Archived Information

Teacher Leadership:

An Appealing and Inescapable Force in School Reform?

## Brian Lord and Barbara Miller[^1]

#### Education Development Center

#### March 2000

# **Teacher Leadership and Professional Development**

Over the next decade, the success of standards-based reforms will hinge,
increasingly, on teachers' professional development. Unlike the
"restructuring" reforms of the late 1980s and early 1990s that attempted
to improve student outcomes by making changes in the organization of
schooling, these more recent reforms call for fundamental change at the
very core of teaching and learning. As Thompson and Zeuli (1999) noted,
"Students must think in order to learn." Teaching that provides students
with frequent and well-designed opportunities to think departs in
significant ways from what we see in traditional classrooms. This is
particularly true when we look at science, mathematics, and technology
education. Helping teachers to make this fundamental shift in practice
requires more powerful approaches to professional development.

One response among large districts throughout the country has been to
identify and deploy a corps of *teacher leaders* to provide support to
their colleagues in changing instructional practice. As we suggest
below, not only is the notion of teacher leadership intuitively
appealing ("teachers teaching teachers") but, given the nature and scale
of mathematics and science reforms, almost inescapable.

"Teacher leader" is a generic term that applies to individuals in a
variety of roles (Moller and Katzenmeyer 1996, Lieberman, Saxl and Miles
1988). It most often refers to teachers who are out of the classroom
full-time to assume some kind of leadership role in promoting change in
classroom practice among large numbers of teachers. These people may be
based in one or more school buildings or have responsibilities across a
district. Teacher leader can also refer to teachers who remain in the
classroom and assume, on top of their full-time teaching
responsibilities, some role in promoting change. Less frequently,
teacher leader refers to teachers who have a reduced teaching load, for
example teaching three periods of the day and acting in a leadership
capacity for the balance of their contracted time.

### 

At present, we do not know enough about teacher leadership to make bold
claims for its effectiveness in helping reforms go to scale or improving
student achievement. However, preliminary research findings point to one
critical feature. Teacher leadership is often treated as a strictly
instrumental strategy to increase the number of professional development
providers -- putting in place more people to provide more contact hours
with classroom teachers. This approach offers limited promise of
achieving reformers' goals. Yet, when teachers leaders are part of a
wider, systemic strategy, within a well-aligned constellation of
district supports (e.g., assessment and accountability systems, programs
for curriculum implementation), the potential for impact is greater. For
this reason, we view teacher leadership less as a magic bullet for
quickly solving the "numbers" problem and more as a critical feature in
a coherent and focused set of district policies to address the
substantive challenges of reform.

### What Do Teacher Leaders Do?

Teacher leaders are generally working toward the same goal: to promote
and support change in teachers' classroom practice (Medina and St. John
1997, Smylie and Denny 1990). They are sometimes described as the
"front-line forces," those who have the greatest amount of contact with
classroom teachers and therefore the greatest likelihood to effect
change in teachers' practice. How that goal of changing practice gets
interpreted, though, is reflected in the different kinds of work that
teacher leaders do. Districts and schools, at some fundamental level,
make decisions about the role of teacher leaders in their system.
Sometimes these decisions are strategic, providing a clear focus for
leadership work and utilizing teacher leaders as one of a number of
resources to promote reform (Lord et al. 2000, Elmore and Burney 1999).
Sometimes there is no explicit or public decision-making about what
teacher leaders do, and their role evolves as teacher leaders tackle the
challenges of changing their colleagues' classroom practice. Thus, it is
important to understand how the particular district, school, or even
project shapes the work and experience of teacher leaders (Wasley 1991).

There are many different designations for individuals in a teacher
leader role. Depending on the district or school context, they may be
referred to as mentor teachers, specialists, resource teachers,
demonstration teachers, model teachers, coaches, peer teachers or
teachers on special assignment. The variety of titles contributes to the
difficulty in talking about teacher leader roles more generally. In one
district, a mentor teacher may be assigned to work with novice teachers
to master instructional strategies. In another district, a mentor
teacher may do a demonstration lesson for a classroom teacher who asked
the mentor for help. Currently, there is no common language for teacher
leaders; there is only the local vernacular. Thus, to develop an
understanding of what teacher leaders do -- regardless of their titles
-- we need to look more closely at their work in context.

