As an institution, Walden has long supported days of service and encouraged students, faculty, and staff to give back to their communities. In the companion Assignment for this module, you are developing a plan for a proposed Global Day of Service project. For this Discussion, you will explain the Global Day of Service project you are proposing for your Assignment and offer feedback and support for your colleagues’ projects.
Important Note: You will share your ideas regarding your Module 5 Assignment in this Discussion. Be sure to read through the instructions for this Discussion and the Module 5 Assignment prior to beginning work this week.
To prepare:
An explanation of the following:
For this Discussion, and all scholarly writing in this course and throughout your program, you will be required to use APA style and provide reference citations.
Note: To access this module’s required library resources, please click on the link to the Course Readings List, found in the Course Materials section of your Syllabus.
Fullan, M. (2016). The new meaning of educational change (5th ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Callahan, D., Wilson, E., Birdsall, I., Estabrook-Fishinghawk, B., Carson, G., Ford, S., . . . Yob, I. (2012). Expanding our understanding of social change: A report from the definition task force of the HLC Special Emphasis Project [White paper]. Minneapolis, MN: Walden University.
Social Change Web Maps [Diagrams]. Adapted from Expanding our understanding of social change, by Callahan, D., Wilson, E., Birdsall, I., Estabrook-Fishinghawk, B., Carson, G., Ford, S., Ouzts, K., & Yob, I., 2008. Baltimore, MD: Walden University. Adapted with permission of Walden University.
Cooper, K. S., Stanulis, R. N., Brondyk, S. K. Hamilton, E. R., Macaluso, M., & Meier, J. A. (2016). The teacher leadership process: Attempting change within embedded systems. Journal of Educational Change, 17(1), 85–113. doi:10.1007/s10833-015-9262-4
Walden University. (2016). Global days of service. Retrieved from https://www.waldenu.edu/about/social-change/global-day-of-service
Walden University. (2017b). Who we are. Retrieved from https://www.waldenu.edu/about/who-we-are
Review this site for information on Walden University’s mission and vision and its focus on social change.
Expanding
Our
Understanding
of Social
Change
A Report From the
Definition Task Force of the
HLC Special Emphasis
Project
Darragh Callahan, Elizabeth Wilson, Ian Birdsall,
Brooke Estabrook-Fishinghawk, Gary Carson,
Stephanie Ford, Karen Ouzts, Iris Yob
Expanding Our Understanding (July 2012) Page 2
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Walden is committed to providing barrier-free access to its educational services and makes
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Disability Services at disability@waldenu.edu.
© 2012 Walden University, LLC
http://www.ncahlc.org/
mailto:disability@waldenu.edu
Expanding Our Understanding (July 2012) Page 3
Social change is defined broadly in terms of process and product to indicate that all kinds of
social change activity are welcomed and encouraged at Walden. As faculty members, students,
and alumni have indicated, even small acts can have large consequences, and many of these
consequences are unpredictable. The charge given to the Definition Task Force was to expand
the university’s definition of social change to provide more guidance for teaching, learning, and
assessing the social change mission at Walden. To that end, the Task Force offers the following
considerations.
To bring about long-term solutions and promote lasting effects through the process of social
change, the following features may need to be considered as appropriate to the context and
purposes of each program. The features are grouped under the headings Knowledge, Skills, and
Attitudes, to encourage a holistic approach to preparing learners for social change. The
groupings, however, are defined by soft boundaries because each feature belongs primarily to
one group but may share some of the qualities of the other groups.
A. Knowledge
1. Scholarship
The scholar-practitioner model is particularly suited to social change because knowledge
applied to real-life situations is a scholar-practitioner’s goal. In the scholarly role, the
scholar-practitioner engages in active learning, critical reflection, and inquiry into real-
life dilemmas and possibilities. Careful study and research can reveal the causes and
correlates of social problems and suggest solutions and opportunities for promoting
growth.
2. Systems thinking
Many of the issues addressed by social change are complex because there may be
multiple causes and manifestations of the issue that require different responses at many
levels. Systemic thinking is a technique for developing insights into challenging
situations and complex subjects. It usually begins with analysis, which makes sense of a
system by breaking it apart to see how the parts work together and influence each
other. This may be followed by synthesis that aims to develop a set of responses that
address the situation in a comprehensive way. In the Walden community, finding
systemic solutions to challenging issues might be undertaken by multidisciplinary
collaborations in which scholar-practitioners from a number of colleges work together
to examine issues and propose multipronged responses.
http://www.probsolv.com/probsolv.htm
Expanding Our Understanding (July 2012) Page 4
3. Reflection
Those working toward positive social change can enhance their effectiveness by
reflecting on the experience. Reflection can be extrospective, that is, looking outward to
review the short- and long-term outcomes of a project and its implications for the
individuals, institutions, and communities with and for whom one is working. It can also
be introspective, that is, looking inward to examine what has been learned from the
process, including new insights into one’s motives, skills, knowledge, actions, and
reactions. Self-reflection allows for the contemplation of one’s professional and
personal development. Group reflection affords all stakeholders in a social change
project (scholar-practitioners, community partners, policy-makers, and beneficiaries) an
opportunity to process the experience and learn from each other. Reflection employs
critical-thinking and analytical skills. It can be carried forward by questioning and self-
inquiry and may depend on a willingness to see things from another’s perspective.
While reflection needs to be honest, it should also be caring and supportive, examining
strengths as well as weaknesses and successes as along with disappointments. While
reflection may look to the past, its purpose is forward-looking—to make future social
change activities more effective.
B. Skills
4. Practice
In the practitioner role, the scholar-practitioner engages in the application of
knowledge. Learning-by-doing, or experiential learning, has a long history of support
and success in education because it can infuse and sometimes lead to deconstructing or
constructing theoretical understandings within the realities of practical life in the
student’s personal growth, profession, or community. By using recursive loops between
scholarship and practice, both intellectual growth and better practice can occur—each
informing the other. Not merely knowing about theories but actually testing theories in
the context of everyday life is the foundation of a scholar-practitioner’s educational
process and contribution to social change.
5. Collaboration
Given the complexity of many of the issues addressed in social change efforts,
responsive action may be needed from many different sources. In these situations, the
Expanding Our Understanding (July 2012) Page 5
social change agent may want to build working relationships with other entities
including community leaders, service agencies, neighborhood coalitions, businesses,
religious congregations, and other local institutions. Apart from these types of civic
engagement, collaboration with scholars and practitioners in an array of professional
fields may bring a variety of perspectives, research, and applied knowledge.
Partnerships can unite the skills, knowledge, and energies needed to make a difference.
The ability to build a team, combined with leadership, project management, conflict
resolution, and communication skills, may be essential. A significant partner in social
change enterprises is the primary beneficiary; this person has a personal knowledge and
experience that can be invaluable in both analyzing a situation and proposing responses.
The primary beneficiary may be one individual or someone representing the
perspectives of a group of beneficiaries. Working collaboratively with primary
beneficiaries can be mutually educative and rewarding.
6. Advocacy
Advocacy is a matter of raising consciousness or being the “voice” for someone, some
group, or something that may or may not otherwise have a voice that can be heard. It
may involve political engagement, but it may also be a matter of supporting others as
they negotiate directly with the services and opportunities they need. In light of social
change, advocacy more widely aims to influence not only political but also economic
and social systems and institutions to protect and promote the dignity, health, safety,
and rights of people. Advocacy for an issue often takes the form of education that aims
to bring about a new understanding and awareness. Advocacy may also need to
encompass mentoring activities to build confidence and self-reliance in those whose
welfare is being promoted.
7. Civic engagement
Social change efforts can be supported and reflected in laws by policy-makers. Being
aware of the channels for communicating with civic leaders and knowing how to
effectively use those channels are often important when working for social change. All
institutions and groups—not just government entities—have their own politics, that is, a
prevailing mind-set, an internal structure, and channels of influence and power. Being
able to incorporate and negotiate these politics in support of social change requires
finesse and sensitivity. Understanding this before engaging with others can be helpful,
whether these others are legislators, local agencies and institutions, professional
associations, neighborhoods, ad hoc teams, or professional colleagues. Power
Expanding Our Understanding (July 2012) Page 6
relationships also exist between those working for social change and those who are the
primary beneficiaries. Mutual collaboration and power-sharing between the parties
involved can empower all toward more lasting social change.
C. Attitudes
8. Humane ethics
While a number of emotional effects may prompt one to engage in social change,
including empathy, sympathy, guilt, a feeling of satisfaction, and so on, one’s ethical
code can inform and direct one’s motivated engagement in social change. Humane
ethics is a system of moral principles that guide human conduct with respect to the
rightness and wrongness of certain actions. While personal codes of ethics may differ,
an underlying, common code of a humane ethic is characterized by tenderness,
compassion, sympathy for people and animals, especially for the suffering or distressed,
and concern for the health of the environment in which we live.
Analyzing Social Change
Figure 1 below shows each of the features—scholarship, systemic thinking, reflection, practice,
collaboration, advocacy, civic engagement, and humane ethics—on an axis ranging from 0 to 5.
Each social change activity or project could be mapped onto the axes to show the extent to
which it incorporates each feature. Joining the points along each axis produces a web for each
activity, an example of which is shown in red.
It is important to note that this tool is not intended to be an instrument to assess a particular
social change activity. Some projects and activities will be appropriately strong in one or more
areas but not necessarily in all. Rather, its purpose is to serve as a tool to analyze social change
activities that occur at Walden. It may reveal areas where an activity might be enhanced, and
importantly, it may reveal where the program for preparing students for social change might be
strengthened.
Further, all kinds of social change activities are encouraged, given the range of interests,
commitments, and opportunities for engagement among students, faculty members, and staff.
Most, if not all, kinds of activity can be represented as a web. The purpose of the web analysis
is ultimately to provide a tool to enlarge our vision of the range and features of social change
that seeks long-term solutions and promotes lasting effects.
Expanding Our Understanding (July 2012) Page 7
Figure 1. Web map showing each of the features.
Below are some examples of web maps of social change activities based on reports by students, faculty
members, and alumni in a recent research study: Perspectives on Social Change. Pseudonyms have been
used throughout.
Example No. 1. Bookcase Builders
Tom is a Rotarian and undertakes a number of service projects in the community with other Rotarians.
