Research On Teacher Leadership In Schools

Teacher leadership is a process and influences on the things and persons made by the teachers with certain capacities in the certain situations in the school to fulfill school goals. Teacher leadership made by the teacher subject is the good complement to the school masters by the way of mechanism of distributed leadership and parallel leadership on all aspects of schools. Teacher leadership has significant sense to deepen educational reform and promote teacher growth. Teacher leadership is good for teachers to join in the school changes through widening the role, providing the leading positions and it can put up growing ladder for teachers. It is also good for school masters to change their leading styles, for teachers to awaken their professional self-esteem and can promote excellent teachers to take active part in the work of curriculum, instruction and teacher growth.This thesis used the combinational way of quality and quantity, based on the literature of teacher leadership home and abroad, questioned on the 486 teachers from 4 regions and 3 kinds of 15 schools, interviewed with 30 teachers, viewed on 3 schools, and action researched on 1 school has studied the teacher leadership phenomena of our present schools, finding the problems and analyzing its causes, combed the main growth models for teachers to develop in the schools, showed and explained the productive mechanism of the teacher leadership and at last rebuilt some suitable teacher leadership models on the base of action research.On the study result, the thesis points out:The quality of concept of teacher leadership is growing. Traditionally, the functions of teacher leadership are mainly within class management and class instruction. Now it is widened to management, interpersonal relationship, curriculum, instructional teaching research and teacher development leadership, within which teacher leaders are active. Models of team leadership, program leadership, curriculum leadership, instructional leadership, peer coaching and teacher group development are all effective. The leading teachers cultivating is the effective method for successful schools. Teacher leadership initiates the new role of teachers, ties the developing goals of teachers and schools together and is an important way for teachers to grow without leaving teacher position.Teacher leadership is influenced by school culture, leadership styles of school masters, school organizational systems and the ways of teacher interactions. The democratic-style leadership of masters, the co-operational teaching culture and multi-parallel communication are the main conditions to cultivate teacher leadership. The parallel school system is good for teachers to complement leading action effectively. The teacher's leading traits, their leading capacities, learning styles and leading conditions in the schools are varieties of influence on teacher leadership functions.At present, group heads and leading teachers are main subjects of teacher leadership. The leadership level of group heads is not very high, and the main function still extends the executive leadership of school master. For the leading teachers, the main leadership way is informal or conceal. The effective teacher development model in the schools is peer coaching between or among teachers in the same group. The leading power of grade leaders and subject leaders comes mainly from hierarchy organizations while leading teachers mainly depend on their professional and moral powers. Teachers with high rank professional title and high professional power are intended to become teacher leaders. The key function of teacher leadership in the sample primary schools is interpersonal relationship leadership, while in the junior school, it becomes educational leadership but in the senior school it is the instructional teacher leadership. Now systematic teacher development including administrative teacher development form, professional titles teacher development form and teaching competition teacher development are main way for most teachers to improve, so are nonsystematic teacher development including teaching development, teaching research development, diploma studying development The teacher leadership development models are not paid enough attention. The path for teachers to lead is not wide, and the way of teacher leadership is also not rich, and the teacher leadership function is limited. So the level of teacher leadership is in the low stage. Most teachers and school masters doubt the ideas of teacher leadership. The hinder causes of teacher leadership in present schools mainly lie on the strong power leadership style, competing school duty, individual teacher culture, hierarchy school system design, the simple models for teacher leadership, the deficiency of teacher leadership theory, and the unconscious of teacher leadership for excellent teachers, group heads, teachers and masters.The motive power of teacher leadership comes mainly from achievement motivation, power motivation, and professional self-esteem produced by teacher acceptance and master acceptance and self-actualization. Group dynamic, cooperation mechanism and culture drive are also the main power and cause to let teachers lead. Those who have strong role realization, high professional power, independent recognition, and talent on art and sports are the main teacher leaders in the schools.Distributed leadership and parallel leadership is the organizational mechanism for completing the function of teacher leadership. School masters and teacher leaders often use inter degree distributive leadership, trusteeship distributive leadership, equal distributive leadership, power share distributive leadership and friendship distributive leadership to fulfill the function of teacher leadership, so do the same degree parallel leadership, principle empower parallel leadership and so on. The power resource of teacher leaders comes mainly from personality, principle empower, profession and moral.On the one-year action research, some teacher leadership models are practiced as follows: excellent teacher-centered team leading model, one by one topic report for teachers' co-operational learning groups, teacher professional commission leadership models, and high rank title teacher tutor model. The practice received good effect.At last, the thesis gives the following advice. Pay more attention to the policy making and school systems on teacher leadership, providing more roads for teachers to develop. Make more ways for teachers to lead in the school management, widening the role of teachers, paying more attention on initiate teacher leadership models, and finally it argues more theorist should make more research on teacher leadership.