Education Commons^™

Learning To Lead: Exploring How 1st-6th Year Teachers Develop Informal Leadership, Thomas Levine, Patrick Mulcahy, John Bengston, Andrew Didden, Abigail Esposito, Alexander Valacer, Miranda Rich, Dan Seara, Brian Colantonio, Andrew Dombrowski, Justis Lopez, Colin Schlank, Daniel Wilson

NERA Conference Proceedings 2015

Scholars and reformers call for promoting teacher leadership to improve schools, but few address how we can promote teacher leadership among newer teachers. This paper uses extant research to identify five possible positive influences on 1^st-6^th year teachers developing informal leadership skills. Surveys and interviews with staff members at four secondary schools point to professional learning communities as the most promising of these possible means. Participants also identified getting involved with colleagues and with school activities as promising first steps for 1^st through 6^th year teachers to develop the knowledge, reputation, and skills to become …