We can learn more about the mission of teacher leaders when we look at
their identification with subject area or grade level. A district that
identifies teacher leaders as mathematics specialists or science
specialists focuses on developing among teachers a deeper understanding
of a particular discipline. Teacher leaders' own content knowledge and
expertise within a discipline shapes their work. A district that
identifies teacher leaders by grade level, for example K-5 coaches,
emphasizes the capacity of those people to work with populations of
teachers across disciplines. These teacher leaders draw heavily on their
own teaching experience and knowledge of students, curriculum, and
pedagogy at particular grade levels. A district with K-12 peer teachers,
for example, is a place where teacher leaders are responsible for
working with a cluster of elementary, middle and high schools that feed
into one another. Here, teacher leaders might be expected to develop and
sustain coherence and good relationships across those grade levels and
among those schools through a K-12 curriculum plan or shared
instructional practices.

In practice, the work of teacher leaders can be quite varied
(Loucks-Horsley et al. 1998, Lieberman 1992). In some systems, district
staff or principals make decisions about how teacher leaders spend their
time and what responsibilities they assume. In other systems, teacher
leaders are asked to use their own professional judgment in determining
what they do and how they work. The work of teacher leaders can be
organized into four categories:

-   working with individual teachers in classroom settings

-   working with groups of teachers in workshop or comparable
    professional development settings

-   working with teachers, administrators, community members or students
    on issues or programs that indirectly support classroom
    teaching/learning experiences

-   working with various constituents on the task *du jour*

We describe below the kinds of responsibilities that fall within each
category of work. Taken together, this is a large set of
responsibilities and there are teacher leaders who are involved in all
four kinds of work. For the majority of teacher leaders, the first two
categories -- working in classrooms and working in professional
development settings -- occupy most of their time.

*In-classroom support.* Teacher leaders typically provide some kind of
support to individual teachers in their classrooms, working to help them
change their teaching practice in some way. They might demonstrate a
lesson for a teacher, team teach, observe and critique a lesson a
teacher teaches, or assist with planning. In-classroom support from
teacher leaders also means introducing or providing needed materials to
implement a lesson or unit. As teacher leaders work with individual
teachers in classrooms, their efforts can run the gamut from encouraging
teachers to try new strategies or materials through fine-tuning
teachers' skillful use and sophisticated understanding of those
strategies or materials.

In one district we have studied, teacher leaders provide a sequenced
program of classroom support. For a teacher who is just starting to
implement a new mathematics curriculum, the teacher leader begins by
demonstrating one or more lessons. She teaches the lesson in the
teacher's classroom while the teacher observes. This demonstration is
followed by discussion with the teacher about the lesson's goals, its
components, and the challenges it posed for students or for the teacher.
Next, the teacher leader observes the teacher teaching one or more
lessons, again followed by a debrief and critique session in which the
teacher leader offers feedback and elicits reactions from the teacher.
Beyond this sequence of demonstrate-debrief-observe-debrief, the teacher
leader tailors the next steps to the needs of this classroom teacher --
team teaching a new type of lesson, continuing to observe and debrief,
or assisting in lesson planning.

In another district that we have studied, teacher leaders do
demonstration lessons but are not able to observe teacher leaders
because of union regulations. In a third district, some teacher leaders
team teach with the classroom teachers but don't do demonstration
lessons, while other teacher leaders in that same district emphasize
observation. Their choices seem to be based on what they, as teacher
leaders, feel most comfortable offering to classroom teachers.

*Professional development activities.* Teacher leaders typically plan
and deliver professional development to groups of colleagues, usually in
the form of workshops held after school or on teacher inservice days.
Teacher leaders might also staff institutes of longer duration during
the summer or other times when teachers are not teaching. Professional
development in workshop or institute settings is usually structured to
communicate or explore new curriculum, unfamiliar subject area content,
or innovative instruction or assessment strategies. Sometimes the
professional development is more ongoing in nature, part of a larger
program of workshop follow-up in classrooms or in another group setting.

