Abstract
In learning institutions creating an environment that allows teacher leadership and voice enhances positive influence on instructional practice, educator collaboration, school climate and culture, and teacher autonomy. Teacher leadership has offered an appropriate platform for the teachers to lead in the community, thus engaging in different communities executed within the community to improve the learning environment and achieve positive outcomes in schools. Besides, studies highlight that it has been a good opportunity for teacher leaders to lead their profession, thus providing room for them to advocate for their profession, encourage their colleagues to be part of the leadership, and increase the teacher influence. When creating quality teacher leaders, it is essential to develop teacher leadership skills and characteristics that enable teacher leaders to have recommendable skills that will lead to quality service. Developing teacher leader characteristics and skills is a continuous process that allows teachers to collaborate and work with school staff and faculty to enhance the current teaching methodologies and create new teaching approaches to facilitate students’ academic success.
Concerning training teachers about teacher leadership, the first activity will be about why teachers should embrace teacher leadership. This lesson will be a great opportunity for teachers to understand the background and knowledge of teacher leadership and how it is defined in learning institutions. The second activity will be about what teacher leaders need for effective teacher leadership. This activity will allow teachers to understand activities that facilitate and nurture quality teacher leadership, like leadership skills. The third activity for the lesson will entail additional knowledge required by teacher leaders. In this case, it allows teachers to be equipped with the necessity of understanding the educational policy and system thinking to be quality teacher leaders. The last activity for the lesson will entail interpersonal skills for teacher leaders and the future of teacher leadership. In this case, teachers will be taught effective communication strategies which teacher leaders with different individuals can use to enhance their service provision.
Introduction
In learning institutions, it is essential to have quality teacher leadership that aids in the continuous development and improvement of different academic activities. Enforcement of teacher leadership stimulates a positive correlation between the teacher and instructional leadership and the higher achievement students to acquire. Creating an environment that allows teacher leadership and voice positively influences instructional practice, educator collaboration, school climate and culture, and teacher autonomy. Because learning institutions project continuous recognition and increase of teacher leadership, it has led to a positive collaborative effort between teachers and students. Different districts and institutions with competent teacher voices and leadership have principals who execute their activities to promote, support, and grow a positive culture with an effective focus on student achievement and learning. Enhancing teacher leadership and voices in an effective collaborative environment do enhance higher student achievement and greater retention and recruitment of highly-quality educators in the learning institution. Therefore, this research work focuses on assessing the teacher leader activity and how to encourage others to consider leadership opportunities.
Literature Review
Studies highlight that teacher leaders show a positive growth mindset to transform their schools, classrooms, and profession to attain excellence and equity for all students. It has enhanced positive development among different institutions and enabled educators to lead learners in their classrooms (Harris & Jones, 2019). Moreover, teacher leadership has offered an appropriate platform for the teachers to lead in the community, thus engaging in different communities executed within the community with the ultimate objective of improving the learning environment and achieving positive outcomes in schools. Besides, studies highlight that it has been a good opportunity for teacher leaders to lead their profession, thus providing room for them to advocate for their profession, encourage their colleagues to be part of the leadership, and increase the teacher influence (Shen et al., 2020). All these activities have been impactful in ensuring that the learning institution has a good environment that can facilitate continuous and positive learning. Studies also project that leadership is an essential element of different phases of the teacher’s career, and it is enforced in the professional development of the teachers because it allows teachers to accomplish different demands of student learning and enhance progress in their district, school, and more significant profession (Szeto & Cheng, 2018). Studies highlight that teacher leadership is the cornerstone for the quality transformation of schools (Harris & Jones, 2019). It allows teachers to develop different norms of practice, a sense of values, and a character of communication, forming an influential culture for progressive school development.
When creating quality teacher leaders, it is essential to develop teacher leadership skills and characteristics that enable teacher leaders to have recommendable skills that will lead to quality service. Developing teacher leader characteristics and skills is a continuous process that allows teachers to collaborate and work with school staff and faculty to enhance the current teaching methodologies and create new teaching approaches to facilitate students’ academic success (Cheung et al., 2018). Studies also show that teacher leaders should have appropriate characteristics to remain effective student educators (Shen et al., 2020). They should have essential leadership skills: listening, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking. Influential teacher leaders must have active listening skills to collaborate and mentor different faculty and staff members and ensure proper planning for professional conferences and meetings. Additionally, teacher leaders should have proper critical thinking skills to create effective teaching strategies and curricula and coach their colleagues. Teacher leaders must have critical thinking skills because they are always involved in enforcing strategic high-level planning and decisions (Harris & Jones, 2019). Teacher leaders should also adopt problem-solving skills because it allows them to have a quality approach that will enable them to solve different problems by use of strategic thinking and also utilize their teamwork to enforce quality solutions that will enhance success (Bellibaş et al., 2022). These skills and characteristics can be developed when teacher leaders learn how to improve the required approaches, create opportunities for quality feedback, enhance their organization, set goals, and embrace continuous evaluation.
Scholars have projected that teacher leaders have many contributions in different areas they have been allocated to facilitate continuous learning development. Teacher leaders ensure they enforce their expertise to a larger platform, thus enhancing the communities’ educational culture, growth, and practice. Moreover, they assist other teachers in enhancing their capacity to instruct students and lead their colleagues to accomplish the needs of the community, school, and students (Shen et al., 2020). Teacher leaders are responsible for enforcing collaborative culture among their colleagues and students. That allows the institution to have a quality platform that will allow teachers to offer effective education to students and enable students to find their teachers approachable when seeking clarification on different academic activities. Similarly, teacher leaders do participate in the execution of evidence-based research that aligns with the improvement of the status of the learning institutions (Shen et al., 2020). Teacher leaders also ensure that their colleagues embrace quality professional learning by participating in different workshops that will make them improve their skills. They also enhance the utilization of the evaluation of the learning standards so that gaps can be noted in the learning program and improve student learning (Harris & Jones, 2019). Therefore, it is essential to have a quality framework that educates teachers about the benefits of teacher leadership and why they should be part of it.