One such activity involves building bookcases. Some members of the club also volunteer with Habitat for
Humanity, which provides housing for needy families. Another member has connections with the local
school district and knew of a recent drive to improve the level of literacy in the community. Putting
these together, the club decided to build bookcases for the Habitat for Humanity homes and, through
the support of another club member who manages a bookstore, give each family a gift certificate to buy
books for the children to put in the bookcase.
This activity would certainly rate relatively high on Collaboration for the networking among Rotarians,
the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity, the school district, and the local book store. It also represents
a Humane Ethic in that it shows the responsiveness of this club to the need for these children to read
Expanding Our Understanding (July 2012) Page 8
well for their future success in life. As a practice, this need is supported by implicit knowledge about the
importance of motivating children and providing them with opportunities to read. so there should be a
showing on the Practitioner axis. Figure 2 below shows how this project might be mapped.
Figure 2. Web map of the bookcase builders project.
If Tom and his fellow club members want to pursue this project further they might ask whether they
may seek other possible partners for this endeavor, such as the reading tutors, the bookstore
salespeople, the parents, and even the children themselves. Others brought into the program may
contribute more Systemic Thinking to address the problem of illiteracy. The club members may also
consider follow-up activities using other features like Advocacy with a particular focus on mentoring,
Civic Engagement, or some Scholarly study of or research on the effectiveness of the project.
Example No. 2. Basket-Weavers as Story-Tellers
Arsi’s research took her to a remote and needy area of Jamaica, where many of the village women help
support their families through weaving baskets for sale in the tourist areas. Using a qualitative approach,
Arsi listened to and recorded the women’s stories of their lives in abject poverty, analyzed them for
common themes, and presented her findings as her dissertation. The information in this dissertation
could be invaluable to service agencies and others willing to work with these women to improve their
lives.
Expanding Our Understanding (July 2012) Page 9
The project is high on the Scholar axis, especially because it is research into a real-life problem that
needs informed solutions. It further exhibits significant Collaboration in that she established personal
relationships with the women so that they could tell her their stories. It is also strong in the Humane
Ethics dimension because it deals with real human need. Writing a dissertation also demands Reflection,
particularly because it requires some discussion of the meaning of the findings and their possible
implications. The dissertation ultimately enters the public domain and, as such, is a permanent voice for
the women whose stories it shares (Advocacy). Figure 3 below illustrates this example.
Figure 3. Web map of the basket-weavers as story-tellers project.
Arsi successfully graduated in 2011. If she wanted to continue with the project, she might share her
findings with policy-makers (Civic Engagement) and service providers, such as business people,
educators, and healthcare workers (Systemic Thinking). If she could disseminate her work through
publications and presentations, she would not only deepen her own understanding (Reflection) but
more directly provide valuable information to service agencies and others to apply in working with and
for these women (Practitioner).
Example No. 3. The Monthly Giver
Expanding Our Understanding (July 2012) Page 10
Many faculty members, students, and staff members sign up to make monthly donations to agencies,
such as United Way, through automatic payroll deductions. Given their busy schedules and
commitments, they look at this as making some kind of contribution to “the development of individuals,
institutions, and societies.” Does such an activity count as social change? Figure 4 below is an attempt
to map this activity.
One of the benefits of the mapping tool is that it is inclusive of a wide range of possible engagements in
social change. The monthly giver, like many others, is guided by a Humane Ethic and wants to act out of
compassion and care for the distressed and needy. She also understands that the organization she is
donating to is carefully managed, well informed, and handles donations responsibly, and she wants to
do something practical to support it (Practitioner). She also knows that her donation, because it is
combined with the donations of many others, can amount to a significant sum to support large-scale
projects in the community (Collaboration).
Figure 4. Web map of the monthly giver.
Example No. 4. Global Day of Service Participant
Expanding Our Understanding (July 2012) Page 11
During the annual Global Day of Service, Justin organized a small group of his co-workers to clean up the
road entrance to the town. This meant gaining permission from the town clerk, recruiting willing
workers, arranging for safety training, and equipping them with safety vests, gloves, and garbage bags.
Justin works full-time and is undertaking his studies part-time. He is also the father of three, and his wife
works full-time so he has a heavy load of responsibilities. He does not have a lot of spare time, but he
has committed the time to organize and prepare for this 1-day volunteer clean-up event.
Justin’s efforts are guided by an ethic of care for the environment (Humane Ethics) and are one means
through which he can apply his studies on the importance of protecting the eco-system in a practical
way (Practitioner). Partnering with the town clerk was mandatory in this case, but the Collaboration was
important for the safety of his team, and his recruiting efforts among his co-workers was an extension of
the Collaboration. In some senses, he served as an Advocate for the environment. The day following this
activity, he posted some thoughts on what the experience meant to him and his co-workers in a class
discussion forum (Reflection).
Figure 5. Web map of a Global Day of Service participant’s activity.
Example No. 5. Nurses for Women
Expanding Our Understanding (July 2012) Page 12
Claire is a member of a nurse’s organization working for an urban community offering
uncompensated services to more than 200,000 clients a year. One of her projects has involved
hiring a number of nurses who are certified to perform sexual assault examinations; this
expedites forensic examinations in pre-hospital agencies, such as emergency medical services
and fire departments. As a result, law enforcement can work with the victims of domestic
violence, abuse, or sexual assault on the spot and spare them the added trauma of going to an
emergency room. The program has seen a record number of perpetrators put behind bars—but
the work does not stop there. The organization helps the young women get back on their feet
in a number of ways, including connecting them with “Suits for Success” so they are dressed
suitably for job interviews, teaching them interview skills, getting them enrolled in school
programs, and helping them with grants and jobs, so that they can put what happened to them
as victims behind them.
Claire has multiplied her individual efforts with an eye toward lasting change in a number of
ways. She and her co-volunteers apply a systemic approach to addressing the needs of the
victims of sexual abuse: helping them gain the confidence, skills, opportunities, financial
support, and even the clothing to be successful in the job market so they can build success in
their lives (Systemic Thinking). She has increased her personal effectiveness by connecting with
other trained and certified nurses and with fire departments and emergency medical services
(Collaboration). She seems to have been moved to action by a Humane Ethic and has found a
way to use her skills and knowledge to help others (Practitioner).
Expanding Our Understanding (July 2012) Page 13
Figure 6. Web map of the nurses for women project.
This is only a small sample of social change projects, but if it is representative, it is possible to
discern some trends in social change activity at Walden. For instance, in the aggregate, Humane
Ethics and Collaboration are strong features but Civic Engagement and Systemic Thinking are
not. Such findings may be useful in determining whether all of the identified features should be
supported and, if so, how they can be supported in the curriculum and through guidance
offered by university leadership and students’ mentors.
The teacher leadership process: Attempting change
within embedded systems
Kristy S. Cooper1 • Randi N. Stanulis1 •
Susan K. Brondyk2 • Erica R. Hamilton3 •
Michael Macaluso1 • Jessica A. Meier1
Published online: 18 November 2015
� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
Abstract This embedded case study examines the leadership practices of eleven
teacher leaders in three urban schools to identify how these teacher leaders attempt
to change the teaching practice of their colleagues while working as professional
learning community leaders and as mentors for new teachers. Using a theoretical
framework integrating complex systems theory with Kotter’s (Leading change.
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1996) eight steps for leading organizational
change, we analyze the work and perspectives of individual teacher leaders, and we
examine how teams of teacher leaders and principals function collectively in their
efforts to lead instructional change. Our findings have implications for schools
seeking to utilize teacher leadership as a reform strategy for authentic instructional
improvement.
Keywords Complex systems theory � Instructional improvement � Organizational
change � Professional learning communities �
Teacher leadership
Abbreviations
PD Professional development
PLC Professional learning community
& Kristy S. Cooper
kcooper@msu.edu
1
Michigan State University College of Education, 620 Farm Lane, Room 403, East Lansing,
MI 48824, USA
2
Hope College, Holland, MI, USA
3
Grand Valley State University, 401 W. Fulton, 476C DeVos, Grand Rapids, MI 49504, USA
123
J Educ Change (2016) 17:85–113
DOI 10.1007/s10833-015-9262-4
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10833-015-9262-4&domain=pdf
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10833-015-9262-4&domain=pdf
Introduction
A persistent issue in closing the achievement gap is improving the quality of
teaching and learning in urban schools. Many argue that improving urban schools
requires increasing the instructional capacity of teachers through job-embedded
professional development (PD), where teachers engage in collaborative, ongoing
dialogue around teaching and learning (Darling-Hammond et al. 2009; Heck and
Hallinger 2009; Horn and Little 2010). Such PD often relies on teachers assuming
formal roles as ‘‘teacher leaders’’ who guide this learning (Lieberman and Friedrich
2010; Yost et al. 2009). For this leadership to lead to improved instruction, however,
teacher leaders must skillfully engage in leadership practice that effectively changes
how their colleagues teach. Yet, the process by which teacher leaders create such
change is not clear in the extant literature. Thus, we conducted yearlong embedded
case studies of eleven urban teacher leaders working in teams to improve the
instruction of their colleagues by leading teacher learning around discussion-based
teaching—that is, by trying to help their colleagues better structure and lead
conversations among students. Integrating complex systems theory (Opfer and
Pedder 2011) with Kotter’s (1996) theory on leading organizational change, we
analyze how the embedded systems within which teacher leaders operate shape the
change actions they take and whether and how those actions change teaching
practice.
The challenge to improve urban schools
Movements to improve urban schools have been debated and mandated by policy
makers and business leaders for decades. Yet, as Payne (2008) asserts, ‘‘Most
discussion of educational policy and practice is dangerously disconnected from the
daily realities of urban schools’’ (p. 5). Such schools often lack resources such as
adequate funding, qualified teachers, and instructional leadership. Urban schools
also face high rates of student and teacher turnover, and students often come from
poverty-stricken homes. Payne argues that multiple social barriers (e.g., low
expectations, pessimistic views of new programs, and distrust between colleagues
and leaders) and micropolitical barriers (e.g., perceptions of favoritism and power
struggles) exist within urban schools that further hinder reform efforts. Although
schools may adopt the rhetoric of new programs readily, they often fail to
effectively meet the intent of such programs or adapt initiatives to their school
context. Similarly, popular reforms such as instructional coaching and decentral-
izing decision-making often fail because of power struggles between coaches and
school leaders and because teachers are often left out of decision-making processes.