In one project with which we have worked, a science teacher leader was
part of a teaching team for a summer institute for teachers. He and
others planned and delivered two weeks of instruction in selected earth
science topics and investigated specific science curriculum materials
that developed those topics for students. In another site that we have
studied, a teacher leader offered a two-hour after-school workshop on
the graphing calculator. In a third site, a teacher leader and a
mathematics supervisor led a series of workshops on a particular
curriculum that was being implemented across the district.

*Indirect support to classrooms.* Compared to offering direct support in
classrooms or through professional development, teacher leaders often
have responsibilities that indirectly support changes in classroom
practice. They serve on and facilitate curriculum or standards
committees. They work in community-based partnerships that provide
additional resources to schools. They represent their district or school
at conferences, on task forces, or in meetings. They act as a liaison
between the district offices and the school building. They develop
curriculum and/or manage inventories of materials.

*Task du jour.* More often than teacher leaders would like, they are
asked to respond to a crisis situation. They act as substitutes in
classrooms, take on teacher evaluation responsibilities that a principal
is unable to do, deal with student disciplinary matters, or transport
materials from one building to another. Teacher leaders do this work for
a variety of reasons. For some teacher leaders, being responsive to the
situation at hand and willing to help out wherever they are needed is
their entry ticket into a building or classroom in order to help
teachers. For other teacher leaders, they are not in a position to say
"no" to whatever task is set before them.

These duties hint at the range of responsibilities that teacher leaders
are assigned, choose, or accumulate. The longer the tenure of teacher
leaders, particularly if they are perceived as successful in their role,
the greater the responsibilities they bear and the longer the list of
duties they are expected to fulfill.

### Teacher Leaders in Science, Mathematics, and Technology Reform

Nowhere has the use of teacher leaders been more visible and played a
more significant role in efforts to achieve large-scale reform of
teaching practices than in science, mathematics and technology education
(SMT). Large and mid-size school districts, such as those funded under
the National Science Foundation's Urban Systemic Initiatives and Local
Systemic Change programs, are turning to teacher leaders to help
introduce, disseminate, and sustain reforms in these important subject
areas (Weiss et al. 1999, Briars 1999, Navarro and Natalicio 1999,
Miller and Mark 1995, St. John et al. 1994).

The deployment of teacher leaders in SMT reform reflects the goals and
characteristics of the reforms themselves. These reforms are complex and
ambitious, aiming to supplant conceptually weak curricula and
instruction with more rigorous and more engaging approaches to student
learning. They aim to create greater coherence in K-12 mathematics and
science programs within and across grades and aim to reach all students
in all grades, not just high achieving students, thereby increasing
performance and SMT literacy district wide (NRC 1996, AAAS 1993, NCTM
1989).

It is the complexity and ambitiousness of reform, however, that drives
districts toward teacher leadership. If districts expect to foster a
wholesale transformation in SMT teaching and learning (i.e., instruction
in which "students must think in order to learn"), they will need to
provide enhanced opportunities and support for teachers' professional
development (Ball and Cohen 1999, Ball 1996, Elmore and Burney 1999,
Loucks-Horsley and Matsumoto 1999, Thompson and Zeuli 1999). Yet, this
need emerges at the same time that most districts are cutting back on
central office staff, especially in the core content areas. There are
simply too few administrative staff with the needed expertise or
experience to provide the professional development that might lead to
lasting change among classroom teachers. The most likely source for
satisfying this leadership deficit is the district's corps of
experienced teachers. Because they are already under contract, know the
system well, and are often familiar with the content of the changes
being sought, they are likely candidates for advancing SMT reform.

