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Constructions of teacher leadershipin three periods of policy and reformactivismJudith Warren Little aa Graduate School of Education, Tolman Hall MC #1670, Universityof California, Berkeley, 94720–1670, USAPublished online: 03 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Judith Warren Little (2003) Constructions of teacher leadership in three periodsof policy and reform activism, School Leadership & Management: Formerly School Organisation,23:4, 401-419, DOI: 10.1080/1363243032000150944

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School Leadership & Management,Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 401–419, November 2003

Constructions of TeacherLeadership in Three Periods ofPolicy and Reform ActivismJUDITH WARREN LITTLEGraduate School of Education, Tolman Hall MC #1670, University of California,Berkeley, 94720–1670, USA

ABSTRACT It is primarily within the last two decades that ‘teacher leadership’ has emerged asa prominent element of reform strategy and policy rhetoric. Three bodies of data spanning 14years show how the meanings of teacher leadership vary, paralleling shifts in policy goals andstrategies. Over time, designated teacher leadership roles have become heavily weighted towardinstitutional agendas over which teachers have little direct control and over which teachersthemselves are divided. Much formally defined teacher leadership accomplishes a division oflabour without entailing much initiative on matters of purpose and practice. Yet in each of thereform periods—from progressive and relatively decentralised to conservative and stronglycentralised—some instances of teacher leadership constitute genuine initiative in teaching,learning and schooling. Such cases present existence proofs that illuminate both possibilities anddilemmas. From them we have begun to learn how teacher leaders might mobilise resources forteacher learning and educational reform.

Teachers have a long history of political, social and educational activism in the USA(for example, Clifford 1987), but it is primarily within the last two decades that‘teacher leadership’ has emerged as a prominent element of reform strategy andpolicy rhetoric [1]. Further, the policy stance toward teachers and teacher leadershiphas demonstrably shifted even during that relatively short period. In the 1980s,teacher leadership formed the centerpiece of career ladder initiatives designed toreward accomplished teachers while also securing their commitment to teaching andmarshalling their expertise in support of new teachers and school improvement(Malen & Hart 1987; Little 1990). From the late-1980s to mid-1990s, a surge ofinvestments in whole-school reform produced new definitions of leadership rolesand a new emphasis on leadership in pursuit of locally defined school reform(Wasley 1991). By the late 1990s, policy and reform conditions in the USA hadshifted dramatically as ‘high stakes accountability’ took hold. In this period, districtand school administrators recruit teachers into leadership positions in the service ofexternal accountability. Pressures and demands on teachers have continued toescalate steadily, while supports and rewards have dwindled [2].

ISSN 1363-2434 printed/ISSN 1364-2626 online/03/040401-19 2003 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/1363243032000150944

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402 J. W. Little

At issue in this article is how teacher leadership comes to be conceived, invokedand enacted by teachers under policy and reform conditions that have shifted overtwo decades from a relatively progressive mood toward a starkly conservative one,with growing consequences for teachers’ work and working conditions. Throughout,the various reform initiatives have been justified by concerns for wide and enduringdisparities in educational achievement and attainment. Yet the policy and reformlogics or ‘theories of action’ have evolved in ways that have direct bearing on therecruitment and retention of capable, committed teachers and on notions of what itmeans to be a teacher.

Two analytic interests underlie this article. Together, they extend my ownprior work on teacher leadership in the contexts of the school workplace andevolving reform initiatives (Little 1990, 1995, 2001) and build on the recenttheoretical and empirical work of colleagues in the USA and elsewhere (for example,Wasley 1991; Siskin 1993; Hargreaves 1994, 2003; Bartlett 2001; Van Veen et al.2001; Bottery 2002; Harris & Muijs 2002; Sachs 2002; Van den Berg 2002; Harris2003).

First, I am interested in how teacher leadership is characterised by policymakers, administrators and teachers themselves at each of the policy and reformperiods. This is a question about the social and political organisation of teaching andits relationship to the institution of schooling, about how people speak normatively,metaphorically and substantively about the professional obligations of teaching,what they do and do not consider leadership by teachers to entail, and theattributions they make regarding important influences on the goals and practices ofteaching.

A second and related set of questions focuses on whether and how teacherleadership, whether invested in formal positions or enacted in more diffuse andinformal ways, enables teachers to expose and tackle difficult questions of teachingpractice and student learning. This line of analysis arises from an interest in howteacher initiative on matters of educational purpose and teaching practice in settingsoutside the classroom might make itself felt in the quality of teaching and learninginside the classroom. Elsewhere, I have examined this question by looking in amicro-analytic or ‘fine-grained’ way at recorded interactions of teachers as they worktogether (Little 2002, 2003). The current article relies on teachers’ interviewaccounts to trace teachers’ orientations toward teacher-to-teacher initiative onmatters of practice.

Three Successive Studies

In pursuit of these questions, I have begun to re-examine the leadership experienceof secondary school teachers in case study schools operating under very differentreform and policy conditions over a span of 14 years. The analysis draws on threebodies of case study data collected from 1988 to 2002 to examine the expectationsthat administrators, policy makers and teachers themselves express regarding teacherleadership, the kind of practice thought to constitute leading, and the institutionalresources available for teacher leadership.

