The Fundamental Dilemma of Teacher Leader-Facilitated Professional Development

Abstract

Purpose: This article focuses on a specific model of teacher leadership in schools—the studio classroom. In answering the call for more targeted studies of teacher leadership, the study is designed to assist educational leaders in putting in place the organizational and social structures that allow teacher leaders to have the most positive impact on teachers. Research questions focused on perceptions, enactment, and impact of the studio classroom. Research Methods: The research took place over a 2-year period (2008-2010), with six teacher leader-participants from four school districts. Data collection included individual and group interviews and extensive on site observation, as well as administrator interviews. Analytic procedures were qualitative, grounded in the teacher leadership literature and a sociocultural teacher learning framework. Findings and Implications: Across sites, a diminished understanding and appreciation for the teacher learning process left no sanctioned space to learn from mistakes. Thus, logistical, social, and cultural barriers overwhelmed any studio classroom implementation attempts—and teacher leaders ultimately failed to open up their classroom doors as intended. Practical implications include a need to reexamine the term modeling as exhibiting qualities that encourage reflection on teaching rather than replication of teaching. Similarly, to stimulate learning from actual classroom practice, a new vision of teacher leadership needs to focus on improving rather than proving. Additionally, research on teaching will need to more strongly make the case that authentic teacher inquiry more strongly correlates with teacher and student learning than the importation and transmitting of “best practices.”