Through all of these initiatives, Payne identifies teacher resistance as a central
problem in improving urban schools. Thus, it seems pertinent to consider the
teacher’s role in creating authentic change.
86 J Educ Change (2016) 17:85–113
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Teacher leadership
Teacher leadership, in which teachers themselves generate and facilitate change, is
rooted in the teacher professionalism movement that began in the early 1980s and
continues today (Fairman and Mackenzie 2014; York-Barr and Duke 2004). Over
the past decade, the role of teacher leaders in school reform has become more
prominent in empirical research, and much of this research has posited that teacher
leaders are vital for successful school reform (Angelle and Schmid 2007; Crowther
et al. 2002; Frost et al. 2000; Katzenmeyer and Moller 2001; Murphy 2005; Valli
et al. 2006). The role of the teacher leader—what it is and how it is defined—is
varied, however, depending on the school context and the research. Yet, most
scholars agree that teacher leadership occurs within and outside classrooms to
influence school-wide instructional practice (Beachum and Dentith 2004; Katzen-
meyer and Moller 2001). Beyond role-specific duties or titles (such as department
chair or grade-level leader), teacher leadership rests with the agency of the teacher
to work with the principal, to build community, to support teachers, and to
determine, implement, or make manifest a school-wide vision for instructional
practice (Cranston 2000; Margolis and Huggins 2012; York-Barr and Duke 2004).
In reviewing the literature, York-Barr and Duke (2004) concluded that the
success of teacher leadership depends on interrelated, foundational conditions in
three areas: (a) school culture, (b) relationships, and (c) school structures. First,
researchers have argued that, for schools to exhibit positive change through teacher
leadership, they must have cultures that foster communication, collaboration, and
learning (Little 2006; Wood 2007). The principal must be open to and supportive of
teacher leaders, understand the teacher leaders’ work, and ensure they have a
prominent and visible role in developing the mission and values of the school
(Drago-Severson 2007; Little 2006; Mangin 2007; Wood 2007). Moreover, the
principal, teacher leader, and school faculty should work together to identify and
consistently uphold professional norms for collective learning and improved student
achievement and instruction. Secondly, teacher leaders need to build professional
and respectful relationships with colleagues through ongoing communication and
feedback that showcase their trustworthiness and instructional expertise. York-Barr
and Duke (2004) found that effective teacher leaders are generally seen as role
models, are respected by colleagues, and have leadership capacities. Teacher leaders
and principals also need to build positive relationships with one another, as
principals play a central role not only in developing teachers’ leadership skills, but
also in setting expectations and creating pathways for teacher leaders to succeed
(Mangin 2007). Finally, specific school structures that promote and support
effective teacher leadership include time for collaboration, shared leadership, and
embedded professional development (Drago-Severson 2007; Kardos et al. 2001;
Lampert et al. 2011; Little 2006; Paine et al. 2003). Although such structures
contrast with traditional hierarchical school structures and teacher isolation, which
are inherent in many schools (York-Barr and Duke 2004), when teachers have time
to discuss and plan instruction, analyze student work, and learn from others’
expertise, they can improve instruction and student learning (Chenoweth 2009;
J Educ Change (2016) 17:85–113 87
123
Drago-Severson 2007; Kardos et al. 2001; Little 2006). Shared leadership between
school leaders and faculty, such that faculty have a voice in decision-making
processes, also supports teacher leadership (Drago-Severson 2007), as does PD that
provides teachers with individualized learning opportunities connected to their
everyday instructional practice (Borko et al. 2008; Drago-Severson 2007; Little
2006). With the work of teacher leaders embedded in such PD, they can support
their colleagues as they promote valuable, engaging teacher and student learning
(York-Barr and Duke 2004).
The process of teacher leadership
Despite the breadth of research on the foundational conditions for teacher
leadership, this body of work does not present a complete picture of how teacher
leadership can and does improve instruction. That is, even when these conditions are
met, teaching and learning do not necessarily improve. There is a little-understood
teacher leadership process by which teachers take actions that lead to change in
their organizations. York-Barr and Duke (2004) identify three broad means of
influence by which effective teacher leaders can shape the work of individuals,
groups, and organizations. Those means of influence are broadly conceived and
include maintaining a focus on teaching and learning, establishing trusting and
constructive relationships, and interacting through formal and informal points of
influence. York-Barr and Duke identify the ultimate outcomes of such influence as
improved instructional practices and student learning. Yet, they do not articulate the
specific actions and tactics teacher leaders can take as they engage in those
relationships and interactions that would effectively change, rather than merely
influence, the instruction of other teachers. In distinguishing between these two
outcomes, we conceptualize influence as indirectly altering another’s practice by
informing their thinking in ways that shape what they do, whereas change is
intentionally propelling others to do some specific thing in a specific way that differs
from current practice.
In expanding on York-Barr and Duke’s work, Fairman and Mackenzie (2012) use
interviews with forty formal and informal teacher leaders to describe nine activities
in which teachers can influence instructional change, such as through collaborating
with peers or contributing to school improvement efforts. They position these
teacher leadership activities on a continuum from classroom-based to school-based.
More recently, Fairman and Mackenzie (2014) describe specific strategies these
same teacher leaders use to influence colleagues, such as by creating collegial
climates or building trusting relationships, and they provide examples of ways
teacher leaders have enacted these strategies. Through examining teacher leaders’
self-reports, Fairman and Mackenzie contribute to our understanding of the teacher
leadership process by delving more deeply into the actions individual teacher
leaders take. However, their findings rely on reflections from teacher leaders and
inferences about cause-and-effect relationships that may overstate the impact of
teacher leadership on ultimate outcomes. As with much of the research, Fairman and
Mackenzie’s conclusions rest on two assumptions: (a) that teacher leaders have a
88 J Educ Change (2016) 17:85–113
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means to influence their colleagues’ work, and (b) that teacher leaders engage in
actions that lead their colleagues to change their practice. In the present study, we
examine these assumptions by analyzing videos of teacher leaders attempting to
produce change in their colleagues’ teaching and by using interviews and other
triangulated data to contextualize these change efforts in the embedded systems
within which teacher leaders function.
Theoretical framework
We draw on Kotter’s (1996) eight steps for leading organizational change as a
framework for classifying the tactics teacher leaders use when attempting to change
the practice of their colleagues. The change process, according to Kotter (1996),
begins with a sense that the status quo is not working. Outside factors, which in
schools might be low test scores, may serve as the impetus, but real change occurs
only when an internal sense of urgency motivates individuals to change what they
do (Step 1). For this to happen, individuals with power (e.g., administrators, formal
teacher leaders, influential teachers) take up the mantle of change and form a
guiding coalition (Step 2). This coalition leads initial change efforts by clearly
articulating the problem, developing a vision for the change process, and defining
feasible and focused strategies for enacting that vision (Step 3). The challenge for
the coalition is to ensure that individuals at all levels of the organization understand
and ‘buy in’ to the vision. In schools, coalitions might accomplish this by
championing a new instructional practice, trying it out themselves, and making it
central to their work with teachers. Their work also involves communicating the
vision in various modes and forms (e.g., faculty meetings, hallway/lunchroom
conversations, testimonials, etc.) and delivering a consistent message in ways that
appeal to the hearts and minds of teachers (Step 4). The goal is to embolden teachers
to try new ideas, convincing them to make the necessary sacrifices involved in
changing their instructional practices. As part of this work, the coalition provides
supports, such as resources (time, funds, and materials) and training, to empower
broad-based action toward the vision (Step 5). They make way for this action by
removing obstacles to the vision and confronting people who undermine change
efforts (intentionally or not). As the changes begin to take hold, the guiding
coalition focuses on creating and highlighting short-term wins that propel further
action (Step 6), and they turn their attention to producing more change by
acculturating new members, constantly revisiting the vision, and ensuring that all
decision-making relates directly to the change goals (Step 7). Throughout the
process, the guiding coalition operates with the full understanding that they will, at
some point, relinquish power to others as change begins to spread and new practices
become anchored in the culture of the school (Step 8).
To contextualize teacher leaders’ efforts to create change, we also utilize
complex systems theory (Opfer and Pedder 2011), which recognizes that teacher
learning is nested within complex systems that have varying levels of overlap and
influence. Lasting change can only take hold when extending beyond a guiding
coalition and becoming prevalent among many individuals in a school, each of
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whom possesses their own personal system of orientations toward a given reform—
such as their beliefs, understandings, and experiences with the reform. Achieving
change that permeates many systems within the school context is perhaps the most
complicated step in achieving true transformation. Opfer and Pedder (2011) assert,
‘‘Teacher learning tends to be constituted simultaneously in the activity of
autonomous entities (teachers), collectives (such as grade level and subject groups),
and subsystems within grander unities (schools within school systems within
sociopolitical educational contexts)’’ (p. 379). They frame these systems and
subsystems as ‘‘interdependent and reciprocally influential’’ (p. 379). They argue
that examining the nested systems in which teacher learning occurs sheds light on
‘‘the complex relationships between systems that promote and impede teacher
learning and instructional change’’ (Opfer and Pedder 2011, p. 379). As teachers are
asked to assume a leadership role, formal teacher leaders coexist within both the
leadership team and the teaching staff. In this unique boundary-crossing position,
teacher leaders may have a voice in decision-making and goal-setting, yet can
maintain their access and credibility with teachers, all of which may allow them to
play an important role in conveying the necessary sense of urgency to initiate and
propel change. From a complex systems perspective, we posit that teacher leaders
can link the visioning process and the implementation of new teaching practice
while also shaping the school’s operative culture across multiple systems (Opfer and
Pedder 2011). Once the change process begins, teacher leaders could contribute
further by connecting systems as they communicate a consistent vision and engage
in the learning process with their colleagues. As we have hinted at here, the present
study seeks to situate Kotter’s (1996) eight steps for leading change within the
complex systems that frame teacher leaders’ work as a way to understand the
process of teacher
leadership.