Districts most often deploy SMT teacher leaders to help them solve three
critical problems of large-scale reform---reach, persuasion, and
sustainability. First, and most simply, the sheer magnitude of the task
of *reaching* all SMT teachers in districts committed to reform requires
a large number of skilled and experienced leaders who can serve as
intermediaries between district policy and classroom practice. Providing
even the most basic level of professional development for hundreds or
even thousands of teachers requires adequate staff. Second, among a
district's teachers will be those who are skeptical or openly resistant
to proposed changes and who need *persuading*. Teacher leaders are well
positioned to act as messengers and agents of change. They are ideally
suited to the task of communicating to all SMT teachers the new and
exciting pictures of what students should know and be able to do in
science, mathematics and technology. Because they are experienced
teachers themselves, they can help to make these images more accessible
and persuasive to their colleagues in the classroom. And third,
districts *sustaining* reforms beyond the duration of initial funding
and the exposure to initial training will need to support capacity
building at the school and classroom level. Through on-site modeling,
coaching, and mentoring, teacher leaders help classroom teachers acquire
not just mechanical knowledge about new curriculum, but the capacity for
informed judgment and a commitment to SMT reforms.

### 

### What Issues Does Teacher Leadership Raise?

# 

# Teacher leadership, in principle, does appear intuitively appealing as well as inescapable, given the demands of mathematics, science and technology reform and the realities of today's districts and schools. The work of teacher leaders is valued and yet it is quite diverse, a reflection of the different expectations held for teacher leaders as they help teachers change classroom practice. As more districts and schools turn to teacher leaders to support reform efforts and as those districts and schools with a history of teacher leadership gain more experience, the following issues take on greater urgency: 

# *Leaders in an Egalitarian Profession.* The term teacher leader embodies a contradiction identified by many individuals in the role. On the one hand, teacher leaders identify themselves as teachers, as classroom practitioners whose experience and knowledge are honed by their years with students and curriculum and whose credibility among their peers is typically based on their classroom work. On the other hand, teacher leaders are called to be leaders in a profession that historically has few recognized avenues for teachers in leadership roles. Teacher leaders are different from administrators, the obvious leadership path in the education profession. All of this means that teacher leaders operate in a different professional space from their teaching colleagues and many speak of their discomfort in being seen as separate from other teachers (Boles and Troen 1997). In a profession characterized by relatively flat career trajectories, little public recognition for expertise, and norms of egalitarianism (Hart 1995, Johnson 1990, Little 1988), teacher leaders stand out as an interesting experiment. They are teachers, one of the rank and file. Yet, they are also leaders, somehow set apart from other teachers. 

# *Training and Support.* A common view among policy makers and district leaders is that an expert teacher will make an expert teacher leader. If these individuals are confident and competent in working with their students, the assumption is that they should be able to provide direction to their colleagues. This reasoning often fails in practice. There are many great teachers who lack the skills of leadership. For example, they may not be skilled in facilitating workshops for adults or making public presentations, have little experience in negotiating with principals and teachers to gain access to classrooms in low-performing schools, or limited patience for working with adults not yet convinced of the importance of change. In short, preparing highly skilled classroom teachers to be effective teacher leaders takes training (Miller et al. in press, Loucks-Horsley et al. 1998, Moller and Katzenmeyer 1996) as well as a system of supports including accountability, assessment and professional development. Recruiting skilled teachers to these leadership positions is not, in itself, a guarantee that they will be able to foster broader change. 

*Opportunity Costs.* Full-time release teacher leaders give up their own
classrooms to work with other SMT teachers. This has costs. Many
teachers are reluctant to abandon the classroom for any length of time.
They enjoy working with their students and recognize that their
professional credibility rests, at least in part, on their skill in the
classroom. Too long an absence from the classroom begins to erode the
foundations of legitimacy for the work they do. Principals, too, are
reluctant to give up their premier teachers to these district- or
school-wide positions. Excellent teachers are a valuable resource for
any school, especially in mathematics and science, and many school-based
administrators discourage their departure from the classroom. At the
same time, teacher leaders who remain in the classroom full- or
part-time find it difficult to preserve the time and energy needed to
carry out their leadership work, in addition to their teaching
responsibilities.

