Teacher leadership in (inter)action: Empirical studies in primary and secondary schools.

The organisational structure of schools has been changing in the last decades, introducing the phenomenon of “teacher leadership” (TL). Today, leadership in schools can no longer be reduced to the sole activity of the school leader since some teachers are formally appointed to take on responsibilities beyond their classroom duties in order to guide other teachers towards improved practices and, in the end, to contribute to the overall school quality. Examples are teachers who take on the role of the mentor, the (general or pedagogical) coordinator, and the special educational needs coordinator. Although TL is regarded as a catalyst for school improvement and professional development, some concerns have been raised about how TL may challenge established authority patterns in schools. To date, only few empirical studies on TL investigated how TL really unfolds in practice. In particular, only a small number of studies have moved past the formal role-bound conception of TL by examining how TL is perceived by other actors (teacher colleagues and school leader) within school and thus by paying attention to the presence of inherent micropolitics within the interactions. Starting from this idea, this dissertation aims at broadening and deepening the research on TL by approaching TL as a practice rather than merely a role.

In the first chapter, we explore the presence of TL in Flemish schools and examine teacher leaders’  perceptions and evaluation regarding TL practices by means of a qualitative multiple case study approach. The results suggest that taking on leadership responsibilities as a teacher has a strong impact on their social-professional relationships and on their professional self-understanding. In the second chapter, focus is on unravelling how teacher leader roles are “negotiated” within the social-professional relationships in the school. By means of an in-depth study of two extreme cases regarding special needs care practices, findings illustrate that the special educational needs coordinator only receives the legitimacy to act as a teacher leader when his or her expertise is recognized, when teachers perceive their task as first-line helpers, and when the school leader is willing to release power. In the third chapter, we examine the effect of being socially connected to the mentor and teacher colleagues on teachers’ job attitudes and intention to leave the profession. By combining social network and multilevel analysis techniques, we find that being socially connected to teacher colleagues is of high importance, especially for beginning teachers, confirming our hypotheses that induction is not merely the responsibility of the mentor but of the entire school team. In the fourth chapter, we investigate the effect of teachers’ involvement in special needs care on student outcomes. The results indicate that students with highly involved class teachers report higher levels of wellbeing than students with less involved class teachers. We did not find a significant effect for math teachers’ involvement in special needs care on student math achievement, nor a differential effect for students with and without special educational needs.

We conclude this dissertation with a critical reflection on our empirical studies. Furthermore, we elaborate on the implications of our research results regarding teacher leadership for policy and practice.