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Constructions of Teacher Leadership 403

Research on the Contexts of Teaching in Secondary Schools (CRC, 1988–92)

The first set of data resulted from a multi-year study of 16 high schools from1988–92, with the analysis focusing on five comprehensive high schools [3]. For thisstudy, the research team sought ‘ordinary’ schools that were neither engaged inambitious reforms nor deeply troubled. For this reason, it is possible that the sampleunderestimates the extent of teacher leadership in high schools during this perioddespite the publication of a series of studies specifically targeting high school reform(Boyer 1983; Sizer 1984; Powell et al. 1985).

The School Restructuring Studies (SRS, 1992–98)

The second dataset was collected from 1992–97 in five high schools involved inlocally designed whole-school reform. The School Restructuring Studies proceededin two stages. In the first stage, a research team conducted case studies of two highschools that focused whole-school reform on the development of interdisciplinaryteams and curricula, including programmes to strengthen vocational programmesand integrate them more fully with robust academics. The second stage encom-passed high schools funded under California’s Demonstration School RestructuringProgram, of which three schools became the focus of intensive case study research[4].

Teachers’ Professional Development in the Contexts of Secondary School Reform (PDCR,1998–2002)

The final dataset derives from an intensive study of two high schools from 1999–2002, when the accountability movement had been firmly established [5]. The twoschools bring two different kinds of reform histories into the current accountabilityregime. One school had accumulated a long history of whole-school reform and hadestablished a high level of whole-school community; the other had no comparablehistory of whole-school reform, but was home to individual departments with aregional reputation for being innovative and reform-oriented.

All data were collected in California, and thus reflect the particular policyenvironment and policy trajectory in that state. Although each dataset encompassesmultiple data types, the analysis for this article builds principally on individualinterviews, taped, transcribed and organised for analysis in the form of Word andNvivo files, together with summary content logs and various thematic matrices.

Two caveats preface this analysis. First, these were studies of the conceptionsand contexts of teachers’ work at three points in time. They were not designed inany explicit way as studies of teacher leadership. For purposes of examining teacherleadership, the datasets are asymmetrical in important ways that will be evidentbelow (most significantly, with regard to the nature and extent of relevant observa-tional data). Second, this draft article does not yet make use of the full dataset. Theclaims made here must be seen as provisional.

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404 J. W. Little

Two Emerging Story Lines

The remainder of this article will develop two principal story lines, indicating thecentral tenets of each. Summarised briefly, they are as follows.

A Trajectory in the Meaning of Teacher Leadership—From Localised Influence andInnovation to Concerns for External Accountability

The first story line centres on a trajectory in the meanings attached to teacherleadership over a 14-year period. Over the three periods of policy and reform activitythere is a marked, but not uniform, shift in the meaning of teacher leadership fromlocalised and rather idiosyncratic activity, very much rooted in individual initiativeand small-scale collaboration, to more systemic efforts by school and district officialsto mobilise teacher leadership in the service of institutional agendas and externalaccountability [6].

Leadership Targeted Directly to Teaching and Learning Remains Scarce Throughout, butthe ‘Existence Proofs’ have Significance for Policy, Practice and Research

The second story line centres on the incidence of leadership focused directly onissues of teaching and learning. The number of cases of teacher leadership focusedon teaching and learning or problems of classroom practice and student well-being,remains small throughout. In each of the studies there is a widespread pattern of‘leadership’ that could readily be described as little more than a division of institu-tional labour, especially managerial labour. Nonetheless, in each of the datasetsthere are examples of teacher leaders and teacher groups focused resolutely andastutely on instructional improvement and on leadership for teaching and learning,regardless of what else is going on in the larger policy environment. These examplesconstitute existence proofs that illuminate both possibilities and dilemmas forteacher leadership.

A Trajectory in the Meaning of Teacher Leadership

Educators’ perspectives on leadership correspond in certain patterned ways to thesuccession of policy shifts: from leadership focused on rewarding accomplishedteachers and supporting curriculum innovation and professional development, toleadership shaped by state-defined and district-mediated reform agendas and de-mands; from a gaze focused on the classroom to a gaze focused on the state. Yet thechanging policy and institutional imperatives alone prove insufficient to account forthe form leadership takes or how it plays out in the working lives of teachers.

For each of the policy ‘moments’, the analysis attends to characteristic concept-

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Constructions of Teacher Leadership 405

ions of teacher leadership at work in these local sites; how teacher leadership wascontested; and the stance taken by principals toward teacher leadership.

Policy Moment 1: Leadership Rooted in Specific Teaching Contexts and Small-ScaleCollaboration

In the first ‘policy moment’, during the 1980s, teachers tended to situate leadershipwithin the most proximate contexts of their daily work. Teacher leadership in casestudy high schools during this period was mostly organised by the formal sub-unitof the department and by the range of department sub-cultures (see Siskin 1994)[7].

