What is it about?

Internationally, there is increasing emphasis on teacher leadership of professional development, this provides opportunities for teachers to initiate and facilitate professional learning activities beyond their own schools. There is a need for theoretical tools to analyse their leadership activity and how to support it. Constructs from complexity leadership theory and the concept of teacher system leadership are used to develop a framework to analyse the purposes and practices of teacher professional development leaders supported by a national programme for mathematics teacher professional development in England. I argue that the teachers' activities constitute a form of adaptive leadership involving innovating and organising professional development within arenas of leadership, through the processes of mobilising, brokering and the creation of networks. This required engaging in system work to fulfil purposes connected to both local and system wide concerns. The teachers were supported by the enabling leadership of headteachers and by national warrants for exercising leadership. The study demonstrates the value of the analytical framework and indicates that a cadre of teacher system leaders can be developed by attending to the interplay of professional development leadership and a wider system orientated professional identity and by specific support to develop adaptive leadership capacities and skills.

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Why is it important?

This paper extends concepts of system leadership to teachers leading professional development.

Perspectives

It is important to recognise teacher leaders as system leaders

Dr Mark Boylan
Sheffield Hallam University

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This page is a summary of: Enabling adaptive system leadership, Educational Management Administration & Leadership, October 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1741143216628531.
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