Professional development for teacher leaders
This study accompanied our work as university-based PD providers in a 4-year
program with 28 high-poverty urban charter schools in a large Midwestern city.
Two or more teachers at each school were placed in formal teacher leadership
roles—as professional learning community leaders (PLC leaders) or mentors for
novice teachers—to build a school-wide culture of professional inquiry around
discussion-based teaching. Schools were invited to participate in this PD as part of
their required work in a large federally funded grant initiative led by the state
charter association. Their participation in the grant provided multiple years of free
professional development, along with school resources and stipends for teacher
leaders. Our PD focused on developing the practice of teacher leaders who could
facilitate inquiry-oriented PLC meetings that enhanced the quantity and quality of
professional dialogue among teachers. At the same time, we prepared mentors to
work one-on-one with beginning teachers to further facilitate professional dialogue
and teacher learning. At the outset of the program, we introduced school principals
to a rubric (Stanulis et al. 2011) to help select their PLC leaders and mentors. Rubric
criteria included elements of Dewey’s (1933) characteristics of educative teachers,
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including being wholehearted (approaching teaching with joy and connecting
content and students in meaningful ways), trustworthy (opening practice to others
and valuing conversations with colleagues about teaching and learning), and
openminded (being open to learning and eager to try new ideas; being open to
reflection and analysis of one’s teaching). The rubric also integrated York-Barr and
Duke’s (2004) foundational conditions that teacher leaders be respected as teachers,
be learning oriented, and have leadership capacities. Depending on the size of their
school, principals selected one or two PLC leaders and one to four mentor teachers.
Because principals are foundational to school change (Grissom and Loeb 2011), we
included the principals in three PD sessions each year, building on the initial session
where we discussed selection of mentors and PLC leaders. The content of this PD
focused on ways to develop and support a school culture that supports teacher
learning, and we provided modeled examples of principles and practices of an
effective inquiry-focused PLC meeting. Principals were also updated on themes of
the mentor/PLC leader sessions and regularly met with their PLC leader and
mentors as a school team to plan next steps for enacting instructional change in their
school.
In the 2012–2013 school year, PLC meetings and mentoring both centered on
promoting an inquiry-based learning climate around discussion-based
teaching.
Discussion-based teaching is an instructional strategy for improving student
learning, as it (a) involves students in meaning making while actively listening
and voicing ideas; (b) requires students to provide relevant evidence from materials
being discussed; (c) promotes student linking, in which students agree with,
disagree with, and/or extend their peers’ contributions; and (d) provides opportu-
nities for students to communicate orally and in writing to improve critical thinking
and comprehension (Jadallah et al. 2010; Matsumura et al. 2010; Stanulis et al.
2014). All teachers engage students in some talk, but few learn to lead the kinds of
classroom discussions that are rigorous and lead to critical thinking (Gambrell and
Almasi 1996). Learning to lead effective discussions involves knowledge of
individual students, textual material, and ways of reading and scaffolding
participation to facilitate these kinds of discussions (Stanulis and Brondyk 2013).
We chose to focus on discussion-based teaching in our PD with teacher leaders
because teachers benefit from focused attention on one area of instructional
improvement and because learning to lead classroom discussions is a core practice
linked to effective teaching (Ball et al. 2009; Grossman et al. 2009). We undertook
the present study with three school teams from our PD to understand how teacher
leaders engaged in these instructional improvement efforts at their schools.
Research questions
To understand the process by which teacher leaders in our PD program attempted to
change their colleagues’ instructional practice around discussion-based teaching, we
set out to answer two research questions:
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1. What change tactics do the leadership teams and individual teacher leaders use
when attempting to change the teaching practice of their colleagues, and how do
they use them?
2. How do the structural and cultural facets of the systems within which teacher
leaders are situated, including the leadership teams in which they are embedded,
promote and impede their efforts to create change?
Methods
We developed embedded case studies (Yin 2009) of leadership teams in three
schools participating in our PD. The overarching cases were the teams, each
consisting of a principal and 2–5 teacher leaders, and the eleven teacher leaders
across the three schools constituted embedded cases. This embedded design enabled
us to examine how the members of each team functioned collectively and separately
in their efforts to change the teaching practices of their colleagues and how various
embedded systems shaped teacher leadership in three different schools.
Site and participant selection
Following the first year of PD (2011–2012), we used purposeful theoretical
sampling (Patton 2002) to identify three schools in which we perceived a high
likelihood that teacher leadership was impacting school-wide instruction. Based on
our interactions with principals and teacher leaders at all 28 participating schools,
we targeted three sites in which the teacher leaders at that time appeared to have
strong leadership capacity and a learning orientation and where the principals
appeared to support teacher leaders by devoting ample time and resources to their
work. In these ways, these schools appeared to meet York-Barr and Duke’s (2004)
foundational conditions for effective teacher leadership and thus be suitable loca-
tions to study the process of teacher leadership in an urban setting.
Table 1 provides an overview of the three overarching school cases—Spruce,
Maple, and Dogwood Academies (pseudonyms)—and the eleven embedded teacher
leader cases (shown in bold). The number of teacher leaders at each school ranged
from two to five, and all participating leaders were female. Table 1 also provides
size, demographic, and academic performance data for the schools. All three were
charter schools in a high-poverty urban area in the Midwest and had student bodies
that were 94–99 % African American, ranging in size from 355 to 575 students.
Despite similar demographics and test scores, however, these schools ranked quite
differently in the 2011–2012 statewide ranking of schools, which is based on test
scores, growth over time, and within-school achievement gaps. As of 2012,
Spruce
and Dogwood were both in the upper 40th percentile, while Maple was struggling
by comparison at only the 7th percentile.
We selected these schools based on our assessment of the principals, teacher
leaders, and school contexts before our study began. At Maple and
Dogwood
Academies, there were high levels of consistency in school leaders, teacher leaders,
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teaching staffs, and student bodies from the year of selection to the year of study.
However, there were many interim changes at Spruce Academy. First, Spruce’s
K-12 campus divided into four separate schools—with kindergarten, elementary,
middle, and high schools. The principal, Sophia, became superintendent of all four
schools, and administrative interns were placed in the elementary school, the site for
our study. The student and teacher populations also tripled, bringing in many new
teachers who were recent college graduates. In addition, Spruce’s original PLC
leader moved to the high school, leaving the kindergarten and elementary teachers
to work with a new PLC leader, Stacy, who joined our study. As such, the Spruce
Academy we studied was contextually quite different from the one we recruited.
Although our intention was not to study a school undergoing such transition, our
interest in the impact of context on teacher leadership ended up making this an
informative site.
Data collection
We collected data during the second year of our PD (2012–2013). To inform our
first research question regarding change tactics, we collected seventeen self-
captured videos of the teacher leaders engaging in leadership work. PLC leaders
digitally video-recorded themselves facilitating or co-facilitating two whole-staff,
Table 1 Overview of the three overarching school cases (with embedded cases noted in bold)
Spruce
Academy
Maple
Academy
Dogwood
Academy
Leadership team
Principal Sophia Marie Donna
PLC leader(s) Stacy Michelle Daphne
Morgan
Mentor(s) Sarah Maggie Debbie
Melinda Dawn
Madeline Dianne
Size and demographics 2012
Grades served K-5 K-5 K-8
Number of teachers 34 30 16
Number of students 575 510 355
% African American 94 99 99
% Economically disadvantaged 84 83 70
Academic performance data 2012
% proficient/advanced in reading (5th
grade)
59 47 66
% proficient/advanced in math (5th grade) 15 5 15
State ranking
a
74th percentile 7th percentile 63rd percentile
a
State ranking is based on test scores, growth over time, and within-school achievement gaps
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hour-long PLC meetings—one in fall and one in winter or spring. Mentors recorded
themselves engaging in one-on-one mentoring conversations with beginning
teachers. Three mentors video-recorded one mentoring session, and four mentors
recorded two sessions—one early and one later in the year. Mentoring sessions
ranged from 8 to 30 min. All teacher leaders wrote reflections on their videos and
discussed the videos and reflections in a formal coaching conversation with a
member of our team. The videos, written reflections, and notes from the coaching
conversations all served as data on the change tactics teacher leaders used and how
they understood their efforts to lead instructional change.
To inform our second research question on the influence of embedded systems on
teacher leadership, we conducted thirty-four interviews with the PLC leaders,
mentors, and principals across the year. Interviews ranged from 30 to 60 min and
were recorded and transcribed. Nine teacher leaders were interviewed three times
each at the beginning, middle, and end of the year. The two PLC leaders at Maple
Academy were interviewed together each time since they shared the role. Two
mentors were only interviewed twice due to health issues. School principals were
interviewed once (1 principal) or twice (2 principals) as their schedules allowed. All
interviews followed a semi-structured protocol that sought to identify the
individual’s understanding of their and others’ leadership experiences, their
responsibilities and challenges as a leader, and how they saw the team, school,
and broader contexts as impacting their efforts to change instruction.
To triangulate our understanding of the leadership practice and contexts at these
three sites, we collected three additional forms of data. During three visits to each
school, we collected artifacts from leadership activities, including agendas from
PLC meetings, samples of teacher work products from PLC meetings (posters,
lessons plans, etc.), and copies of materials distributed during PLC meetings and
mentoring sessions. At the end of the year, we also surveyed the full teaching staff
at each school to assess teachers’ perceptions of discussion-based teaching in their
classrooms (the primary focus of the teacher leaders’ work) and the quantity and
quality of professional dialogue among teachers in the school. Surveys were
administered during staff meetings and were completed by at least 75 % of the
faculty at each school. Finally, we used school and state websites to collect data on
student achievement and staff attrition at each school.
Data analysis
Data analysis occurred in three phases. In Phase I, as data were collected, we used
our theoretical frameworks to generate descriptive codes and coded the thirty-four
interviews (Miles and Huberman 1994). In Phase II, following data collection, we
met as a six-person research team over 2 months to generate individual case reports
(Yin 2009) for each teacher leader by collectively viewing the seventeen video-
recordings, examining supplemental data, and discussing the practice of each
teacher leader to identify where and how she used Kotter’s (1996) change tactics.
The member of our team who coached each teacher leader during the PD added
information from their notes and personal interactions. We also reviewed interview
excerpts from the teacher leaders and principals, discussed our interpretations, and
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added additional notes to the case reports. We then summarized our impressions of
all eleven teacher leaders in an analytic matrix (Miles and Huberman 1994)
organized by Kotter’s eight change tactics.
At this point, we moved into Phase III and considered the three leadership teams
as cohesive units of analysis. Here we integrated Opfer and Pedder’s (2011) theory
with Kotter’s (1996) to consider aspects of the change process. Questions that
propelled our analysis include: Who drives change? How do various members of the
team shape the change process? Is there a sense of urgency that change must
occur? Does the leadership team have a strong vision, and is it clearly and
regularly communicated to others? How do school leaders support or impede the
process? How does the school context impact this work? We drafted one-page
interpretive statements to describe how each team attempted to change instruction,
and we created concept maps to capture the embedded systems and team dynamics
at each school (Maxwell 2005). Figure 1 shows a generic concept map to illustrate
our graphic conceptualization. The left side of the model denotes how complex
systems interact in a process that works toward a particular product on the right side
of the model, such as sustainable school-wide change in instruction. The gray circles
at the far left represent two systems that were constant for our three cases, as all
teacher leaders received the same PD and worked in similar contexts. The center of
the graphic shows the various players who influenced change. We conceptualized
that teacher learning takes place within the arc of the model and is influenced by the
school leader, who has the ability to enable or constrain teacher learning by
influencing the school context for teacher learning (such as by scheduling time and
allocating resources). Teacher leaders also influence teacher learning within the arc
as they interact with one another and their colleagues. In our analyses, we modified
this model for each school to depict how these complex systems intersected in ways
Sustainable
School-wide
Change
PD
Colleagues Teacher
Leaders
CONTEXT
Process Product
Fig. 1 Generic concept map denoting how embedded systems can shape the teacher leadership change
process in a school
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that promoted or constrained instructional change at each site. As a final step, we
looked across our analytic tools to identify our overall findings regarding the
process of teacher leadership and how the school contexts and leadership teams
shaped those processes.
Findings
Given Opfer and Pedder’s (2011) complex systems theory, we theorized that teacher
leaders’ efforts to create change would be influenced by the embedded systems
surrounding their work. This could not have been more true. We found that change
efforts among these eleven teacher leaders were overwhelmingly shaped by a
multitude of systems, including the contexts of their leadership teams and schools,
their individual PD experiences, their personal orientations toward teacher
leadership and those of their colleagues, and external factors such as being in a
large city and being charter schools. Using the lens of Kotter’s (1996) eight steps for
leading change, we also inferred that some teacher leaders made key missteps early
in the change process—particularly in the initial four phases of establishing
urgency, creating a guiding coalition, developing a vision, and communicating that
vision—that limited their ability to change their colleagues’ practice. Examining
change tactics and embedded systems simultaneously, we identified key ways in
which complexities within the interlocking systems—particularly the leadership
teams and school contexts—greatly influenced whether, and if so how, teacher
leaders individually and collectively enacted Kotter’s first four steps toward change.
In the end-of-year survey of the full teaching staff, teachers at all three schools
reported attending regular PLC meetings with genuine participation among their
colleagues, and most teachers at all three sites agreed that mentors helped new
teachers think about student learning. We also found, however, that teachers in the
three schools reported using discussion-based teaching strategies with different
frequencies at the end of the year. At Spruce and Maple Academies, only 22–25 %
of teachers reported having students actively talk and participate in class more than
three-quarters of the time, and only 14–18 % of teachers reported having students
talk with a peer or in groups for more than 60 min a week. By contrast, these
percentages at Dogwood were 66 % for students actively talking and participating
more than three-quarters of the time, and 58 and 42 % for students spending more
than 60 min a week talking to a peer or with a group, respectively. Although we do
not have baseline data to assess whether the frequency of discussion-based teaching
actually changed over the year, our qualitative data strongly support the conclusion
that the high volume of discussion-based teaching reported at Dogwood was due in
large part to the teacher leaders. In particular, our analyses reveal that the nature of
teacher leadership at Dogwood was much more systematically focused on the goal
of increasing discussion-based teaching than that at either Spruce or Maple, and the
embedded systems at Dogwood greatly supported this teacher leadership work in
ways we did not find at Spruce and Maple.
To illustrate how embedded systems shaped teacher leaders’ efforts to create
change, we present our findings on each of the three cases below. We begin with
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Dogwood Academy, the one school in which teacher leaders successfully enacted
Kotter’s (1996) first four steps for leading change and ultimately appeared to create
instructional change among their colleagues. We start here to lay the foundation for
how embedded systems can support the teacher leadership process. We then present
the Maple and Spruce cases—in which Kotter’s framework suggests that teacher
leaders took missteps early in the change process and thus ultimately had less
impact on the implementation of discussion-based teaching—to illustrate two ways
in which embedded systems can hinder or undermine the teacher leadership process.
Dogwood Academy: Embedded systems supporting the teacher leadership
process
As a small charter school on a busy city street, Dogwood Academy was comprised
of a tight-knit, sixteen-person teaching staff of primarily African American women.
Figure 2 shows our conceptualization of how embedded systems supported the
change process at Dogwood. Central to instructional change was the strong and
focused leadership of the PLC leader, Daphne (shown by the gray circle at the base
of the teacher learning arc), who had been teaching at Dogwood for 6 years. Her
principal Donna remarked of her, ‘‘She’s personable and humble so that you know
ego doesn’t get in the way…. She is very inclusive of the staff. She values their
ideas. She wants them to contribute… She is the biggest cheerleader in the group.’’
Although our PD did not explicitly address Kotter’s (1996) eight steps for leading
change, Daphne intuitively enacted the first five steps and was well positioned to
move into the later stages of the model.
As the foundational step for change, Daphne did what PLC leaders at the other
schools did not: She created a sense of urgency around the need for more
discussion-based teaching. She did this by linking discussion-based teaching to an
overall vision for change that she labeled ‘‘Bridging the System,’’ and which she
linked to the particular needs of Dogwood’s urban students whom she argued
needed consistency. Daphne described this vision in an interview:
Discussion-based
Teaching
Mentor
Mentor
Mentor
PD
Context
PLC
Leader Colleagues(16)
PLC
Leader
Fig. 2 Change process at Dogwood Academy
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What is resonating throughout our building right now is just bridging our
system and everybody is talking about it…. It is our system, it’s not, you
know, 4th grade scores…. Our students should have a lot more consistency,
and we’re doing them a disservice [when we’re inconsistent]. So our goal is to
figure out where are we losing, why are we losing, and how can we stop losing
it…. Everybody understands that it is the system and we have to work on our
system in order for our students to succeed.
As part of trying to increase consistency throughout the school, Daphne’s whole-
school PLC meetings heavily emphasized uniform approaches to discussion across
the grade levels. In a spring PLC meeting, Daphne asserted to her colleagues, ‘‘If
something works, why shouldn’t it be modified for all grades?’’ During that
meeting, Daphne had two teachers share best practices in discussion-based teaching,
and teachers met in grade levels to modify those practices for each grade. In creating
urgency around a vision of ‘‘bridging the system,’’ Daphne drew on the needs of
Dogwood’s population of urban students, thereby integrating the local context, and
urged her colleagues to consider their responsibility to scaffold student learning
over multiple years.
This compelling, urgent focus on discussion-based teaching also appeared in the
practice of two mentors, Debbie and Dianne. In a representative exchange, Debbie
and a mentee debriefed a lesson. The mentee reflected, ‘‘I suppose it’s my job to
make sure [the students] know prior to playing the game that the most important
thing is student discussion. And I might not have set that up quite as well as I could
have.’’ Debbie concurred, and they considered strategies for more successfully
structuring group conversations. Despite the consistent focus among Daphne,
Debbie, and Dianne (as shown by overlapping circles in the model), the third
mentor, Dawn, did not contribute to increasing discussion-based teaching. As a
counselor, rather than a teacher, Dawn’s mentoring interactions tended to center on
students’ psychological needs and rarely addressed instructional strategies. The
other three teacher leaders all reinforced one another’s messages that discussion was
central to the vision of effective teaching at Dogwood Academy.
School leader Donna reinforced the vision and functioned as a co-visionary with
Daphne. She also supported the change process by creating structures to support
teacher learning (represented on the model by the arc with arrows), and she
regularly attended our PD sessions for school leaders, actively participating and
sharing her inclusive vision of teacher leadership with other principals. Daphne
noted of Donna, ‘‘She models what she hears from the large PLCs…. That’s the way
she carries her meetings…. We all have input; she listens to us. So I know that she
feels that student talk is important, I know it.’’ Despite modeling the vision herself,
Donna enabled Daphne to guide PLC meetings. Donna explained,
I don’t always stay for the entire [meeting] as long as I have had a
conversation with Daphne beforehand and we know what the agenda is. She’s
very good about sharing what they’re going to do and saying, ‘Is this in line
with what you would like to see?’ And a lot of times I say, ‘Well we’re
working this together. It’s not so much what I want to see you do as long as
we’re all on the same page.’
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Enacting a unified and clearly communicated vision for instructional change, the
guiding coalition of three teacher leaders and the principal were able to move into
Kotter’s (1996) fifth step for leading change by empowering broad-based action.
Dogwood’s collegial culture of safety and shared expertise supported frequent
conversations about teaching practice that enabled broad-based action to take hold.
Indeed, everyone we interviewed at Dogwood described a highly collegial
professional context. Mentor Debbie described, ‘‘This is like a family, and we
have one another’s back…. This is a great, great environment.’’ In one video,
Debbie’s mentee remarked, ‘‘You know, Debbie, I appreciate you and some of the
other middle school teachers…. I appreciate the help you’ve given me and just the
acceptance [and] the professional relationship that we’ve had over the last eight,
nine months.’’ This highly collegial tone permeated the interactions we witnessed in
the videos, our own interactions with this leadership team, and our campus visits to
Dogwood. In this context, the teacher leaders were able to position themselves as
co-learners with colleagues and influence broad implementation of discussion-based
teaching.
As depicted in Fig. 2, the evidence illustrates that the structure and culture of the
leadership team and school context at Dogwood created the space and conditions to
support teacher-leader-driven change. Discussion-based teaching was clearly a
common focus of teacher learning at Dogwood at all levels throughout the year, and
conversations in the videos along with the end-of-year survey results suggest that
discussion-based teaching encompassed the practice of many of the sixteen
colleagues in the school by the end of the year.
Maple Academy: Embedded systems pulling in many directions
At the outset, Maple Academy appeared to have many key elements that we
envisioned would support instructional change through teacher leadership. The
school had a strong principal, Marie, who was popular with her staff and highly
invested in the instructional quality of her school. Marie always attended our PD,
volunteering for her team to share ideas and smiling proudly as staff members
shared what was happening in their school. The staff of primarily young white
women also had very low turnover, with all thirty of the 2012–2013 teachers having
taught at Maple the year prior. Two experienced Maple teachers, Michelle and
Morgan, shared the PLC leader role, and worked as part-time administrators in tight
collaboration with Marie. The three mentors were experienced teachers, whom
Marie described as ‘‘my strong classroom leaders, grade level team leaders.’’
However, we ultimately found that the embedded systems at Maple were relatively
rigid and disconnected, pulling the leadership team in many directions and
seemingly undermining the teacher leaders’ ability to create change. In Fig. 3, we
illustrate our conceptualization of the change process at Maple. The most noticeable
feature of this graphic is the number of arrows pointing to various initiatives. Video
analyses of PLC meetings and mentoring sessions at Maple revealed a fairly diffuse,
disconnected vision for instructional change due to the large number of initiatives
and emphases during the 2012–2013 school year. These included implementation of
Common Core State Standards, preparing for the new Smarter Balance assessment,
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monthly trainings on Classroom Instruction that Works, Daily Five literacy centers,
posting objectives on the board, cooperative learning, small-group Data Analysis
Teams, meeting the goals outlined in the School Improvement Plan and Maple’s
charter, and discussion-based teaching. With so many simultaneous initiatives each
being treated as a separate endeavor, discussion-based teaching was only one
strategy among many (hence the small PD overlap in Fig. 3). Not only could we not
locate discussion-based teaching within the school’s vision, we could not identify a
singular clear, unified vision for effective teaching at Maple. We further noted that
the list of initiatives underway at Maple were context independent; they were not
framed as being responsive to the particular learning needs of Maple students. This
stood in stark contrast to Daphne’s assertion that Dogwood students needed
consistency across grade levels.
Also prominent in Fig. 3 is the thick, all-encompassing arc representing principal
Marie’s top-down managerial style. In an interview, Marie listed ‘‘non-negotiables’’
for teachers, including posting instructional objectives and using cooperative groups
and ‘‘Daily Five’’ literacy centers. In many ways, the teacher leaders were Marie’s
enforcers. Mentor Madeline relayed,
Maggie had an issue where Daily Five was really not even being done at all
[by a mentee]. It was called Daily Five, but it wasn’t [really Daily Five], and
so she went to the principal and said, ‘How important is it that this teacher is
doing this?’ And the principal said, ‘Well, it’s very important.’ And she said,
‘Well, it’s a huge problem because it’s not happening at all.’
Through such anecdotes, it became clear that urgency at Maple was centered on
using the teaching strategies Marie advocated and that Marie was the driving force
for teacher learning. As a group, the principal and teacher leaders at Maple had a
relatively large team of six to serve as a guiding coalition. Yet, because the
instructional agenda came from the principal and was not owned nor shaped by the
teacher leaders, they had little autonomy and few opportunities for leading change.
PLC
Leader
PLC
Leader
Mentor
Mentor
Mentor
Posting instructional objectives
Cooperative learning
Daily Five
Common Core State Standards
Preparing for Smarter Balance
Instruction that Works
Teacher data analysis teams
Discussion-based Teaching
PD
Context
Colleagues
(34)
Fig. 3 Change process at Maple Academy
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Thus, in Fig. 3, none of the teacher leaders are shaded because none took the lead in
creating a vision for or movement toward discussion-based teaching. Although a
few mentors mentioned discussion-based teaching when talking with mentees, those
practices got lost in the myriad of initiatives and, therefore, never took hold as a
means to school-wide change.
One area where teacher leaders at Maple did have an opportunity to lead change
was in communicating a vision, Kotter’s (1996) fourth step. Here, the PLC leaders
in particular possessed leadership opportunities as they ran PLC meetings and
attempted to guide their colleagues’ understanding of discussion-based teaching and
other initiatives. Through this communication, they had the potential to identify
common threads across various initiatives and weave them together in a way that
could solidify a change vision. However, Michelle and Morgan tended to preserve
the disconnected nature of the initiatives by talking about them separately rather
than synthesizing them into a cohesive vision. Michelle acknowledged, ‘‘I feel like
it’s hard to get in everything especially, you know, with all the other things that
we’re trying to do here. So, we’re trying to get as much as possible in without being
overwhelming.’’ Mentors reported using a written list of expectations. Madeline
described, ‘‘We have a checklist of objectives we’re supposed to discuss each
month, so we kind of go through those things. And then otherwise we talk about the
culture of talk and partner work and different ways to incorporate talk.’’ In these
ways, even though the teacher leaders had an opportunity to lead through
communication, they did not experience the autonomy to engage in such leadership.
Spruce Academy: Embedded systems lost in transition
We found that the school context at Spruce Academy was not well suited for
instructional change during the 2012–2013 school year due to the transition to
separate campuses, the tripling of the staff, the hiring of seventeen new teachers
(primarily young white women and men fresh out of college), and the promotion of
the principal to superintendent. In the midst of all this change, the embedded
systems surrounding teacher leadership were compromised and struggling to
become re-systematized. In large part due to this shifting context, the change efforts
of the two teacher leaders at Spruce were relatively disjointed and ineffective for
fostering wide implementation of discussion-based teaching across classrooms.
Prior to the transition, principal Sophia, mentor Sarah, and the original PLC leader
attended our PD sessions together and planned as a team. Sophia attended our
sessions for school leaders, facilitated leadership team conversations, and provided
regular release time for mentoring and two early-release days for students each
month so that teachers could work in PLCs. However, in this second year, with an
expanded role, Sophia was rarely present at the PD, left two administrative interns
to oversee the elementary building, and reduced release time for mentors and PLCs.
This new administrative ‘‘hands off’’ approach is represented in Fig. 4 by the wide
arc, denoting that the school leader did very little to create a context for teacher
learning. In her second year as a mentor, Sarah mentored eight beginning teachers,
far more than we recommended, in addition to teaching her own class. Stacy took
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over early in the 2012–2013 year as the new PLC leader at the elementary campus,
which meant she missed more than a full year of our PD.
It is within this changing, taxed context that we asked Sarah and Stacy to promote
discussion-based teaching as an instructional change agenda for their fellow teachers.
In examining Stacy’s efforts as the new PLC leader, we found that she did not
employ any of Kotter’s (1996) strategies for creating change. In regards to urgency,
which Kotter positions as the first step toward change, we found that Stacy’s sense of
urgency was centered on acclimating the large number of new teachers. As such,
Stacy prioritized building a professional community with high morale over
promoting any specific teaching practice, and she emphasized what she saw as the
needs of new teachers, including ‘‘things that… either they’re already implementing
in their classroom or they can pretty quickly implement.’’ At the end of the year,
Stacy reflected, ‘‘I think any changes have been better morale among the teachers.’’
Although discussion-based teaching was included in some PLC meetings, Stacy
presented the strategies in the form of ‘‘tips’’ for teachers, rather than research-based
practices for enhancing student learning. In one PLC meeting, Stacy explained,
Something [the PD team] mentioned the other day, and I want to do this
myself, is set your phone out during your lesson and put it aside and record
your voice…. How much are you talking verses your students talking? … I
think that was a really great idea and I want to do that myself. Just press
‘record’ so I can hear my voice and analyze and look back and reflect on
myself. How much talking am I doing as opposed to my kids? So that’s a
really good idea.
Like much of what occurred in Stacy’s PLC meetings, this excerpt illustrates a
casual yet upbeat attitude toward the ideas from our PD and a sense that her role as
PLC leader was to collect ‘‘tips’’ and pass those on to her fellow teachers. She did
Acclimating New Teachers
Discussion-based Teaching
BTs
(8)
Context
Mentor
PD
PLC
Leader
Colleagues
(26)
Fig. 4 Change process at Spruce Academy
102 J Educ Change (2016) 17:85–113
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not create a sense of urgency for teachers to develop expertise in discussion-based
teaching as a way to increase student learning. We also found some evidence that
Stacy was still in the process of developing her own understanding of discussion-
based teaching, as she sometimes conflated different practices in her PLC meetings.
For example, she regularly interchanged the terms ‘‘whole class discussion’’ and
‘‘whole class instruction.’’
Amidst Stacy’s focus on acclimation and her still-developing understanding of
discussion-based teaching, we found little evidence of a school-wide vision for
instruction at Spruce. In part, Stacy’s hesitancy to formulate a vision appeared to be
rooted in her personal orientation toward leadership and her interest in remaining
just one of the staff. She commented, ‘‘One of the things I still struggle with, from
time to time, is maintaining a level of leadership without making others feel I ‘know
all.’… I try to be as low-key and relatable as possible.’’ Reflecting this orientation,
Stacy closed a PLC sharing session among teachers by saying, ‘‘These are some
really good ideas and what I’ll do is copy all of these down and email them to
everyone, so if there’s one that you want to try in your classroom, you can do that.’’
It was clear from Stacy’s videos and interviews that her PLC meetings primarily
consisted of teachers sharing ideas without any criteria for those ideas or any central
thread connecting different practices around a particular vision of teaching. In this
way, Stacy did not appear to possess a vision for change and seemed to resist the
idea that she could be a visionary for Spruce.
In contrast to Stacy, we found that Sarah emphasized discussion-based teaching
more regularly and revealed stronger understanding of the student learning benefits.
