Teacher leaders – current or former classroom teachers working with other classroom teachers and other educators in the school or district – are present in many reform efforts in mathematics and science education. Teacher leaders may engage in a variety of practices, inside and outside of the classroom, that support instructional improvement. Teacher leaders and principals may work together to make decisions or facilitate reform in their school. Principals may also make decisions that influence the nature of teacher leaders’ work with teachers. These kinds of interactions between teacher leaders’ and principals’ practice help shape the overall direction of leadership and instructional improvement in schools.
Practice-based Insights on Teacher Leaders Working with Principals
Advice from experienced practitioners offers guidance to those involved in teacher leader work with principals to improve instruction. Insights provided by a group of expert practitioners with diverse backgrounds and experiences in working with teachers included the following ideas:
- Get on the same page – Advocate that teacher leaders cultivate principal support in creating a school-wide culture that promotes teacher leadership.
- Make it count – Prepare teacher leaders to secure principal support in the form of time and material resources.
- What’s the job? – Establish agreement with administrators about teacher leaders’ roles and responsibilities.
Research on the Work of Teacher Leaders and Principals
In a review of the published empirical literature, nineteen research studies were identified that included findings related to the work of teacher leaders and principals. These studies investigated two aspects of this topic. One set examined the influence of the principal, in their work with teacher leaders, on the development of teacher leadership and teacher leaders’ practice with classroom teachers. These studies identified the principal’s practices that may support, or limit, the effectiveness of teacher leadership. A second set of studies investigated the nature of collaboration of teacher leaders and principals. Findings from these studies suggested that principals seek out teacher leaders’ input around instructional issues and that these efforts have a positive impact on changes in school-wide instruction. Findings in both sets of studies were consistent across grade levels. Few of the studies were designed to investigate the role of subject area (i.e. mathematics or science) in the shared work of teacher leaders and principal, indicating an area for future research.
Principal support (or lack thereof) of teacher leaders’ work will affect both the nature of leadership initiatives and the scale of their impact on classroom practice. While teacher leaders can certainly engage in effective leadership work without the support of their principal, the resulting work typically does not lead to either broad or lasting, changes in instructional practices. To create sustainable school-wide change, principals must demonstrate support that legitimizes teacher leaders’ work as part of a larger school culture of continuous improvement.
Experienced practitioners, including MSP program leaders, offered insights around teacher leader work to improve instruction. Data were collected and vetted through multi-round, online panel discussions with practitioners, as well as interviews and focus groups with MSP leaders. The insights below reflect general agreement among these practitioners around teacher leaders’ work with principals, including the ways in which principals’ work can shape and support teacher leadership in their schools. The insights are based on a variety of venues and include illustrative examples from practitioners’ own work. After reviewing these insights, you will be given an opportunity to share your own experiences with these practices. The information you provide will be included in the analysis of insights and examples from other practitioners as this website is periodically updated.
Get on the same page – Advocate that teacher leaders cultivate principal support in creating a school-wide culture that promotes teacher leadership.
For teacher leaders to have the best chance of achieving whole-school reform, principals need to be involved in creating and maintaining a culture that is “conducive to adult learning and encourages, recognizes, and celebrates the success of teacher leadership.” As one practitioner explained,
Some progress can be made with a passive principal or a hands-off principal, but sooner or later, if the principal is not supporting the work, a plateau will be reached and it is unlikely that a system [school] will be impacted over the long haul.
Principals may need some help, however, “getting on board” with the changes the teacher leader is promoting. This help should certainly come from program leaders, but support must also be cultivated by the teacher leaders themselves. An MSP leader noted,
Teacher leaders also have to be able to forge relationships with the school administration in order to get administration buy-in and support. Without this, nothing happens. They must also take into account that these relationships have to be continually rebuilt as administrators come and go.
While teacher leaders frequently do not have such support from the outset, they can develop support by keeping principals informed about their work and, even better, soliciting their active involvement. Teacher leaders may be wary of “forcing themselves” on principals, but they should certainly make an effort to communicate with principals regularly, and to invite them to participate in activities the teacher leader is facilitating. One MSP leader observed,
The teacher leader can be an important player in developing a relationship with the principal, inviting them into learning/exploring issues related to instruction, and helping develop a more supportive environment for teachers. All too often a principal who is perceived as “not supportive” simply doesn’t have the knowledge/skills to use models of teacher leadership well or frankly, hasn’t had recent opportunities to really explore instruction based on recent research.
Experienced practitioners noted that teacher leaders are usually unable to cultivate principal support alone. Leaders of the broader reform initiative can offer opportunities for principals and administrators to come together to learn more about the teacher leader program and their work with teachers.
