Conference Agenda

Teachers are the key to school improvement. Teachers are the key to student achievement. Two such statements which are to be found with varying interpretations in literature would immediately suggest that teacher leadership must surely be an essential aspect of teachers’ work at large. The literature is replete with what characterises teacher leadership, and more specifically teachers as leaders, but there is limited consensus about broader conceptualisations of teacher leadership in different contexts. This intrigue was the genesis of a research project, The International Study of Teacher Leadership (ISTL) (www.mru.ca/istl) begun three years ago which focused on how teacher leadership is conceptualised and enacted. This panel discussion presents a specific focus of that study: What are the perspectives of teachers who emerge as unrecognised enactors of teacher leadership in three different countries – South Africa, Colombia, Australia?

A group of researchers from 12 universities in 12 different countries collaborated around the topic of teacher leadership working with a shared literature review and research design in search of conceptualisation of teacher leadership in each of the countries. The ISTL comprises a noticeable number of members from countries of non-Western origin. It is this factor that has propelled the interests of the researchers to explore how the concepts of teacher leadership are enacted in different cultural contexts. Extensive research by this large group of international researchers has found and shared enlightenment as to the understandings of teacher leadership where the professional activities of teacher leaders occur in a range of complex sociocultural contexts across the world. The attributes required of teachers in this range of contexts varies and this study has demonstrated that if teacher leadership is to be a recognised phenomenon, teachers are required to demonstrate their knowledge and lived experience within localised social and political dimensions. This viewpoint is also the axis for ensuring educational policies and practices meet the needs of the local context and yet work with the wider academic views of teacher leadership as it appears in the literature from mainly a Western perspective.

The ISTL group designed a mixed-methods methodological approach with freedom for members of each country to develop their own database according to the availability of participants and relevance to the cultural nuances of their country. Methods of data collection included document analyses, questionnaires, interviews, case studies, and oral histories. As the larger study explored and found, teachers enacting leadership is not always obvious. There are many who hold formal positions with defined roles and apparent responsibilities, but probably far more who might be said to be informal leaders not recognised as such but nonetheless seemingly enacting the qualities of leadership. Researchers from three of the countries, South Africa, Colombia, and Australia have chosen to share emerging findings of the perspectives of teachers in leadership as a finer focus for this panel discussion: listening to the teachers who may never have heard of, let alone used the term teacher leader, yet seemingly enacting their day-to-day roles in what might be described elsewhere as teacher leadership.

The strength of this research is that each author/panel member is a national of their own country with lived experiences of their previous school teaching careers and now as academics in their respective universities. It is proposed that the panel will highlight what might be of interest to others beyond these three countries and encourage a broader debate in pursuit of a deeper understanding of teacher leadership beyond the literature. It is to encourage an open approach to encompassing the diversity of socio-cultural contexts in which teachers operate worldwide and thus a broader empirical research base about teacher leadership.