Objective: This study aims to explore how Chinese model teachers understand and improve teachers’ instructional leadership. Model teachers, namely distinguished teachers and lead teachers in various contexts, are teachers who have the abilities to enhance instructional effectiveness, guide teachers’ professional development, and undertake social and national responsibilities (Berry & Ginsberg, 1990; Queensland College of Teachers, 2011; Edwards & Ogle, 2021). For instance, Berry and Ginsberg (1990) said model teachers must possess high-level teaching skills and corresponding subject expertise, which is the core qualification as instructional leaders. However, a few academics focused on how model teachers understand teachers’ instructional leadership and what are their strategies for practicing this leadership. 

Research Question:

1) What is teachers’ instructional leadership from Chinese model teachers’ perspectives?

2) How do Chinese model teachers improve their instructional leadership?

Theoretical Framework: Instructional leadership is not a specific term for teachers. In the early phase, many researchers focus on the instructional leadership of principals or administrative school leaders. Recently, more and more researchers pay their attention to teachers’ instructional leadership, and they clarify the connotation of instructional in personal, stakeholder, and socio-cultural levels. In terms of individual level, instructional leadership is the high level of the drive for professional development. Specifically, teachers with instructional leadership are good at find and take advantage of professional learning opportunities to strengthen their teaching ability (Berry & Ginsberg, 1990). When it comes to the stakeholder level, instructional leadership is a process of building relationships, in which teachers with this type of leadership can influence their colleagues, school leaders, students, parents, community members and other stakeholders. And this process aims at enhancing teaching and learning quality (Wang, 2020; York-Barr & Duke, 2004). In addition, at the socio-cultural level, instructional leadership is support for the district or national reform. Instructional teacher leaders are responsible for providing advice and practical experience for regional or even national education and teaching reform and improvement (Mangin & Stoelinga, 2010). 

However, most of the existing studies limit the connotation of teachers' instructional leadership to classroom teaching, believing that teachers who can improve classroom teaching and promote students' learning and development are instructional teacher leaders. This version underestimates the leadership of teachers in teaching. In fact, many teachers with instructional leadership can not only promote the improvement of classroom teaching and the academic achievement of students, but also can influence and lead teachers' professional development and learning, and even advance the implementation of the relevant national education policy, such as teaching, curriculum, teacher policy and so on.

This study posits understanding teachers’ instructional leadership in the Chinese context. This context has unique characteristics in terms of individuals, stakeholders, and socio-cultural environment, which can help us understand teachers’ instructional leadership from a relatively new perspective. In terms of individual environment, Chinese teachers have different professional titles (third-, second-, first-, advanced and distinguished level), corresponding to varying teaching abilities (Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, 2015). In terms of stakeholders, apart from students, colleagues, school leaders and parents, teaching-research officers are another stakeholder of Chinese teachers who influence teachers’ understanding and promotion of instructional leadership (Luo & Zhao, 2021). In terms of socio-cultural environment, China is implementing the policy of echelonization of teaching staff. This policy encourages the professional development of good teachers, excellent teachers and educationalist teachers, and asks these three types of teachers undertake corresponding social responsibilities (Ministry of Education, 2018). Therefore, a richer understanding of instructional leadership can be gained from the perspective of Chinese model teachers based on the specific individual, stakeholder and socio-cultural contexts in China.

This study adopts to the case study as the methodology. Based on the meaning of the case, the case is a circumstance that includes the context, time or people. Thus, this research regards the instructional leadership of seven participating teachers as a case. The informants are seven model teachers in China. All these teachers participated in a three-year professional development (PD) program called “Expert Teachers Leading the Voyage (ETLV)” (Ministry of Education, 2018). This PD program selected 14 universities or colleges as PD bases and recruited 129 expert teachers from the whole country to conduct professional learning with the support of these PD bases. The ETLV program aims to promote the continuous development of these selected expert teachers and facilitate them to become model teachers with leadership within three years. As two designers of some PD courses and activities in the ETLV program, we honorably had the opportunity to know seven excellent model teachers in this program. In this case, we invited them to join this study as informants, and all of them agree to do so voluntarily. All of these participants have been working in schools for more than 25 years. They have been conferred as “advanced or distinguished teachers”, which are the first two highest officially recognized professional qualifications for elementary and secondary school teachers in China. Therefore, these participants can provide various versions of instructional leadership and the corresponding practice cases. This study relied on the longitudinal way to collect data. First, according to research questions, we designed a series of questions to interview participating teachers. Second, we interacted with these model teachers to build a reliable relationship with them, which can provide a trustful and relaxed atmosphere in the process of one-on-one interviews. Third, when all the preparations are in place, we conducted face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with participating teachers. Given the data type, we chose the content analysis method (Cohen et al., 2007; Merriam, 2009) to analyze data. First, we transcribed all video recordings to the texts and proofread them to make sure these texts are correct. Second, we read all transcriptions more than once and tried to stand in model teachers’ perspective to understand these transcriptions deeply. Third, we coded the raw data and constructed some types of code to answer the two research questions.

This study found that Chinese model teachers have a unique understanding of teachers’ instructional leadership at personal, stakeholder, and socio-cultural levels. First, the individual level of teachers’ instructional leadership is the enthusiasm of teaching, which means instructional teacher leaders have a great passion for teaching and like challenges and changes. Thus, they call themselves “crazy” teachers. At the stakeholder level, teachers’ instructional leadership is personal charisma. Participants thought that teachers with instructional leadership could attract people to work together to improve educational quality in their schools. They also often refer to themselves as “magnet” teachers. Third, the socio-cultural level of teachers’ instructional leadership is the sense of responsibility. Teachers with this leadership can timely and accurately understand the requirements of policies on teachers or teaching and make corresponding responses. In this way, they call themselves “bridge” teachers. The data analysis of this study found that model teachers’ characteristics, stakeholder interaction, and socio-cultural support are the leading measures that contribute to improving teachers’ instructional leadership. In addition, the interaction with professional models is an important way for model teachers to improve their instructional leadership. Model teachers often actively seek diverse opportunities to interact with these professional models, who have constructed their teaching or educational theories and can impact the professional development of teachers in the whole country. This interaction can inspire model teachers to verify their thinking about teaching and improve the rationality of their teaching theories. Third, external professional intervention with policy support plays a significant role in developing teachers’ instructional leadership. As distinguished or advanced teachers, model teachers have many chances to join national PD programs. In these programs, model teachers can discuss educational topics with scholars and lead their teams to conduct teaching research under the guidance of academics, which can improve their instructional leadership.

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