Figure 4 includes divergent arrows to indicate that the two teacher leaders were
working toward different goals and so not aligned in pursuit of a common vision of
good teaching. Sarah as the mentor (shaded gray) was the driver toward discussion-
based teaching with her small group of beginning teachers (denoted by the BT circle
as a subset of the overall colleagues). Stacy, as the PLC leader, was more concerned
with acclimating new teachers as she engaged with the staff at large. Although
Sarah also had this goal, she embraced discussion-based teaching as a means for
acclimation. Just the same, we did not sense great urgency in Sarah’s mentoring, as
her tone was more soft and suggestive. In interviews, however, Sarah reported
observing and celebrating her mentees’ use of discussion-based teaching, suggesting
a more intentional focus than her mentoring tone revealed. She noted of one mentee,
‘‘The Spanish teacher, I love him to pieces because he actually is using ‘turn and
talk’ that I do with my kids…. They’re now sitting with each other and [having]
conversations with each other in Spanish and practicing polite mannerisms.’’
One clear issue impeding teacher leadership for change at Spruce was the small
number of teacher leaders. Kotter (1996) argues that change requires a guiding
coalition of powerful leaders who will collaborate on steering the change. Unlike at
Dogwood and Maple, where there were four or five teacher leaders and an on-site
principal, Spruce had only two teacher leaders who were functioning with very little
administrative oversight. In this way, Spruce’s guiding coalition appeared to be too
small, particularly compared to their staff of 34 teachers. In some ways, Sarah’s
cadre of eight mentees became something of a small coalition, meeting occasionally
to review discussion-based teaching. However, this coalition was not particularly
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powerful given their status as primarily new teachers, and they were not a force for
change throughout the school. Without a real champion for a school-wide vision
centered on discussion-based teaching and without a sense of urgency around the
need for such a vision, instruction at Spruce Academy did not broadly appear to
integrate discussion-based teaching during the 2012–2013 school year beyond the
small cohort of Sarah’s mentees. In this case, the transitional context of the school
clearly played a role in the minimal impact of teacher leadership.
Discussion
Looking across these cases, we gain insight into the process of teacher leadership as
it occurs within embedded systems and how those systems support, direct, or
impede instructional change. This study is not meant to be an endorsement or
critique of any particular school or school leader, as these school settings are much
more complex than what we can account for through only two theoretical lenses.
Rather, we provide comparisons across the schools in an effort to provide insight
into how schools that would like to affect change through teacher leadership might
learn from examples of schools and teacher leaders in similar contexts. The findings
from this study suggest that when teacher leaders work within networks of
supportive embedded systems, they can develop and drive change towards an
instructional vision that is clear and reinforced. However, when teacher leaders
work in environments that are disconnected or compromised, their ability to
influence or change their peers’ instruction is highly limited. Below, we discuss five
embedded systems that we found to impact the teacher leadership change process:
the teacher leader’s personal orientations toward leadership, the school principal’s
orientations toward leadership, the leadership team, the school context, and the local
context outside of the school. Throughout this discussion, we consider Kotter’s
(1996) first four steps for leading change—establishing urgency, creating a guiding
coalition, and developing and communicating a vision. Although these four steps
might oversimplify the complexity of leading change within dynamic organizations,
they help us begin to illuminate how various systems can impact whether and how
teacher leaders engage in initial steps toward creating change.
The teacher leader’s orientations toward leadership as a system
Critical components of teacher leadership included the teacher leader’s beliefs,
language, prior experiences, and knowledge base, which collectively constituted
their orientations toward leading and served as individual-level subsystems within
schools and leadership teams (Opfer and Pedder 2011). Certainly, not all of these
teacher leaders believed that they were, or could be, change agents, and such self-
perceptions impacted the level of boldness in their language and assertions. This
was most profoundly evident in the contrast between PLC leaders Daphne and
Stacy. Whereas Daphne tended to make strong assertions (e.g., ‘‘Our students
should have a lot more consistency.’’ ‘‘We have to work on our system.’’), Stacy’s
language was much more tempered (e.g., ‘‘If there’s one you want to try… you can
104 J Educ Change (2016) 17:85–113
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do that.’’ ‘‘So, that’s a really good idea.’’). Given that Kotter (1996) positions
creating a sense of urgency as the first step in leading change, we surmise that the
differences in the linguistic tones of these two teacher leaders had differing impacts
on how compelled their colleagues felt to try new practices in their classrooms.
As prior research has noted (Stein and Nelson 2003; Timperley 2005), we also
found that teacher leaders’ depth of knowledge of the teaching practices they were
promoting influenced their change efforts. In delivering our PD, we felt we
presented our participants with adequate information on the rationale for and most
effective implementation of discussion-based teaching. However, in watching
eleven teacher leaders talk about these practices in the videos of PLC meetings and
mentoring sessions, we questioned the level of understanding among some of our
participants and reconsidered our own assumptions about the background knowl-
edge of principal-identified teacher leaders. Similarly, we identified a critical need
for teacher leaders to possess a substantial knowledge base about instructional
leadership and strategies for leading change. In training teacher leaders, we focused
on developing understanding of professional learning communities, mentoring, and
the types of collaborative practices that support teacher learning. What we failed to
consider was the need to also prepare teacher leaders to understand organizational
change and strategies for driving change among their peers—a process that turned
out to require much more assertive leadership and purposeful visioning than we
anticipated. As a result, teacher leaders at Maple and Spruce did not take action
toward leading change around discussion-based teaching that was as purposeful as
that taken at Dogwood.
The school principal’s orientations toward leadership as a system
Kotter (1996) argues that organizational change requires change agents to create a
guiding coalition of powerful leaders who will collaborate to take action on steering
the change. It is within this guiding coalition that teacher leaders can become
instructional change agents if principals provide them with appropriate amounts of
autonomy and support (Stein and Nelson 2003). As prior research has shown, the
extent to which teacher leaders have autonomy to actually engage in leadership lies
in great part with the principal (Mangin 2007; York-Barr and Duke 2004). By
examining how principals’ orientations toward leadership interact with other
systems to shape the teacher leadership process, we found that when the principal
made room for the voices of teacher leaders and was a member—as opposed to the
leader—of the guiding coalition, those teacher leaders effectively drove school-
wide change. Yet, when the principal did not relinquish control or was largely
absent, teacher leadership was somewhat stifled and minimized. Fundamentally,
then, teacher-leader-driven change must consist of a coalition of teacher leaders
with the principal playing nothing more nor less than a supportive role in those
particular change efforts. One reason why it is important to have the most powerful
player in the organization, such as the principal, on-board with the change is that
having the principal on board symbolically adds value to the change and makes the
improvement efforts more likely to take broad effect. We saw this at Dogwood
where the principal’s support for the PLC work was ongoing, and yet she made way
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for the PLC leader to develop and act on a vision for change. By contrast, the
principals’ roles within the guiding coalitions at the other two schools did not
support teacher leadership in promoting discussion-based teaching. At Maple, the
principal positioned herself as the director of her teacher leaders’ work, rather than
supporting it from a distance and offering support. At Spruce, given that the
principal was largely absent, the opposite was true. There was plenty of space for
teacher leadership but few structures or gestures of support and guidance.
Collectively then, these cases suggest the critical importance of the school
principal’s orientation toward leadership in creating and maintaining conditions that
enable authentic teacher leadership.
The leadership team as a system
Beyond just the principal’s orientation toward leadership, the dynamics among the
full guiding coalition—the principal and the teacher leaders—played a key role in
whether or not the leadership team worked harmoniously to propel change.
Figures 2, 3, and 4 convey our sense of how each leadership team functioned. We
found that the team that had the greatest success in implementing discussion-based
teaching was at Dogwood (Fig. 2), where there was a strong sense of momentum
toward discussion-based teaching and a high level of cohesion among four of the
five team members as they consistently reinforced the same vision of effective
teaching. The team also had a clear champion for the work in their PLC leader, and
the principal struck a balanced position of providing guidance and support while
enabling autonomy. Although individual team members expressed strong commit-
ments toward the change endeavors at the other two schools, the team dynamics at
Maple and Spruce (Figs. 3, 4) were much less cohesive in how the members
operated as a unit and less focused in their pursuits, both of which undermined their
ability to develop and communicate a consistent vision. As such, we found that only
Dogwood actually had a clear vision that could be captured in a few, succinct words
and clearly communicated to staff. Notably, Kotter (1996) proposes that formulating
and then communicating a vision for change are pivotal. If this is indeed the case,
then it is not surprising that broad instructional change did not emerge at either
Spruce or Maple, where we found little evidence of cohesive guiding coalitions or
coherent visions of effective instruction.
The school as a system
We found that the teacher leadership process was greatly shaped by and dependent
upon the contextual conditions within the schools, as prior research has noted, but
we also found that those conditions were not stable or transparent. The rapidly
changing context at Spruce Academy illustrates how quickly the foundational
conditions for teacher leadership described by York-Barr and Duke (2004) can
change and how such rapid change can undermine the potential impact of teacher
leadership. Considering these foundational conditions as ‘‘pre-requisites’’ for
effective teacher leadership, as we did in identifying three schools to study, turned
out to be inaccurate. Conditions within schools are not established and solidified
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before teacher leadership begins, but are constantly shifting. As Payne (2008) and
Ingersoll (2001) note, urban, high-poverty schools in particular have rapidly
changing contexts due to the high volume of turnover among students, teachers, and
administrators. Given this lack of stability, teacher leadership does not occur in the
linear fashion suggested by York-Barr and Duke’s graphic depiction of their model,
in which arrows pointing to the right convey a step-by-step process. Instead, we
found that the volatility of life in urban schools makes complex systems theory
(Opfer and Pedder 2011) a more useful model for understanding the dynamic role of
context in teacher leadership because it allows us to account for the multitude of
challenges that can impede positive change.
In addition to finding that foundational conditions can change rapidly, we also
found that such conditions were difficult to identify from the outside, even when
assessing a more stable school environment like Maple Academy. As PD providers
working with Maple for over a year, we invited the leadership team to participate in
our study because it appeared they met the foundational conditions in school
culture, relationships, and structures (York-Barr and Duke 2004). Ultimately,
however, we found that leadership at Maple was not shared among the principal and
teacher leaders; rather, it was primarily the domain of the principal. From the
outside, this hierarchical leadership was not apparent to us prior to the study, and we
question the extent to which it was even acknowledged and voiced among members
of the leadership team. If teacher leaders themselves do not realize that the nature of
leadership in their school is not well suited for teacher leadership, their efforts to
lead may be ineffective, regardless of how they enact the process. In such a case,
even attempting to enact Kotter’s (1996) strategies for leading change could have
little impact if the setting is not conducive to teacher-leadership-driven change.
