Conference Agenda

Education systems worldwide are increasingly turning to teacher leadership as an essential strategy for school improvement (Harris & Muijs, 2005; Wenner & Campbell, 2017). Literature has established the importance of utilizing teachers’ potential beyond the classroom borders, to influence colleagues’ professional development, innovative practices, and school development efforts (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2009; York-Barr & Duke, 2004). Therefore, mobilizing teachers’ professional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012), is no longer a preferred approach, but rather essential for sustainable school transformation. Despite the demonstrated efficacy, teacher leadership remains elusive, appearing in various forms and serving different purposes (York-Barr & Duke, 2004).

A recent systematic review conducted by Aliu et al. (2024) supported this conceptual fragmentation by concluding that there is a lack of consistent definition of teacher leadership in the recent literature. The study reviewed articles that were published in the period 2018 – 2023 focusing on teacher leadership. When mapped out against the Snoek et al. (2019) framework of teacher leadership, the study found that the phenomenon is predominantly conceptualized as an informal and individual form of leadership. Moreover, the review synthesized the outcomes of teacher leadership across the school, teacher and student levels, identifying the impact on school development, transformed school culture, innovation and change, teacher professional growth, collegial collaboration, improved teaching practices, and improved student motivation and achievement.

While the findings of the review corroborate the positive impact of teacher leadership, they also point to a critical limitation in the current conceptualization and understanding. If teacher leadership produces essential outcomes for school transformation, the question arises then why does it manifest so differently across studies? To better understand this, it is important to move beyond conceptualizing and listing outcomes, to examining the contextual factors at the macro-level structures that influence the nature of leadership behaviours. The forms and behaviours of teacher leadership are deeply entrenched in distinct education traditions that define the level of autonomy attributed to schools and teachers. In this regard, literature distinguishes between the Anglo-Saxon “Curriculum” tradition, and the Continental “Didaktik” tradition. The first philosophy prioritizes standards and accountability (Westbury, 2000), whereas the latter one emphasizes pedagogical autonomy and Bildung (Tahirsylaj & Werler, 2021). Despite that global policy convergence is narrowing these gaps (Tahirsylaj, 2019), recent analyses of assessment practices demonstrate that these systemic distinctions still fundamentally shape teacher autonomy (Tahirsylaj, 2021). In addition, in Hierarchical systems (e.g., Confucian heritage or centralized contexts), the distribution of power is often rigidly stratified (Hofstede, 2011), as opposed to the Western notions of distributed influence where leadership is decoupled from formal authority and enacted as a dispersed practice (Spillane, 2006).

Therefore, this review study aims to examine how these macro-level educational traditions shape the nature of teacher leadership. Moving beyond the descriptive analysis of the previous review, this paper focuses on a secondary comparative analysis of the Aliu et al. (2024) dataset. The objective is to determine the different manifestations of teacher leadership by mapping them against educational traditions dominating the countries where the studies were conducted. Against this background, the study attempts to answer the following main question:

• How does the conceptualization of teacher leadership diverge across Anglo-Saxon, Continental, and Hierarchical educational traditions?

To provide a richer understanding of the topic, this study further investigates two guiding sub-questions:

• What are the dominant definitions and theoretical origins of teacher leadership used across these traditions?
• In what roles and behaviors does teacher leadership manifest across these traditions?

Despite the recognition of teachers as central to student achievement within European education policy and research (EASNIE, 2019), a lack of effective professional learning (PL) for inclusion perpetuates a knowledge-practice gap for inclusion among teachers in the Republic of Ireland (RoI) and its European counterparts (Florian & Camedda, 2020). Significantly, the type of PL can vary in quality and impact, from transmissive models that emphasise knowledge acquisition and tend to have a limited impact on practice, to collaborative inquiry-based models, such as professional learning communities (PLCs), which are more likely to foster meaningful professional growth (Kennedy, 2014). PLCs have been identified as both an ideal site for teacher leadership (EASNIE, 2019; Hairon et al., 2015) and an effective form of teacher PL for inclusion (Brennan et al., 2024). However, there is a lack of studies that explore and elucidate how teacher leadership can be enacted and developed. This paper endeavours to bridge gaps in the research by examining how a school-university partnership empowered four teachers to lead PLCs for inclusion within and across four schools. It draws on Harris and Jones (2019), who identify three fundamental features of teacher leadership that support educational change. First, teacher leaders exercise leadership from a place of influence rather than a formal leadership role. Second, they step outside their classroom to instigate change and develop effective pedagogical practices that they share with colleagues (Harris & Jones, 2019). Third, teacher leadership is concerned with influence and relationship building rather than authoritative power dynamics (Poekert, 2012).

