Moving Teacher Leaders to the Front Line of School Improvement: Lessons Learned by One Australian Research and Development Team

Abstract

This chapter presents the work of the Leadership Research International (LRI) team at the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ), Australia, with a deliberate focus on placing teacher professionals at the forefront of school improvement initiatives. This action emerged from early LRI research findings in Australian projects identifying factors contributing to school effectiveness. Findings of the 1990s, followed by field-based research from 2000 to 2002, established the importance of teacher leaders influencing beyond the classroom working closely with principals to enhance student-learning outcomes. Two decades of research and development by the LRI_UniSQ have continued to strengthen the earlier published teacher leadership framework and a concept of whole school leadership termed Parallel Leadership for school improvement. Research that is more recent has raised questions about sustaining the role of teacher leaders, especially their informal role in schools. It has also become obvious that the sustainability of action depends on the capacity of the principal and systems to sustain processes within schools to enable teacher leaders to thrive. Findings from current LRI_UniSQLRI_UniSQ research highlight a movement toward a structural response to the phenomenon of teacher leadershipTeacher leadership. We posit that, more than ever before, teacher leadershipTeacher leadership through principled action needs to shape meaning for children, youth, and adults. This calls for an urgent need to reinvigorate the organic nature of teacher leadershipTeacher leadership and embrace the importance of advocating and providing agencyAgency for teachers leading beyond the classroom.