Looking into the lives of teacher leaders

• Main Author: Ramos, Ma. Charmaine San Diego
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2012
• Subjects: Educational leadership; Teachers—Social conditions; Teacher Education and Professional Development
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/6854
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study sought to look into the lives of teacher leaders and highlight the centrality of improving teaching practices and students’ learning. In an effort to do so, teacher leaders, their principals, and teacher peers or colleagues completed survey questionnaires, and interviewed over the course of the study to answer the three specific research problems: (1) What are teacher leaders’ personal and professional leadership histories, qualities and dispositions? (2) What are the perceptions, experiences and motivations of a teacher leader? (3) What factors contributed to the development of these teacher leaders? This study was anchored on Spillane’s (2006) theory of distributed leadership. Spillane view distributed leadership as being central to the teaching and learning process in the school and agree that leadership involves all members of the school community, not just the principal. Spillane (2006) explains the idea further by detailing three types of co-leadership practice; collaborative, collective and coordinated. This research was qualitative case study. The nature of qualitative case study sought to answer questions that stress how “social experience is created and given meaning” (Yin, 2011). In order to determine the ways in which teacher leaders’ influence in promoting improvement efforts, a case study approach was chosen. The study covered five (5) preschool teachers also called the “teacher leaders”, five (5) principals and five (5) teacher peers/colleagues for a total of 15 participants. The findings of this study led the researcher to the conclusion that teacher leaders viewed teacher leadership as collaboration with the principals, colleagues and parents of their students. They observe that teacher leadership is shared leadership within the organization. The key characteristic of teacher leaders is Demand Reconciliation which is defined as, “reconciles conflicting demands and reduces disorder system (p. 3)” which is similar to the perceived characteristic of the principals and teacher peers. Most of the leadership experience of the teacher leaders were mentoring and leading committees for special activities for the preschool. The main motivation of the teacher leaders participant is their family and collaboration with the people in the organization. It can be concluded that the key factor that contributed to the development of these teacher leaders are their students and their love for teaching.