Scholars have rarely investigated how people become informal leaders who ‘walk ahead,’ model learning and innovation, and develop relationships and networks to influence others and extend their own learning.  Studies of this phenomenon among full-time classroom teachers who exercise leadership within their schools and beyond are even more rare.  This article draws on data from a national study of 81 secondary school teachers across the US who were nominated by peers as exemplary classroom teachers.  Data indicated that the participating teachers were highly engaged in leadership activities and that their spheres of influence ranged well beyond their schools, often to the state or national level.  How did these teachers learn to exercise leadership while continuing as full-time classroom teachers?

Despite the extensive ways in which the exemplary teachers exercised leadership, these teacher leaders did not set out with the intent to lead.  Rather, because they shared a deep commitment to students’ learning as well as a personal nonstop quest for learning and genuine desire to improve their professional practice, their intent was to learn in order to better help students learn.  Their own learning represented self-imposed choices which, coupled with their teaching skills, helped them become leaders.  No one designed new roles for these teachers, or gave them the title of teacher leader, or removed them from the classroom so they could lead.  Instead, the teachers voluntarily created, found, or accepted opportunities that allowed them to learn, help students learn, and, at the same time, influence colleagues’ learning.  In short, these teachers were learners before they were leaders.  Then, as leaders, they discovered they still had much more to learn.

Review of Literature

-       will provide a brief description of the origin of the concept of teacher leader, especially its connection to the professionalization of teaching movement and its tendency to formalize such roles despite unfavorable perceptions among teachers (Little, 2000; Smylie, Conley, & Marks, 2002)

-       describe new understandings of leadership in general since the 1980s (Argyris & Schön, 1996; Barth, 2001; Kouzes & Posner, 2002; Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond, 2001; Weick & Quinn, 1999).  These views, as well as Senge’s (1996) description of “internal networkers,” emphasize leaders as coming from anywhere within the organization, as being “leading learners” and “leader as teacher” in the sense that they make deep changes within themselves and then “show people how to be.” 

Such leaders do not come made-to-order; their development occurs over time.  Although these leaders are distinguished by the “clarity and persuasiveness of their ideas, the depth of their commitment, and their openness to continually learning more” (Senge, 1990, p. 359), their leadership is a by-product of a lifetime of learning and effort “to develop conceptual and communication skills, to reflect on personal values and to align personal behavior with values, to learn how to listen and to appreciate others and others’ ideas” (p. 359).  Moreover, such leaders can occur in any organization; they can be business leaders in companies, leaders in non-profit organizations, or teacher leaders in schools.

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