Although there is no uniform tradition in the USA by which department headsare granted formal authority over curriculum and other professional matters, includ-ing teacher evaluation, both the warrant and the impulse for leadership at the schoollevel in these high schools rested heavily with subject. To the extent that departmentheads were credited with leadership, it was for building and sustaining the ‘gooddepartment’. Thus, an English teacher and future department chair at one large highschool (3000 students) recalled his impression of the English department’s co-oper-ative culture at the time he was hired and offered an explanation linked prominentlyto departmental leadership:

They [teachers in the English Department] were really energetic andinvolved in what they were doing and more than anything else sharing ideasabout what they were doing in class, what was working. Showing students’work, you know, ‘Here’s a good example of this, don’t you like it?’ So it’snot a feeling of trying to be better than anybody, there’s not a competitivefeel to it, it’s very cooperative. And I would just credit that to the peoplethere as well as the leadership that we’ve had in the last two departmentchairpeople. (English teacher, Oak Valley High School)

One of the former department heads recalled a trigger event in the evolution of thedepartment culture: the hiring of five beginning teachers all in one year as theschool’s enrolment began to grow rapidly in the early to mid-1980s. Now, he says:

… If I were to put a microscope into the English Department in particular,it’s a standard everyday practice that teachers are handing other teacherssample lessons that they’ve done or an assignment that they tried and,when it worked and how they would do it differently … Most of the peoplein the department will say it’s because of me, because when I becamedepartment chair that’s what happened. (Former Department Chair, OakValley English Department)

Yet the enactment of formal department leadership in this school and others washighly variable. Some chairs were credited with inspiring collaboration and inno-vation or with promoting professional development; others embodied hierarchical

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406 J. W. Little

and patriarchal traditions, protecting the prerogatives of seniority; still others re-ported simply ‘taking a turn in the barrel’, managing administrative details (supplies,budgets) and co-ordinating the use of departmental resources.

Controversies surrounding leadership also had a highly individualistic andidiosyncratic character. To the extent that leadership was contested, it was withregard to individual interpretations of the scope and prerogatives of the leadershipposition. In the following exchange between a highly-qualified science teacher andan interviewer, the contested issues centre on teaching assignment and the ways inwhich the department head used the power of the position to consolidate privilegein the department on the basis of seniority.

T: Seniority is a constraint for me. And what’s interesting about it isbecause I’m not a second year teacher, I’m an eighth year teacher, but withsecond year power … I requested the AP biology class for next year … Itinfuriated [the chair]: ‘What gives you the right? That’s a plum course’.

I: Because you haven’t been here long enough? You haven’t earned it?

T: Right. That’s the idea. Pay your dues … Someone would have to die forme to get to teach chemistry.

In this respect, leadership in the science department differed markedly from that ofthe English department (in the same school) described above, where departmentleaders had introduced a widely supported teaching assignment policy de-coupledfrom seniority and founded on shared responsibility for all students.

The range of approaches to teacher leadership, even within the formal structureof the department head role, compelled little administrative attention unless depart-ment conflicts spilled over into school-level dilemmas. In the case of the sciencedepartment described above, the principal identified the teacher assignment policyas problematic, likely to result in the loss of qualified but marginalised teachers ina field where teacher recruitment was a challenge. In an interview, he indicated hisintent to intervene, which he did subsequently, forcing a change in departmentchair:

The science department is entrenched in their ways, a lot of them, andthere’s kind of a rift that’s going on because there’s been a lot of growth inthe recent years. And there’s a bunch of new energetic young ones andpeople who’ve been there … in classes because of seniority. And some ofthese [new teachers] may have to wait and die before they get to teachbiology. Which is going to change. (Principal, Oak Valley High School)

Yet a proactive and strategic stance toward teacher leadership was largely absent,with administrators in one district going so far as to eliminate formal departmenthead positions in the interests of ‘cost-cutting’.

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Constructions of Teacher Leadership 407

Moment 2: The Proliferation of Teacher Leadership Positions Linked to a Campaign forWhole-School Reform

Beginning in the 1980s, a campaign for whole-school reform developed as aresponse to a litany of criticisms focused on the shortcomings of the high school.The Coalition of Essential Schools had emerged in the mid-1980s, initially led andpromoted by the critic Ted Sizer, author of Horace’s Compromise: The Dilemma of theAmerican High School. State-sponsored initiatives also emerged. In the early 1990s,California published a ‘reform blueprint’ for the state’s high schools (Second toNone). The blueprint envisioned a state-supported push toward whole-school re-form, a prominent feature of which was to be ‘new professional roles’ for teachersin school-level decision making, school governance and programme improvement.

In this second policy moment, coinciding with a wave of whole-school reforminitiatives supported by both public agencies and private foundations, teacherleadership became associated more prominently and consistently with reform agen-das. The reform focus was evident at multiple levels:

• In cases of subject and department leadership linked to wider subject reformagendas or activities—in the following example, a mathematics reform agendapromulgated by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and champi-oned by the California Mathematics Council.

