How Teachers Become Leaders: Learning from Practice and Research

This is a unique insider’s look at the process that teachers experience when they assume leadership positions in their school, district, state, or writing project site. The text features vignettes by K–12 teachers, describing their individual leadership roles and experiences to show how teachers take charge in a variety of contexts. The authors identify four major themes: identity, collaboration, making conflict productive, and learning new practices. Through the teacher leaders’ own words, readers witness how the four themes are an integral part of daily practice. Chapters also examine what research indicates about these new and proliferating roles.

How Teachers Become Leaders makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how teachers in leadership positions:

• Construct a new identity.
• Develop the skills and abilities to handle conflict and make it productive.
• Learn to facilitate the building of learning communities, helping teachers to collaborate with one another.
• Use the practices they already know and incorporate new ones into their work.
• Reframe the very meaning of leadership, making it work side by side rather than top/down.

Ann Lieberman was a senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and is now at Stanford University. Linda D. Friedrich is the Director of Research and Evaluation at the National Writing Project.