Methods
When training teachers to understand the essentiality of teacher leadership for them to be part of it, it is necessary to have an effective lesson plan that will offer quality knowledge to them and allow them to have the essential understanding concerning it. Therefore, this section presents the activities that will be done in every lesson during the work and how these lessons will benefit teachers.
The first activity will be about why teachers should embrace teacher leadership. This lesson will be a great opportunity for teachers to understand the background and knowledge of teacher leadership and how it is defined in learning institutions. Similarly, it will equip teachers with adequate knowledge about why learning institutions need teacher leaders (Szeto & Cheng, 2018). Through it, teachers will be able to acknowledge that there cannot be any recommendable change in the learning institutions whenever there are no competent teachers ready to become teacher leaders. It will also allow them to know that effective student performance and positive relationships between teachers and students can only be enforced when quality teacher leaders exist.
The second activity will be about what teacher leaders need for effective teacher leadership. This activity will allow teachers to understand activities that facilitate and nurture quality teacher leadership, like leadership skills. In the case of leadership skills, they will have to know that teacher leaders should have skills like emotional intelligence, listening skills, teamwork skills, critical thinking skills, and organizational and problem-solving skills. Besides, it will also allow teachers to know different activities they should embrace to improve their leadership skills once they are leaders. In that case, they will have to understand that a leader should always provide an opportunity for feedback, have active listening skills, improve their organizational skills, execute evaluations, and utilize them for positive growth. Besides, this activity will equip teachers with leadership models, which are coaching and mentoring to serve teacher leaders (Kohli, 2019). It will also allow them to know different obstacles that limit teacher leadership and ways that can be used to overcome such obstacles. Lastly, it will enable teachers to know different ways that are always used to offer rewards to teacher leaders so they can consistently serve the education fraternity.
The third activity for the lesson will entail additional knowledge required by teacher leaders. In this case, it allows teachers to be equipped with the necessity of understanding the educational policy and system thinking to be quality teacher leaders. Besides, it will enhance teachers’ understanding of the change and organizational theories and how they can impact teacher leaders (Bellibaş et al., 2022). It will also allow teachers to know how teacher leaders influence the school climate and culture and how they can use it to ensure effective parent involvement in developing a culturally responsive environment. In the same case, it will enable teachers to know how to use teacher action research to enhance their knowledge base about teacher leadership and have recommendable skills for quality service provision.
The last activity for the lesson will entail interpersonal skills for teacher leaders and the future of teacher leadership. In this case, teachers will be taught effective communication strategies which teacher leaders with different individuals can use to enhance their service provision (Leithwood et al., 2020). Furthermore, it will enable teachers to know skills that teacher leaders can use to enhance successful group discussions and change enforcement. It will also allow them to know some digital tools that teacher leaders can use to enhance their service delivery and skillful conflict resolution. In the future of teacher leadership, it will enable teachers to know different changes that can be enforced in schools under the guidance of strong teacher leadership. It will also allow knowing different professional development models that can be used to prepare additional teacher leaders and support continuous and effective support of teacher leadership.
References
Bellibaş, M. Ş., Polatcan, M., & Kılınç, A. Ç. (2022). Linking instructional leadership to teacher practices: The mediating effect of shared practice and agency in learning effectiveness. Educational management administration & Leadership, 50(5), 812-831. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mehmet-Bellibas/publication/343696509_Linking_instructional_leadership_to_teacher_practices_The_mediating_effect_of_shared_practice_and_agency_in_learning_effectiveness/links/62ea38a17782323cf196f07c/Linking-instructional-leadership-to-teacher-practices-The-mediating-effect-of-shared-practice-and-agency-in-learning-effectiveness.pdf
Cheung, R., Reinhardt, T., Stone, E., & Little, J. W. (2018). Defining teacher leadership: A framework. Phi Delta Kappan, 100(3), 38-44. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Judith-Warren-Little/publication/328442748_Defining_teacher_leadership_A_framework/links/5c96806192851cf0ae93eb03/Defining-teacher-leadership-A-framework.pdf
Harris, A., & Jones, M. (2019). Teacher leadership and educational change. School Leadership & Management, 39(2), 123-126. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13632434.2019.1574964
Kohli, R. (2019). Lessons for teacher education: The role of critical professional development in teacher of color retention. Journal of Teacher Education, 70(1), 39-50. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0022487118767645
Leithwood, K., Sun, J., & Schumacker, R. (2020). How school leadership influences student learning: A test of “The four paths model.” Educational Administration Quarterly, 56(4), 570-599. http://conference.cassa-acgcs.ca/downloads/2019_presentations/17-07-05am-b-Four_Paths_Final_Paper.pdf
Shen, J., Wu, H., Reeves, P., Zheng, Y., Ryan, L., & Anderson, D. (2020). The association between teacher leadership and student achievement: A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 31, 100357. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X19305317
Szeto, E., & Cheng, A. Y. N. (2018). Principal–teacher interactions and teacher leadership development: Beginning teachers’ perspectives. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 21(3), 363-379. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13603124.2016.1274785
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