Teacher leadership for inclusion positions all educators as agents of change, using their personal and collective influence to challenge inequality and advance social justice (King & Logan, 2022). Teachers in special education roles with expertise in inclusive education are well-positioned to exercise teacher leadership for inclusion (York-Barr et al., 2005). However, like many other European countries, there are no qualification requirements for such teaching roles in the RoI, resulting in inconsistent levels of teacher expertise for inclusion across schools (Rose et al., 2015). Furthermore, research in the RoI indicates that while school leaders are generally committed to inclusion, they are likely to hold deficit perspectives of disability (Shevlin & Rose, 2017), particularly about learners with complex learning profiles. This can lead to individualising failure within learners rather than viewing challenges in learning as teaching dilemmas. In this context, teacher leadership for inclusion is even more vital for challenging hegemonic assumptions about learner differences and fostering collaborative cultures that value learner diversity. System leadership is a growing concept that generally involves leaders driving innovation for school improvement within and across the education system (Gorman et al., 2025). While the concept of system leadership initially focused on the role of school leaders, there is increasing interest in empowering teachers as system leaders. However, in the Irish context, it can be difficult for teachers to have an impact beyond their own school, as, unlike its UK counterparts, which operate local education authorities, collaboration across schools in the RoI is challenging due to its centralised system. Notwithstanding the differing challenges to inclusive education across jurisdictions, the absence of a formal middle tier in the RoI education system hinders the potential for inter-school collaboration. This study proposes school-university partnerships as a way forward to support collaboration within and between schools to foster system change for inclusion (Brennan et al., 2024). Such partnerships are premised on a university academic establishing and supporting an inter-school network of teachers to lead PL that develops teachers' beliefs, knowledge and skills to meet all learners' needs (Brennan et al., 2024).

Teacher leadership is frequently advanced as a lever for school development because it mobilises teachers’ influence to strengthen professional practice and collective capacity (York-Barr & Duke, 2004; Wenner & Campbell, 2017). However, reviews of the literature show that the field still struggles with conceptual ambiguity (e.g., role-based versus influence-based understandings) and with limited explanatory insight into the organisational conditions under which teacher leadership emerges, remains absent, or becomes fragile in practice (Wenner & Campbell, 2017; Schott et al., 2020). This matters because teacher leadership is not a self-evident, stable “ingredient” that schools can simply install (York-Barr & Duke, 2004; Schott et al., 2020). In fact, empirical work indicates that teachers do not always recognise “leadership” language as describing their activities; rather, teacher leadership becomes meaningful when it is connected to concrete collaborative developmental purposes (York-Barr & Duke, 2004; Muijs & Harris, 2006). This points to a key empirical gap: we need more evidence on how leadership actors interpret and operationalise teacher leadership while planning and initiating school development, not only on how teacher leadership is defined in theory.

That gap is particularly urgent when formal teacher leaders (such as coaches) are involved. Teacher leaders’ influence is negotiated in micropolitical school contexts, where legitimacy, role ambiguity, and relational tensions can constrain teacher leadership work (Struyve et al., 2014; Wenner & Campbell, 2017). Yet, research has rarely examined how school leaders and formal teacher leaders jointly diagnose such conditions, recognise leadership potential among teachers, and decide which strengthening strategies are feasible in their specific context (Wenner & Campbell, 2017; Schott et al., 2020).

Finally, these issues become even more consequential in school–university partnerships (SUPs), where partnership routines structure priority-setting and the translation of ambitions into developmental pathways, and where teacher leaders are positioned as critical to partnership success (Coburn & Penuel, 2016). Studying partnership intake conversations, where schools articulate a driver, map influence, and select initial actions, therefore offers a high-leverage window into how teacher leadership is envisioned and mobilised for school development (Coburn & Penuel, 2016).

This study examines how school leadership teams and formally appointed teacher leaders (coaches) interpret and mobilise teacher leadership as part of their efforts to drive school development within a SUP. The objective is to generate empirically grounded insight into (a) how teacher leadership is envisioned for school development, (b) which conditions are perceived to enable or constrain it (including fragility), (c) how leadership potential is recognised, and (d) which strengthening strategies are considered feasible.