Similarly, if teacher leaders do see limitations to their leadership potential due to the
principal’s style, the power imbalance between the teacher leader and the principal
can make this something that goes unspoken. Such power imbalances and an
associated lack of teacher involvement in decision-making are particularly common
in low-performing urban schools (Payne 2008), making such schools potentially
challenging environments for authentic teacher leadership. In such cases, teacher
leaders may take on leadership roles without any expectation for actually leading
change and may simply go through the motions. As such, inadequate school
conditions for effective teacher leadership are not necessarily observable or
acknowledgeable, despite the fact that these inadequacies can undermine teacher
leadership efforts.
The external context as a system
Kotter (1996) asserts that the first step in leading change is to establish a sense of
urgency that makes members of the organization strongly believe in a pressing need
for change. Across our three school cases, we believe this was done most effectively
at Dogwood, where Daphne positioned the vision of Bridging the System as being
directly in response to students’ learning needs. This localization of urgency
appeared to create a compelling rationale for teachers to wholeheartedly engage in
professional activities that would serve the school’s particular student population.
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By contrast, we found that urgency at Maple centered on implementing the
principal’s many initiatives, and urgency at Spruce Academy was around
acclimating new teachers. Certainly, teacher leaders in these schools pursued these
objectives in purposeful ways with the ultimate goal of improving instruction for
students. Yet, Kotter’s theory suggests that the Maple and Spruce leadership teams
made a misstep by not creating a more compelling sense of urgency that focused on
the external context of their schools. Like Dogwood, Maple and Spruce are urban
charter schools serving high-needs populations with low test scores—particularly in
math, where none of the schools had more than 15 % of students scoring advanced
or proficient on state assessments. Yet, the foci of urgency at these two schools
seemed decontextualized from this reality. We believe that the contexts at Maple
and Spruce could have been used to make a case for increasing the quantity and
quality of discussion-based teaching, but that these opportunities were missed. At
Maple, although teachers experienced pressure to meet the principal’s expectations
of raising student test scores, there was no contextual rationale for mastering any
particular teaching practice to serve students’ needs. At Spruce, helping new
teachers develop their instructional skills in one particular area—such as discussion-
based teaching—could have increased their success in the classroom while
simultaneously helping acclimate them to the profession through collectively
developing shared instructional skills. In pointing out these missed opportunities,
we do not mean to discredit the important goals of promoting good teaching
practices and building staff morale and stability, which we applaud Maple and
Spruce for taking on. Rather, we suggest that utilizing the contexts of their schools
to provide rationale for these goals could have propelled these efforts even further.
In considering whether and how the external context impacted how the leadership
teams framed their senses of urgency, we could not help but note that the only
school that focused on the specific needs of their mostly African American students
was the one school staffed by primarily African American women. In the other two
schools, where the faculty was primarily white, we noted no references to the
specific needs of ‘‘our students’’ in the videos, reflections, or interviews. Although
we hesitate to draw conclusions based on omissions that may simply be a product of
our data collection procedures, we suggest that future research examine this
potentially compelling link between how teacher leaders identify with the local
community and how they frame the urgency for instructional change. It may be the
case that some of the impediments to urban school reform described by Payne
(2008)—including low expectations for students or pessimistic views on reforms—
could vary depending on the demographic composition of the educators. Research
examining this possibility might help us better understand the role of the external
context in teacher leadership among teachers from various racial and ethnic
backgrounds who are working in urban communities.
Teacher leadership for influence or change?
In conducting this study, we sought to examine the assumptions that teacher leaders
both have a means to influence their colleagues’ work and engage in actions that
lead their colleagues to change their practice. Given these assumptions, we looked
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for both means of influence, which we conceptualized as opportunities to share
one’s practice and inform the thinking of others, and actions that lead to change,
which we identified as specific tactics that propel others to do something different in
a specific, intentioned way. During conversations among the members of our
research team, we discussed whether or not influence and change are substantively
different concepts and whether the optimal goal of teacher leadership is to influence
or change the instruction of the teacher leaders’ colleagues. Importantly, York-Barr
and Duke’s model examines teacher leadership influence, whereas Kotter’s (1996)
eight steps target change. As we considered our data using these varying lenses, we
debated whether the differences between the two terms were more than simply
semantics, and we found it useful to consult the definitions provided by Merriam-
Webster’s online dictionary. This source defines influence as ‘‘to affect or change
someone or something in an indirect but usually important way’’ and change as ‘‘to
make someone or something different.’’ We see the distinction between these two
words as being the indirect nature of influence and the more intentional, direct
nature of change. Given the intentional nature of change, we inferred that teacher
leaders engaged in conscious change efforts were seeking to foster more substantial,
specific changes in teaching practice. They had a specific end goal in mind—a
vision for change—that transcended simply wanting their colleagues to learn some
new techniques and practices.
Our comparisons of teacher leadership across the three schools furthered this
influence versus change distinction. We found Daphne’s Bridging the System
approach at Dogwood to be most strongly aligned with Kotter’s (1996) first four
steps for leading change, and we felt convinced that broad-based change toward
discussion-based teaching was well underway. As evidence, our videos captured
Dogwood teachers examining the nuances of discussion-based teaching, such as
during a PLC conversation in response to the question ‘‘What are some possible
reasons why a student might not feel comfortable talking in class?’’ and in a lesson
debrief in which a mentor and mentee discussed why a basketball review game
might not be the best way to get students to collaborate in preparation for a social
studies test. Throughout such interactions, it was clear that Dogwood teachers were
integrating discussion-based teaching into their instruction and grappling collec-
tively with some of the challenges of changing one’s practice in these specific ways.
By contrast, the teacher leadership efforts at Spruce and Maple appeared directed
toward the less intentional, less impactful outcome of influence. This was certainly
the case at Spruce, where given Stacy’s passive language and presentation of
teaching ‘‘tips,’’ her primary means of changing teaching would be through indirect
influence if someone were to try a strategy she shared and ultimately integrate it into
their practice. At Maple, the emphasis on influence rather than change was evident
in the disconnected nature of multiple initiatives that confused the vision and
overextended teachers’ abilities to focus on particular changes in their teaching.
Whereas teacher leaders at Spruce seemed to purposefully limit their efforts to
influence, the team at Maple seemed to default to influence due to an ineffective
approach to producing change, even when direct change in teaching practice
appeared to be their objective.
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We posit that actors targeting either influence or change might have different
expectations for the depth and gravity of the outcomes of teacher leadership.
Influence suggests that teachers ultimately integrate some new practices into their
teaching—akin to Piaget’s (2000) concept of assimilation of new knowledge that
becomes incorporated into existing schema within the learner’s mind. Yet, change
implies a more emboldened reframing of a teacher’s instruction—akin to Piaget’s
concept of accommodation, wherein the learner reconfigures their mental schema to
represent altered understanding of a concept. We assert that this influence versus
change distinction could be critical to understanding the teacher leadership process
if intentional, direct change requires decisive, clear action, as our study suggests. In
this way, York-Barr and Duke’s (2004) language of maintaining a focus on teaching
and learning, establishing trusting and constructive relationships, and interacting
through formal and informal points of influence really does seem to target influence.
This is not surprising, as the model uses the term influence to denote the goal of
teacher leadership. But, we question whether influence is too passive of a concept to
generate real change, and given the great need for instructional improvement in
urban schools, we propose that the more intentional, direct nature of targeted
change in instruction might be the more compelling objective for teacher
leadership.
Conclusion
Our findings on the teacher leadership processes within these three urban charter
schools suggest that broad-based instructional change requires teacher leaders to be
purposeful and focused in creating change through targeted, direct, and strategic
change efforts. To this end, we found that Kotter’s (1996) eight steps for generating
organizational change offered insight into the process by which teacher leaders can
undertake instructional change efforts, and we found complex systems theory
(Opfer and Pedder 2011) to be an informative way to conceptualize the influence of
multiple embedded systems on the teacher leadership process. By integrating these
theoretical lenses, our work complicates and provides insight into the means by
which teacher leadership creates change. Just the same, we acknowledge that in the
complex contexts facing urban schools with low student achievement and high
teacher turnover, understanding the teacher leadership process for leading change
will ultimately require more than the theories of Kotter (1996) and Opfer and Pedder
(2011) can provide. Urban, high-needs contexts continue to be some of the most
challenging, yet critical, places for enacting educational change. Although we have
sought to explain elements of the teacher leadership process in these settings, there
is still more work to be done to understand how school and teacher leaders can
operationalize positive instructional change in urban schools.
In our own PD work, however, we have found direct applications of this research
that have helped us improve the support and preparation we provide formal teacher
leaders. In subsequent PD sessions, we have paid greater attention to not only
providing extensive information on the rationale for discussion-based teaching, but
also to assessing that understanding among our participants and providing
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opportunities for participants to engage in metacognition about their own
understanding and learning regarding discussion-based teaching. We have also
provided teacher leaders with information on leading change and have specifically
introduced them to Kotter’s (1996) eight steps for leading organizational change. In
coaching teacher leaders in the final 2 years of our PD, we purposefully integrated
Kotter’s terminology—urgency, guiding coalition, vision, etc.—in an effort to
increase the impact of teacher leaders in their schools and to help them navigate the
complex systems that frame their work. We believe that this more strategic focus on
the preparation of teacher leaders to fully and effectively engage in the change
process is a critical future direction for research and practice in teacher leadership.
Acknowledgments The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the Spencer Foundation, which
made this research possible.
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Abstract
Introduction
The challenge to improve urban schools
Teacher leadership
The process of teacher leadership
Theoretical framework
Professional development for teacher leaders
Research questions
Methods
Site and participant selection
Data collection
Data analysis
Findings
Dogwood Academy: Embedded systems supporting the teacher leadership process
Maple Academy: Embedded systems pulling in many directions
Spruce Academy: Embedded systems lost in transition
Discussion
The teacher leader’s orientations toward leadership as a system
The school principal’s orientations toward leadership as a system
The leadership team as a system
The school as a system
The external context as a system
Teacher leadership for influence or change?
Acknowledgments
References
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