I transferred here in order to be the Department Chair. It was a realopportunity to come here and start to look at how we could change theprogramme … It was a case where the old department was retiring. Therewere a bunch of old guys—I hate to say it—but they were retiring, and itwas a chance to really work at hiring a lot of new people and doing newthings. (Former math department chair, North Meadow High School1996)

• In both within-subject and interdisciplinary units, where teachers turned atten-tion to a more collective set of agreements about curricular purpose andcontent:

At our previous school there was barely any departmental agreement onanything … So I think [our division leader] was really attracted to the ideathat there would be some kind of cohesion here, where generally peoplewould have some agreement on the concepts that were being taught.(History teacher in an interdisciplinary ‘division’, Prairie High School1992)

• In the proliferation of formal leadership roles defined by a school-wide reformagenda and a corresponding expansion of school-based decision making:

What I really enjoy, career-wise or professionally, is the fact that I’m in onthe decision-making of what’s going on here at this school. And for mepersonally, that’s something I enjoy. I like knowing what’s happening atschool; I like knowing the reasons that decisions are made. And we have

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408 J. W. Little

very good access to the principal. (‘House Resource Teacher’, SouthgateHigh School, SRS Study 1996)

These developments oriented schools and teachers to larger reform issues while alsogenerating conflict over the meaning of teacher leadership and the locally-defineddirections of reform (see also Little 1995). Characteristic of these contests are thesecontrasting views from a the head of a newly formed interdisciplinary ‘house’ and anEnglish teacher defending the tradition of the department head:

The house head’s view: You are responsible for the teachers in your ownhouse, whether it’s your area of expertise or whether it isn’t, because ifyou’re an excellent teacher, if you’re a model teacher, you can provide thatresource, whether you’re an English teacher [talking to] to a math teacheror a science teacher or a French teacher, or whatever. And hopefully, wehave enough expertise to help teachers in all subject areas. [House head]

The English teacher’s view: I can understand a subject [leader]. But ajack-of-all-trades doesn’t exist. In my house, the head is a home economicsteacher … She knows nothing about humanities. We have another who iscredentialed in social studies [but] gives erroneous advice in math …Before this, department heads … were curriculum leaders, mentors.

The focus on whole-school reform, a relatively new notion for the high school, mayaccount for administrators’ conception of their role during this period. Thoseadministrators who were credited by teachers with ‘pulling their weight’ in restruc-turing concentrated on rallying widespread support for broadly-defined reform goalsand fostering whole-staff discussion about those goals. A principal recalled:

So we looked at issues that had to do with success for all students, withhigh failure rate in some areas, and tried to come up with a vision andprograms that would improve that situation. The vision being generally thecloser ties between school and the real world, with active participation andengagement and thinking in the curriculum and all of those notions. Wehad some essential agreements to start with. (Principal, Hacienda HighSchool 1995)

Administrators also made use of hiring opportunities to build a staff whose viewswere consistent with the reform agenda.

We made a big point in every (hiring) interview of talking about the(whole-school reform) grant, what it means, how it will undoubtedlyrequire more time, and the expectation that we’re interested the wholeschool, and not just a classroom…. And my belief system is that there isleadership in everyone. (Principal, Hacienda High School, Fall 1995)

However, despite a more consistent and strategic orientation toward whole-schoolreform, administrators placed their bets on individual innovation and small-scalevoluntary collaboration, a stance in many ways consistent with earlier traditions of

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Constructions of Teacher Leadership 409

leadership. Although teachers were instrumental in pursuing whole-school reform,formal leadership roles lacked long-term institutional support. In a report completedat the close of the School Restructuring Studies in 1998, the research teamconcluded:

At their best, [designated teacher leaders] helped create a climate andorganise forums in which teachers could examine the effects of theirinstruction, or develop new ideas and skills … More commonly, on aday-by-day basis, teacher leaders assumed responsibility for the adminis-trative tasks of restructuring. We would be hard pressed, then, to describethese positions as ‘new roles’ in the sense anticipated by the [state-spon-sored program]—that is, permanent new roles with direct and ongoinginfluence on teaching and learning. (Little & Dorph 1998: 41).

Moment 3: The Escalation in ‘High-Stakes Accountability:’ Teacher Leadership in theService of Public Accountability

The third policy moment, extending into the present, is marked by pronouncedinternal contradictions and a certain profound irony: notions of an ‘expanded role’for teachers have gained widespread currency (Lieberman & Miller 1999) even whilestate policy instruments exert heightened control over teachers’ work. At the level ofteacher experience, a very mixed picture emerges. In some respects, teachers in thecase study schools might be said to have embraced the ‘expanded role’ as a sourceof professional pride and a stimulus to continuous learning. At the same time,expanded responsibilities also result in overwork (Little 2001; Bartlett 2002) or whatsome might term an intensification of labour (see Hargreaves 1994; Ballet &Kelchtermans 2002; Bottery 2002). Teachers articulate a sophisticated understand-ing of prevailing external forces, accepting the principle of public accountability butcriticising or actively opposing what they consider misguided or overly narrowreform visions and coercive strategies adopted by the state or a local district [8].

