The Nature of Teacher Leadership

Teacher empowerment remains a major key to educational reform in the United States, and yet among the many practical difficulties consistently faced by teachers throughout our history are a lack of substantial decision-making power and an overwhelming feeling of being controlled and dominated. Conversely, teacher leadership is a concept that entails empowering teachers, those directly impacted by decisions made from “above”, to play vital roles in what actually occurs in the classroom. Yet, in this era of high-stakes testing, teacher leadership often gets left behind. Thus, this study examined: 1) the nature of teacher leadership as it is perceived by preservice and inservice elementary school teachers, and university and public school faculty members and administrators; 2) how teacher leadership is manifested in practice; and 3) the extent to which teacher education encourages and develops teacher leaders. This timely work presents valuable information to better understand factors affecting the development and practice of teacher leadership to help inspire true and lasting educational reform.