This presentation will present findings from research studying the impact that long-term ongoing professional learning activities, such as action research and action learning, has on the leadership practices of its teacher participants. We draw upon evidence from two empirical studies conducted in Sweden and Australia which specifically aimed to uncover the distinctiveness of the conditions and circumstances which generate the development of both leadership capacities and aspirations among its participants. We describe this phenomenon as ‘generative leadership’. The term ‘generative leadership’ was coined to illustrate the happeningness and ongoingness of transformation over time as teachers both change and sustain changes to classroom practices and develop leadership capacities and aspirations for becoming teacher leaders. The reciprocity between professional learning and leading practices is explored.

Teacher leading has been described as an area where teachers' individual professional development and leading in educational work are connected and viewed as a tool for school development (Muijs & Harris, 2006) and importantly, for this study, future systemic development. Teacher leading has at its core the aim to support the development of the practices of colleagues, and regarded as the dimension of professional leading that requires contextual empathy, collaboration and ongoing development. It is generally not a formal role, but teacher leaders act with more ‘agentic power’ to take the lead in development work that has direct impact on teaching quality and student learning. In this sense, such leading practices are not solely produced by individuals; they are connected with one another in ecologies of practices involving interdependence among networks of practices within and beyond classrooms, schools and systems (Kemmis, Wilkinson, Hardy, & Edwards-Groves, 2009). The question for this study is how, and under what conditions, this occurs. It seems there is a form of collectivity in teacher leading (Harris & Muijs, 2003) which has important implications for leadership succession planning within the policy domain of educational systems.

The presentation draws on the theoretical propositions of ecologies of practices (Kemmis, Wilkinson, Hardy, & Edwards-Groves, 2009) which allows us to understand how practices, like professional development and leading, relate to one another in activity-time space (Schatzki, 2010) and over (historical) time. It enables us to examine how the language, activity and relationships are simultaneously situated and constructed (respectively) in semantic space, physical space-time and social space from which they draw their substantive content when they are enacted. And importantly how, in turn, these practices influence future practices.

Harris, A. & Mujis, D. (2003). Teacher Leadership: principles and practice. NCSL Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Hardy, I. & Edwards-Groves, C. (2009) Leading and learning: Developing ecologies of educational practice. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Canberra, November 29 - December 3. Muijs, D & Harris, A. (2006). Teacher led school improvement: Teacher leadership in the UK. Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006), 961–972. Schatzki, T. (2010). The Timespace of Human Activity: On performance, society, and history as indeterminate teleological events (Toposophia). Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.