Normalising the expanded role. The orientation to an ‘expanded role’ surfaces in thecase study interview as teachers describe their own priorities and the prioritiesembodied in school hiring practices of the period. A teacher in a school emphasisingschool-wide professional community recalls:

My interview was very telling in that they were not very focused at all onparticular subject matter that I would teach. They were interested in mythinking about the whole-school change. They really asked me a lot ofquestions about that. ‘Well, how would you feel about having to be a leaderin the school and seeing yourself as much that as a classroom teacher inyour subject area?’ (Humanities/history teacher, South High School,PDCR Study 2001)

In a second school, a department focused on improving students’ access to higherlevel mathematics, an agenda cast in terms of social justice, recruits teachers byemphasising the collective supports and obligations characteristic of the department.

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410 J. W. Little

A recruitment flyer prepared by the department co-chairs includes the followingtext:

We are looking for strong candidates who have:

• a strong interest in groupwork• a commitment to the idea that every student is smart and can be

successful with rigorous mathematics, and• a commitment to collaboration.

We have worked for years to make sense of groupwork, open-endedquestioning, the effective use of manipulatives, and sophisticated use oftechnology … All teachers of each course meet weekly to collaborate onlesson plans, discuss student progress, and share ideas. We believe thistremendous level of collaboration is one of the things that makes ourdepartment unique, and we think the chance to participate in theseconversations is an invaluable opportunity for any teacher (beginning orotherwise). [Excerpt, position posting, June 1999]

Teachers commonly express collective responsibility for student success as a centralelement of this expanded role:

I think in a larger sense, as a teacher, I think it’s important to have a biggerunderstanding of what the student’s experience is in the school, not just inthe classroom. To think about the issues that the school is concerned withand how that plays out in your classroom or how what you’re doing in yourclassroom fits in to some of the larger issues and goals of the school.(Humanities teacher, South High School, PDCR Study 2000)

Heightened expectations for leadership. Not only is the expectation for leadership andschool-wide responsibility widespread, but also the specific expectations of leader-ship have intensified during this period. A teacher at one school reported having toconsider carefully whether she was up to the task, and the time commitments, ofserving on her school’s academic council, the internal group of teachers andadministrators that serves as the central leadership mechanisms for the school.Another teacher expressed reservations about taking on a position of co-chair in thehighly innovative and collaborative mathematics department whose recruitment flyeris excerpted above. Asked why the prospect was daunting, she replied:

I’m getting paid extra to do this job so of course I’ll work weekends. And,of course, I’ll work nights. And, of course, if we don’t have a person toteach that class I’ll take it over or I’ll find someone to do it. I will make theconnections with the colleges and the universities and the credentialingprograms to find people who fit in our program … And, of course, I’llfigure out the best way to teach this program. And if I don’t know, then I’llfind someone who does. And I will organise department meetings. And I’lltake care of the budget. And I’ll make the connections with the principalthat I need to do. And I’ll deal with paper issues and resource issues and

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Constructions of Teacher Leadership 411

financial issues … and I will be upbeat and friendly every day. And I’ll bethe best teacher in the world on top of it because how can you bedepartment chair if you’re not a good teacher. And then, have a life. (MathDepartment co-chair, East High School 2000)

Escalating external demands. Further, teachers accepting formal leadership responsi-bilities during this period find that they cannot escape the press of external demands.One school funds teachers other than the department head to serve as a ‘datacontact’ for each department, responding to the increasing demands for data onstudent performance A math teacher observes:

For the most part, it appears that our department collects and reports ondata … We really don’t have time to deal with the issues that we want. Wewrote out a timeline of things we wanted to do and we have departmenttime that’s been set aside for us, at least one Wednesday out of eachmonth, but every time we meet, there’s something the school needs us todo. (Math teacher, South High School, 2000)

At another school, department heads spend time positioning the department in waysthat will preserve a certain amount of collective autonomy.

We’re trying to figure out what our school could try to do to respond towhat the state is asking us to do. Our scores are lowest in language arts andreading, and in anticipation of the conversation being held district wide …we wanted something of our own creation, so when the heavy hand startedcoming down, we would have something of our own creation that webelieved in. (English department chair, East High School, 2000)

Emerging opposition. If the whole-school reform movement helped to introduce an‘expanded’ role, as Hoyle (1980) and later Lieberman & Miller (1999) have termedit, the current accountability movement has arguably produced the intensified andovertly politicised role. In ways that Lortie’s (1975) earlier portrayal of a largelyapolitical teaching occupation would not have anticipated, teacher leadership dis-plays a growing political orientation and links to social justice movements anddebates. In this policy moment, teachers are much more likely to position them-selves in relation to external movements and interests as well as to the specific policyinstruments employed by the state or the district. Predictably, there are widevariations in stance, but concerns outweigh endorsements of the current statedirection. At one extreme, a department head asserts ‘we are totally at odds with thephilosophy of what’s going on in the state …’

Increasingly, through the second and third policy moments, the case study datashow reform enthusiasm turning to reform disappointment; teachers who volunteerfor leadership roles or who are recruited into them leaving their posts, their schoolsor teaching altogether; administrators (and teachers themselves) turning to noviceteachers to fulfill school leadership roles and responsibilities, capitalising on thenewcomers’ enthusiasm but exacting substantial costs in other ways.