*Demands of the Job.* Most teacher leaders have extremely challenging
jobs. Many feel overwhelmed by the task. Not only must they address the
needs of those teachers committed to change, but they must also work
with classroom teachers resistant to change, those who see the presence
of teacher leaders as an intrusion rather than a source of support. Some
teacher leaders are in brand-new positions and there are no norms or
precedents for their work. Most teacher leaders are trying to achieve
ambitious goals on impossibly short timelines. The stresses of the job
are relieved somewhat in districts that have aligned curriculum with
assessment or support sustained professional development for teachers,
because such policies serve as powerful reinforcements for teacher
leaders' work in the schools. In districts where these policies are in
place and enacted, teacher leaders may feel empowered, even impassioned,
about their work. Where these policies are not well articulated, teacher
leaders may find themselves under appreciated. Indeed, some describe
themselves as targets or lightning rods for district changes, and feel
that the burden of reform has been placed squarely on their shoulders.

*Effectiveness.* At present, little is known about the overall
effectiveness of teacher leadership strategies in achieving change in
teachers' practice and improvement in student performance. Districts,
especially with large mathematics and science reform efforts, make an
effort to track the work of their teacher leaders through the number of
visits to schools, number of hours of direct contact with classroom
teachers, and number of workshop hours provided. They also collect data
about individual activities led by teacher leaders, based on participant
evaluations. However, the effectiveness of the teacher leadership
strategy in helping schools or districts achieve improved student
performance is not well documented. Anecdotal evidence, focusing on the
connection between teacher leadership and changes in teachers' practice,
is mixed. We see positive outcomes when teacher leadership is part of an
entire district infrastructure for mathematics and/or science reform.
Districts with coherent curriculum programs, professional development
that supports teachers' thoughtful and skillful use of curriculum,
accountability systems that hold all teachers and administrators
responsible for teaching the curriculum, and assessments that provide
appropriate measures of what students are expected to learn are most
likely to have effective teacher leadership. An important first step in
understanding effectiveness is to gain a clear picture of models and
configurations of teacher leadership, a clear image of where and how
leaders are deployed and toward what end.

*Other Options.* Given the urgency of mathematics and science education
reforms and the apparent challenges facing districts as they employ
teacher leadership strategies, reformers are considering other options
for achieving change on scale. Prominent among these are new
instructional and communications technologies and the adoption of
curriculum materials designed to change what and how students learn.
While each of these approaches holds promise for helping teachers
improve their instruction, we maintain that they are unlikely to
supplant teacher leadership strategies. Fundamentally, both approaches
-- new technologies and new materials -- are human enterprises that
require guidance and support for effective use. While new technologies
and new curricula may alter the characteristics of teacher leadership
work, neither is likely to eliminate the need for this work.

### Conclusion

As we have suggested, the image at the heart of teacher leadership --
teachers teaching teachers -- is intuitively appealing. Because of their
own teaching background and connections to the classroom, teacher
leaders are an obvious choice for addressing the challenge of going to
scale with reforms in mathematics, science and technology education.
Given the characteristics of these reforms, some kind of teacher
leadership seems almost inescapable in wider strategies for professional
development. At present, though, we lack a comprehensive view of what
teacher leadership is, how it works, and whether and how well it can be
harnessed to reformers' goals. The potential of teacher leadership and
its presence in large-scale reforms suggest the importance of additional
investigation and well-targeted experimentation.

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[^1]: Brian Lord and Barbara Miller co-direct a National Science
    Foundation-sponsored research project (award no. 9970830) studying
    teacher leadership in six Urban Systemic Initiative sites, with the
    goal of articulating different models of teacher leadership as a
    strategy to reach scale in large districts. Lord and Miller are also
    conducting research supported by the Spencer Foundation
    investigating curriculum implementation and changes in teachers'
    practice, an effort that utilizes teacher leadership. Miller and
    Lord have each provided technical assistance to various districts
    and projects implementing mathematics and/or science reform and led
    evaluations of programs promoting reform in these areas. The ideas
    presented here represent a synthesis of existing research, practical
    knowledge and preliminary research findings. This paper was
    developed with support from the U.S. Department of Education's
    National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the
    21^st^ Century.