced back to the early 20th Century in the United States (Smylie et al., 2002), has established itself as one of the core leadership models within the field of educational leadership and management (Bush & Glover, 2014; Gumus et al., 2016). 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” (York-Barr & Duke, 2004, p. 287-288). The definition underscores the key tenets of teacher leadership: nature, method, and purpose. First, the nature of teacher leadership is conceived as a process rather than a positional concept. It is not confined to only a certain set of specific skills or tasks to be accomplished. Second, teacher leadership is centered on the basis of “influence and interaction”, rather than power and authority (Poekert, 2012, p.117). Finally, this definition highlights improved student learning as an ultimate goal of teacher leadership.
Enquiry on teacher leadership has considerably developed quantitatively for the last three decades, particularly the recent years. The 2004 review of York-Barr & Duke synthesized 140 works on teacher leadership published from 1980 to 2003.
Most recently, our research team conducted a systematic review of teacher leadership research in the 2003-2016 period as an extension and continuity of York-Barr and Duke (2004) (forthcoming). The team reviewed 474 peer-refereed articles published between January 2003 and April 2016. Our review has identified noticeable gaps for further scrutiny. Within this paper, the author wishes to highlight two suggestions based on those gaps. First, most empirical studies on teacher leadership are still confined to the mere description with either using small-scale qualitative case study designs (mostly) or some descriptive survey designs. There is a need to make more efforts at offering the theoretical perspectives of teacher leadership. Second, while teacher leadership is influence-based (Collinson, 2012; Hatch et al., 2005; York-Barr and Duke, 2004), little has been known about the process of how teacher leaders exert positive influences on their colleagues for enhanced student learning and school effectiveness. This leaves a potential void for future investigation.
2. Objectives and Significance of Study
The current study was conducted to address the two aforementioned suggestions for empirical research. Specifically, this study aimed to construct a theoretical model of describing and explaining the process of how teacher leaders influence their colleagues for improved teaching and learning quality. Addressing this research problem, the study sought to: (1) give voice to an underexplored problem; (2) contribute to theorizing the peer-influence process in the educational setting.
3. Relevance to International/European Scope
Although this study was primarily undertaken in the Singapore context, it offers potential contributions on the international scale. First, the final outcome is a theoretical model of teacher peer influence that targets at theoretical generalizability, rather than population generalization. European researchers might be interested in seeing how the lateral influence is elucidated in a model and testing it in their specific contexts in the future research. Second, this presentation will provide an account on how grounded theory methodology (GMT) has been applied. This might attract European educational leadership scholars because (a) the application of GTM for the purpose of theory building varies amongst disciplines (Charmaz, 2014; Urquhart, 2013) and (b) little effort has been done to discuss the use of GTM in the discipline of educational leadership.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
References 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 Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory. Sage. Collinson, V. (2012). Leading by learning, learning by leading. Professional Development in Education, 38(2), 247-266. doi: 10.1080/19415257.2012.657866 Glaser, B. (1978). Theoretical sensitivity. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The Discovery Of Grounded Theory: Strategies For Qualitative Research. Aldine, Chicago, IL. Gumus, S., Bellibas, M. S., Esen, M., & Gumus, E. (2016), “A systematic review of studies on leadership models in educational research from 1980 to 2014”, Educational Management Administration & Leadership 1741143216659296, first published on September 22, 2016. Hatch, T., White, M. E., & Faigenbaum, D. (2005). Expertise, Credibility, and Influence: How Teachers Can Influence Policy, Advance Research, and Improve Performance. Teachers College Record, 107(5), 1004-1035. 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., Conley, S., & Marks, H. M. (2002). Exploring new approaches to teacher leadership for school improvement. In J. Murphy (Ed.), The Educational leadership challenge: Redefining leadership for the 21st century. One-hundred-and-first yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I (pp. 162-188). Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory., 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Sage Publications, Inc. Thornberg, R., & Charmaz, K. (2012). Grounded theory. In S. D. Lapan, M. T. Quartaroli, & F. J. Riemer (Eds.), Qualitative research: An introduction to methods and designs (pp.4167). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Urquhart, C., Lehmann, H., & Myers, M. D. (2010). Putting the ‘theory’ back into grounded theory: guidelines for grounded theory studies in information systems. Information Systems Journal, 20(4), 357-381. 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.
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