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412 J. W. Little

TABLE I. Trajectory in teacher leadership in secondary schools over three policy moments inone state

Policy Moment 1: Policy Moment 2: Policy Moment 3:‘Progressive’ Mood Escalating ‘Conservative’

in State Policy Standards Mood in StateMovement Policy

Characteristic Linked to Proliferation of Leadership in theleadership established reform-related service of externalrelationships structures leadership roles; accountability;and practice (department, leadership linked to leadership

committees); highly reform agendas at positioned invariable practice school level relation to state and

district reformagendas

Leadership Issues of individual Issues of reform Reform focuscontested leadership practice focus within school; beyond the school;

definition of role; warrant forwarrant for leadership;leadership and expectations ofextent of authority teacher leaders

Administrators’ Intervene when Rally whole-school Press forrole problems affecting support for school responsiveness to

school; little or no improvement goals, district and stateproactive strategy encourage demandsfor cultivating widespreadleadership participation and

individualinnovation

Meanwhile, administrators in the case study schools demonstrate little propensity tocriticise state policy directives or even to hold forums in which teachers could engagein discussion and debate.

This trajectory across three ‘policy moments’ (see Table I) appears to havebroadened participation in professional discourse regarding the framing of educa-tional problems and remedies but also to have politicised the discourse over reformwithin schools, the teaching occupation, and wider communities. The good news isthat it is much harder for teachers to remain insular, and to avoid grappling publiclywith larger issues of the purposes and practices of schooling. The bad news is thatthe demands of external accountability appear to breed stress while ironicallydiminishing the time, attention, energy and authority for teacher leadership targetedto matters of teaching and learning within schools and classrooms.

Leadership Focused on Teaching and Learning

Despite some significant involvement by teachers in a range of social and politicalmovements (for example, the women’s rights movement in the nineteenth century,the settlement house movement in the early twentieth century, and the civil rights

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Constructions of Teacher Leadership 413

movement in the 1960s), prevailing depictions of teaching as an occupation empha-sise its conservative character (Lortie 1975). In particular, teachers are portrayed asgenerally uninterested in changing the nature of schooling and as wedded topowerful norms of privacy. Even in groups that espouse an interest in reform, normsof professional interaction may privilege ‘non-interference’ over advice-giving, andindividual autonomy over collective obligations (Aguirre 2002) [9]. It remainscommon in accounts of teacher collaboration or community-building for authors orspeakers to make some reference to the ‘threat’ evoked by practices that entaildisclosure of teaching problems or uncertainties, and to underscore the need for‘safety’ and ‘trust’ as the necessary conditions for such practices.

Initiative Regarding Educational Goals and Teaching Practice is Scarce

The three datasets employed for this study offer further evidence that norms ofautonomy and non-interference constitute a substantial constraint on the exercise ofleadership by teachers, whether by those in formally designated positions or thoseinclined to seek opportunities to question educational goals, assumptions andpractices. The incidence of leadership and professional community focused on goalsand problems of teaching practice remains small.

• Among the five schools and 10 math and English departments in the Study1 (CRC) sub-sample, no school emerges as having a strong innovativecommunity oriented to teaching and learning, and only two subject depart-ments (an English department at one school and a math department atanother) emerge as strong innovative communities [10]. In both of thosedepartments, teachers credit certain department policies (for example, re-garding teaching assignments) and leadership practices with creating a cul-ture productively focused on teaching and learning.

• Among the five schools in the Study 2 (SRS) dataset, one of 10 math andEnglish departments (North Meadow’s math department) qualifies as astrong innovative community, together with interdisciplinary careeracademies in four of the five schools. Again, teacher leadership playedan important role in shifting a department culture in the direction of in-novations that resulted in higher levels of student achievement, and indeveloping alternative school-within-a-school programmes with innovativecurricula.

• In the two case study schools in the Study 3 (PDCR) dataset, one schoolstands out as having constituted strong professional community at the schoollevel, but mechanisms for bridging school wide activity and goals to class-room innovation remain weak, especially in the mathematics department. Ina second school, the math department shines as an example of a robustprofessional community, while the English department struggles to pursueinnovation in the face of well-established norm of autonomy and weakschool-level supports.

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414 J. W. Little

Existence Proofs Illuminate Possibilities as well as Tensions and Dilemmas

Despite the relative infrequency of teacher initiative on matters of purpose andpractice, existence proofs do exist in each of the datasets. That is, teachers do takeleadership, individually and collectively, on important matters of teaching andlearning regardless of whatever else transpires in the larger policy environment. Theydo so, however, under quite variable conditions of support and constraint.

Two scenarios from the most recent round of case studies serve to illustrate thepower of ‘existence proofs’ to serve both theoretical and practical ends. By exposingthe work of teacher leaders and teacher communities at the level of practice, suchexistence proofs suggest how teachers marshal human and material resources insupport of learning and reform, while also capturing the dilemmas and tensions withwhich teachers must contend.

