Interest in teacher leadership as an effective strategy to recognize teacher expertise, distribute administrative responsibilities, and increase professionalism in the teaching profession grew during the 1990s and 2000 with the seminal work in the United States published by York-Barr and Duke (2004) and well-known publications for teachers by Alma Harris and Daniel Mujis (2004) in the United Kingdom. The field continued to expand with major reviews of the literature on teacher leadership published by Wenner and Campbell in 2017 and Cherkowski and Bradley-Levine in 2018. These ideas have been addressed in Europe in efforts such as the Teachers Leader Project which include work in Poland, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece intended to offer strategies and polices for teacher leaders and research such as Bektaş, F., Ali C. & Gümüş S. (2020). These recent reviews and studies discuss the expanding knowledge in the field, address the issues of defining teacher leadership, and deliberate the distinctions between teacher and administrator leadership (Uribe-Flórez, Al-Rawashdeh, & Morales, 2014). Wenner and Campbell identified Accountability and Equity as prominent topics in recent educational policy and practice but received limited attention in teacher leadership studies. This study contributes to the examination of these previously under researched areas.
Accountability and equity received limited examination in teacher leadership research, in spite of their primary roles in the development of educational policy. Few studies examined either teacher leadership perception of equity or the role of accountability in their work as teacher leaders. The current study examines U.S. and German teacher leaders from the understanding and perceptions of these two issues. The study then goes beyond the awareness stage to examine actions taken by the teacher leaders to determine if these topics influenced their goals or were integrated into their efforts. Begun in fall of 2019, the study continues through the fall of 2020 covering a year time span including the impact of COVID 19.
Teachers in the sample currently participate in a graduate degree program focuesed on advanced mathematics content, pedagogy for diverse learners, teacher leadership and action research. The sample includes twelve experienced certified teachers from Germany and the United States enrolled in this online Masters of Arts program. Data was collected over the year period from the teachers located in a six different secondary schools who taught courses ranging from Pre-Algebra to Calculus to students between the ages of 14 and 18. There were three sets of data collected collected in 2019-2020. The first two data sets were from online discussion forums on the topics of equity and accountability. The first data collection formed the basis for studying the teacher leaders’ perception of the school’s accountability for student learning and the role the teacher leader in assuring equity of opportunity for students. The second collection examined teachers’ commentary on the roles student diversity plays in planning and instruction. The third data collection surveyed plans and actions teacher leaders undertook in the three months after the initial data collections. These independent activities were two fold. One was a curriculum and instructional change to promote learning for their students.There were over 10 independent data points of each teacher leader, including plans, student assessments, reflections, and colleagues’ reviews of their work. Data formed the assessment of the role of accountability and equity played in their leadership roles.
An additional data set was collected during the fall 2020 semester including student performance and teachers action during the the COVID-19 epidemic. This data address the changes made based on the constraints place on instructional practices, student academic and emotional needs and teachers’ perceptions of the overall success of their interventions and professional development activities.