This qualitative study used naturalistic inquiry methodology to study the impact
that teacher leadership has on school effectiveness. Two suburban high schools were
chosen for this study. Both of these schools had been rated as exemplary in 2002 by the
Texas Education Agency. Interviews, observations, and surveys were used to obtain
data. Through these, seven categories emerged that were used to create a written
description of teacher leadership on the campuses. Teacher leadership in the past,
teacher leadership roles, teacher leadership enablers, teacher leadership restraints,
products of teacher leadership, teacher leadership in the present, and the role of the
principal emerged when the data were analyzed.
The findings indicated that when teacher leadership played a role on these
campuses there was an expectation by school administrators that teachers would be
leaders. Principals on both campuses had a vision of student success. Communication
between school administrators and teacher leaders was strong. Overall, the role of the
principal had a powerful impact on teacher leadership and consequently school effectiveness. Teacher leadership being fostered and supported was in large part due to
the efforts of the principal.
Recommendations for practice suggest that a) district level personnel need to
work from a definition of school leadership that includes teachers when they hire
campus principals, b) principals must take intentional steps to actively encourage teacher
leadership, c) principals must clearly understand the amount of effort collaborative
leadership demands of them, d) principals should seek out evidence that teacher
leadership is impacting the school, and e) principals should consider what resources need
to be allocated to foster and sustain teacher leadership on campus.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/3740 |
| Date | 16 August 2006 |
| Creators | Hook, David Paul |
| Contributors | Erlandson, David |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Record of Study, text |
| Format | 415264 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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