Understanding Teacher Leadership: A Survey of the Field

Teacher leadership (TL) has become a popular topic in educational research whereby teachers have increasing responsibilities and voice outside of their classrooms. TL has been shown to be important for school reforms, teacher satisfaction, and student learning. The amount of research on TL has grown; however, it continues to be criticized for lacking a coherent definition and theoretical base. Additionally, TL, as a field of study, lacks any organization or regularly occurring meetings. This study surveyed international TL scholars using both Likert items and open-ended questions. Convergent mixed methods analysis showed that participants agreed that TL lacks a cohesive definition, but four common themes emerged from the data on the definition. This analysis shows that while specifics of TL differ across settings, there are some common understandings of TL.