Scenario 1: In a first scenario, nearly 40 teachers and administrators aregathered for the two-day staff retreat that opens the school year. Twoteachers have planned a ‘visualisation exercise’ for the group: ‘We’re goingto visually show you the grade distribution in our school’. They invite18participants to stand up and move to one end of the room; each represents20 students who earn an A or B grade average, about 42% of the school’sstudents. Another 10 are asked to stand, representing the 26% of studentswho maintain a C average. Finally, 12 individuals stand and move to-gether. They represent the nearly one-third of students who account for theschool’s failing or low-achieving students. This last group remains standingwhile others sit; now two of the ‘failing’ group also take their seats. Theremaining 10, the group learns, represent 85% of all Fs given, and those goto students—about one quarter of pupils in the school— who earned 3 ormore D’s or F’s in the previous year.

This scene is characteristic of leadership initiative by teachers in this school, anexercise designed to launch a whole-staff investigation into issues of student successor failure. On this occasion, the staff identified ‘student failure’ as the organisingproblem for its own professional development and inquiry into teaching practicethroughout the year. They followed up by holding student focus groups withstudents who were struggling, looking more closely at profiles of student perform-ance, and in other ways working to ensure that they as teachers took responsibilityfor student success or failure.

Scenario 2: At 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon early in the school year, ninemathematics teachers and two interns gather for the weekly meeting of theAlgebra Group. They devote more than an hour to discussing specificmathematics problems, how they have approached teaching them, and howtheir students have responded. They then turn to the routine the groupcalls ‘check-in’, in which each participant reports on classroom progress orraises an issue or problem related to teaching and learning. When it is herturn, Tina (an intern teacher) begins by expressing pleasure in what herstudents are able to accomplish, but then expresses her frustration with

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trying to ‘close the gap’ between students she describes as ‘fast learners’and ‘slow learners’ in her classes. Others in the group first take up Tina’sframing of the problem as centring on the capacities of ‘fast’ and ‘slow’students and how students relate to one another and the tasks of theclassroom. Eventually Guillermo, an experienced teacher and co-chair ofthe department, suggests that Tina may be helped by rethinking the verydefinition of what it means to be ‘fast’ or ‘slow’: ‘… What I find is thatwhen I have mindsets like that that they get in my way in terms of thinkingabout the curriculum … I think that’s from thinking about a group of kidsas slow learners … That’s how we’re acclimatised to think about learning.One thing I’m thinking about is, the ones that are moving through thingsreally quickly, often they’re not stopping to think about what they’re doing,what there is to learn from this activity … Think of the ones that you thinkof as fast learners and figure out what they’re slow at’.

This scenario typifies interaction in the Algebra Group (most members of themathematics department) at a second school, embodying a set of values and anestablished set of practices that work to open up teachers’ opportunities to learn andthe department’s ability to advance a reform agenda. In addition to openly sharingideas, materials and expertise, the math teachers take the time to do mathematicstogether, examine student work and students’ responses to specific activities andexamine their own assumptions about student learning. The co-chairs of thedepartment are instrumental in sustaining the norms and practices of the group, andcultivating what one of them calls a ‘safe’ environment to take up problems ofteaching and learning.

The nature and conditions of teacher leadership vary in important ways acrossthe two schools from which these scenarios were taken—in the locus of significantleadership at the school vs. the subject department, in the framing of problems forcollective attention, in the expectations for what leadership entails, and in therelationships between teacher leaders and school administrators. (For elaboration ofthese differences, see Bartlett 2001; Horn 2002; Little in press.) Yet in both sites,certain factors enabled vigorous leadership by teachers that in important respectswas focused on issues of educational purpose, teaching practice, and pupil learning.Among them are factors long familiar in studies of effective schools, but stillremarkably infrequent in practice:

• Staff consistently devoted their available time together to issues of teachingand learning; the groups found other ways to handle routine administrativebusiness.

• Teacher leaders were explicit and consistent in expressing the importance ofworking together on issues of educational purpose and problems of teachingand learning.

• Groups adopted specific practices and routines that organised discussion ofreform goals and problems of teaching and learning (for example, the weekly‘check-in’ routine in the Algebra Group meeting); they made concerted

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416 J. W. Little

efforts to embody norms consistent with disclosure of uncertainty and cri-tique of practice.

• Teachers maintained ties with external organisations and groups that sup-plied intellectual, social and material resources for their work.

These and other scenarios and cases offer some explanations for why commonlycited factors in teacher leadership and effective teacher community seem so elusive.Teacher leadership generally, and more specifically teachers’ collective initiative onmatters of purpose and practice, was observably constrained even in these ‘existenceproof’ cases, by a recurrent set of tensions and dilemmas: the tension betweenprofessional autonomy and collective obligation; the tension between professionaland personal commitments of time and energy; the tension between a school’s orgroup’s internal priorities and external demands. Further, the current policy condi-tions—entailing a narrowed vision of educational goals and processes together withtighter controls over teachers’ work—have rendered conditions of support forteacher leadership steadily more tenuous.