Insight in action
Principals and some superintendents attended Lenses on Learning, a professional development program in mathematics for administrators, and brought this experience to discussions with their teacher leaders about what needed to change in the school in order to facilitate improved student achievement (e.g., schedules to enable longer mathematics and science classes). The principals also supported teacher leaders by attending on-site professional development sessions, signaling to teachers that they felt the professional development was important. Principals who actively engaged in Lenses on Learning were more supportive in creating a culture that promotes teacher leadership.
Make it count – Prepare teacher leaders to secure principal support in the form of time and material resources.
Principals typically have considerable latitude in how school resources are used, and their decisions can facilitate or get in the way of the work teacher leaders’ work. “Building administrators make or break the teacher leader role,” noted an MSP leader, by determining whether or not basic conditions for a teacher leader’s success are met. Much of teacher leaders’ practice involves work with classroom teachers who are acting to improve their instruction. Often, teacher leaders are classroom teachers themselves, and are taking on additional responsibilities in their work as leaders. By providing time during the school day for teacher leaders and teachers to work together, principals ensure that the teacher leaders are not continuously forced to make choices between time devoted to their own classrooms, time devoted to improving instruction, and their own personal time. Allocating time for collaboration increases the likelihood that the teacher leader work will take place and be sustained.
Principals can also support the purchase of high-quality materials and other resources that teacher leaders can use in their work and that embody the school’s vision for improvement. By providing these kinds of time and material resources, principals reinforce the message that teacher leaders’ work is valued by ensuring that it can be carried out effectively and with minimal additional burden for teacher leaders and classroom teachers.
Teacher leaders themselves can work with principals to inform them of the importance of time and resources to carry out their work, advocating for having these conditions in place in schools. But, the responsibility for engaging principal support cannot lie only with the teacher leaders. District administrators and other leaders of initiatives external to the school, need to develop principals’ understanding about the kinds of support teacher leadership work requires and work with them to get that support in place.
Insight in action
In one MSP, administrators and high school department chairs participated together in Teacher Leader Academies. An MSP leader reported that a common understanding developed in the course of the Academies that time must be provided for all teachers in a department to meet on a daily basis. The principal subsequently arranged a period each day for teachers in each core subject area to meet. The time was structured to include analysis of student data and discussion of how to improve student achievement, using the MSP tools. The principal was an active participant in each team or department meeting. The department chairs came to recognize the importance of teaching for student understanding of the mathematics, and worked as teacher leaders to help their colleagues reach the same understanding.
What’s the job? – Establish agreement with administrators about teacher leaders’ roles and responsibilities.
In order for teacher leaders to be effective, experienced practitioners suggested that principals and teacher leaders share a common understanding of what teacher leaders’ work should entail. If that work is connected to an external program that prescribes a specific vision for teacher leadership, the principal may need to become engaged in program activities so that s/he develops the same understanding of the teacher leader’s charge and is prepared to support that work. With this shared understanding, principals will be better able to provide appropriate supports to help teachers improve instruction. A shared understanding will also help protect teacher leaders’ roles by ensuring that additional responsibilities (e.g., serving as substitute teachers) aren’t added on, detracting from the intended purpose of their work.
According to one MSP leader, “When principals were active participants they set an important tone of ‘we’re all in this together, and we’re all working to advance our practice’ in ways that had a positive impact on the cultures of the school.” At the same time, it is important to recognize that while active principal support is essential, it is not sufficient. Unless superintendent/district level administrators are also active participants and supporters of teacher leader work, district policies and practices may act as barriers to the work.
Insight in action
After learning from the experiences of their first cohort, developers of an MSP Institute engaged in additional work with principals in order to ensure that teacher leaders could work effectively as leaders when they went back into their schools. MSP staff met with principals and other administrators to discuss the teachers leaders’ roles and the logistical supports that principals could provide, such as partial release time and making classrooms available for demonstration lessons. The MSP also included principals in teacher leader meetings so that they could discuss together how the leadership work could be implemented.
Insight in action
At the onset of a district effort to identify teachers leaders in each school, one middle school principal dedicated half of the school year to increasing understanding of teacher leadership and its importance among the school’s entire instructional staff. As a result, the staff nominated particularly strong and well-respected teachers to serve as teacher leaders in mathematics and science. The principal provided opportunities for the selected teacher leaders to improve their own practice, and ultimately their work with classroom teachers. The principal also arranged time to meet with teacher leaders as a group so that they could reflect on the learning that was taking place among teachers and plan for future work.
If you are interested in how these practitioner insights were collected and analyzed, a summary of the methodology can be found here.
Teacher Leadership Matters
Empirical evidence shows that teacher leaders’ practice impacts teachers’ instructional practice and, in some studies, provides evidence of positive impact on student outcomes. Findings across studies include:
- Teacher leaders’ practice, particularly in providing instructional support to teachers, impacts teachers’ classroom practice.
- Teacher leaders’ practice occurs in a larger context of conditions that impact teachers’ practice.
- Teacher leaders’ practice is related to positive student outcomes.