How this has impacted on my leadership learning

To me, teacher leadership means creating and leading change on a varying scale. This could be a small, personal change or development being investigated or could be a larger scale cluster/region research project and everywhere in between. Teacher leadership is not defined by what or who you are leading, but by the fact that you have seen a gap in a certain area and are taking initiative to do something about it. Coming into teaching at a time in which teacher leadership is a phrase that is used to mean the leadership of some kind of change, as opposed to leadership of people, has benefited me. I know colleagues who have found it more difficult to separate this idea but as more teachers become involved in undertaking teacher leadership opportunities and sharing their experiences I believe this will change. The teacher leadership programme has been a structured way to explore my questions and create new ones. I had an idea in my head of a broad area I wanted to investigate through my enquiry approach but I have broadened my interest and understanding in this area beyond where I thought I would due to the nature of an enquiring approach. As I discussed in my post about an enquiry approach, it is a cycle that continues and although this programme is coming to an end and I have some answers to my initial questions, I feel only at the start of what will be a continual cycle of question, investigate, develop, create more questions and so on…

2 thoughts on “How this has impacted on my leadership learning”

  1. I really like that sentence about teacher leadership ‘not defined by what or who you are leading, but by the fact that you have seen a gap in a certain area and are taking initiative to do something about it.’ It points out to me that leadership often is spoken about in those terms – who are you line managing or which project/area have you been given to lead – and you have given a very strong alternative definition. I’ll need to remember it!

  2. I also noticed the “Find the gap and make a move” element of your post. It’s such an empowering way to explain teacher leadership – brilliant!

    I agree with your statements about how people are starting to join and understand this movement to free and empower teachers to lead their own changes in the way that bridges the gaps they see!

Leave a Reply to Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *