The Perspective of Principals of all Teachers being Leaders

Abstract

Building on the research about assessing teachers’ leader identity, we were curious to understand how K-12 school principals perceive teachers as leaders. We used a survey research design to gather quantitative and qualitative data from K-12 school principals. We could not find any extant surveys aligned with our research focus; thus, we designed and validated a survey for our research. We contacted 1042 K-12 principals from the south-central region of the US; 70 responded by completing our survey. Analysis indicated a potential misalignment in principal leadership styles between the ideal attributes of leadership and contextual or practical applications of leadership. Additional analysis revealed considerable overlap between the principals’ perceptions of leadership and the roles of teachers; however, those leadership roles aligned with teachers as school-level leaders outside the classroom rather than in their role of teaching students. Findings also revealed an alignment of principals’ perceptions of teachers as leaders with principals’ efforts to develop teachers as leaders. Overall, our research suggests that principals support teachers' development as leaders. We close with a discussion of the results and implications for research and practice.