Conclusion

Preliminary analyses of three bodies of data spanning 14 years and three policy‘moments’ show how the meanings of teacher leadership vary in ways that parallelshifts in policy and reform goals and strategies. Over time, designated teacherleadership roles have become heavily weighted toward institutional agendas overwhich teachers have little direct control and over which teachers themselves aredivided. Further, much of what proponents label ‘teacher leadership’ might morereadily be defined simply as a division of managerial labour.

Yet in each of the reform periods, ranging from progressive and relativelydecentralised to conservative and strongly centralised, the data reveal instances ofteacher leadership that constitute genuine initiative on matters of educationalpurpose and practice. Such cases present existence proofs that illuminate bothpossibilities and dilemmas. From them we have begun to learn how teacher leadersand teacher communities mobilise resources for learning and reform.

These discoveries, although provisional, suggest that teacher leadership mightbe pursued in ways that more consistently foster teacher learning, teacher commit-ment and school reform. Together, they have import for our ability to makeheadway on problems of persistent inequity in schooling, and for our ability torecruit and retain capable and committed teachers.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This article was first presented at the ESRC Seminar Challenging the Orthodoxy ofSchool Leadership, National College for School Leadership, Nottingham, England,3 June 2003.

NOTES

[1] The historical record of teacher activism may come as something as a surprise to those

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Constructions of Teacher Leadership 417

familiar with the dominant sociological rendering of teachers and teaching (most promi-nently Lortie 1975), which emphasises the generally apolitical motivations and interests ofthose entering teaching, together with structural and cultural constraints on initiative withregard to matters of teaching (e.g. structural isolation and norms of privacy and non-interfer-ence). So on the one hand, the image of teachers as uniformly passive in the face of socialand political inequity is overdrawn; on the other, the norms of interaction among teachersthemselves, with regard to matters of teaching practice and relationships with students,demonstrably constrain initiative with regard to practice.

[2] This is not a condition unique to the USA, although teachers’ experience of the accountabil-ity movement is mediated by the country’s particularities of school governance and historyof curriculum and teacher policy.

[3] The CRC research was supported by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement,U.S. Department of Education. The study was formally based at Stanford University underthe leadership of Milbrey McLaughlin and Joan Talbert, but also involved a research teamof faculty and graduate students from several other universities. For this analysis, I haveeliminated all schools in the sample that were not public comprehensive high schools inCalifornia.

[4] Support for the School Research Studies was provided by the National Center for Researchin Vocational Education (NCRVE), U.S. Department of Education, the Stuart Foundationand the Hewlett Foundation. Subsequent data analysis was also supported by the SpencerFoundation.

[5] Support for this research was provided by the Spencer Foundation and by the Office ofEducational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.

[6] Because I am drawing on interviews with individuals, and often individuals who heldpositions and titles of formal leadership, it would be easy to interpret this as an individualisticconception of leadership. However, I take my point of departure from notions of socialpractice in two ways, first by attending to the ways in which groups and organisations act tocreate environments that enable multiple kinds of initiative on matters of educational goalsand practice; and second by thinking of career trajectories as social constructions. Thisperspective is consistent with a communities of practice and distributed knowledge framepopularised by Wenger (1998; also Lave 1996; Lave & Wenger 1991) and with relatednotions of distributed leadership (Spillane et al. 2001).

[7] There are some exceptions to the overall pattern of department-centred leadership. Consist-ent with the wave of interest in career ladder schemes during this period, some teachers ineach of the case study schools had been selected for positions as ‘mentors’ under terms ofa state programme. As mentors, they might provide support for new teachers in any field,develop curriculum or offer professional development activities. Within schools, teachers alsoserved as committee chairs or collaborated on curriculum development projects.

[8] This is not to say teachers in earlier policy moments were inattentive to state policydirections and initiatives or uniformly accepting of them, but that the modal orientation inthe current period, the sheer volume of commentary on state policy and the intensity ofresponse, differs from that of the earlier periods.

[9] There is certainly the possibility that such portrayals underestimate the extent of innovationin individual classrooms or in small-scale, informal collaborations. Huberman’s (1989) studyof secondary teachers’ careers in Switzerland suggests that the impulse to innovate and theability to do so by ‘tinkering’ in one’s own classroom may be essential factors in sustainingteacher commitment.

[10] In the larger CRC dataset on 16 schools in two states, McLaughlin & Talbert (2001) definenine of 16 schools as ‘weak’ professional communities; of the 16, only two comprehensivehigh schools (Oak Valley & Onyx Ridge) are characterised as having strong professionalcultures, but this strong culture of practice is portrayed as primarily traditional. Only onedepartment in Oak Valley (English) is portrayed as an innovative learning community, along

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with a math department in another school (Esperanza) that is otherwise portrayed as havinga weak professional culture.

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Notes on Author

Judith Warren Little is Professor at the Graduate School of Education, University of California,Berkeley. Her research focuses on teachers’ work and careers, the contexts of teaching, andpolicies and practices of professional development. She is a member of the National Academy ofEducation. Email: jwlittle@uclink4.berkeley.edu

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