This symposium focuses on issues and conceptualisations which are explored in a new book: ‘Teachers and the practice of leadership: enabling change for transformation and social justice’ (Frost, Durrant, Hill, Holden & Roberts, 2025). They are also reflected in a range of research and development projects led by the contributors to the symposium.

The question that underpinned all of these projects was: what forms of support would enable teachers to become effective agents of change?

The common experience of the speakers in this symposium is the International Teacher Leadership (ITL) initiative, originally launched in Cambridge, UK in 2008 (Frost, 2012).  ITL, in its original form, involved programmes to support ‘non-positional teacher leadership in countries in Europe and the Western Balkans. In the intervening years more programmes have been launched in the Middle East and Central Asia, the most recent being in Kazakhstan in 2024.

In this symposium, speakers will explore the common threads discernible in a range of projects which have contributed to what has been called the democratization of education. The projects discussed in this symposium have been led by a number of non-governmental and civil society organisations in partnership with colleagues in universities. The ITL collaboration rested on the shared assumption that education plays a central role in shaping society, whether that be a matter of the reproduction of the structure of society or through the passing on to future generations the knowledge, values and ways of thinking that are embedded in curricula. The common threads in the projects we will discuss in this symposium include critical thinking, participation, voice, inclusion and, underlying all of these, human agency.

The new book referred to above includes evidence from a rich pattern of research and interventions over many years which have enabled many teachers to become agents of change in countries in Europe, the Western Balkans, the Middle East and Central Asia.  In this book, the authors engage in critical explorations of teacher identity, educational change and leadership in education before putting forward a model of support for ‘non-positional teacher leadership’ and presenting evidence of its outcomes.

Through the presentation of the four papers detailed below, and the ensuing discussion, symposium participants will be able to explore how teachers’ modes of professionality can be enhanced, enabling them to exercise leadership and become change agents in their schools and beyond.  In paper 1 the authors provide a conceptual exploration of educational change and the role that teachers can play in it. This paper lays out the conceptual foundation for the papers that follow. Paper 2 focuses on a recent project in Kazakhstan in which the model of support for non-positional teacher leadership was deployed to support the development of practice in remote and rural schools in Kazakhstan. In paper 3, the author traces the connections between the teacher leadership initiative which took place in Portugal and a wider range of teacher focused projects. Similarly, paper 4 traces the connections between the work on teacher leadership in 2010-12 and subsequent projects in the Western Balkans and in Spain.

The presentations in this symposium will be concise so as to allow plenty of time for discussion. Participants will be invited to engage in a dialogical process through the connections to other teacher-focused projects can be explore.

Frost, D. (2012) From professional development to system change: teacher leadership and innovation, Professional Development in Education (special issue on Teacher Leadership and Professional Development) 38 (2), 205-227. Frost, D., Durrant, J., Hill, V., Holden, G. and Roberts (2025) Teachers and the practice of leadership: enabling change for transformation and social justice. London: Routledge.