Teacher and Middle Leadership: Resolving Conceptual Confusion to Advance the Knowledge Base of Teacher Leadership

Abstract

This paper explores issues with defining teacher leadership and this causes confusion with research on middle leadership. After providing a definition of middle leadership, four major reviews of teacher leadership and an international research project on teacher leadership are described in terms of how teacher leadership is defined. It is shown that in most definitions of teacher leadership there is considerable overlap with middle leadership research and because of this there is a lack of clarity about what is being researched. A leadership influence model is described which provides a way to distinguish between school leadership based on positional power and personal connectiveness. Importantly, this can provide a distinction between teacher and middle leadership that has greater clarity and distinctiveness than current definitions, and potentially it could unify the study of teacher, middle, principal and distributed leadership.