Teacher teams: promoting teacher involvement and leadership in secondary schools

Abstract

University of Utah Employee involvement efforts in schools have increasingly encouraged teacher involvement in planning and governance procedures. Most involvement efforts could be described as suggestion involvement or individual job enhancement approaches (e.g. career ladders, differentiated teacher roles). However, these approaches seem to result in only limited involvement and leadership by teachers due to existing organizational control mechanisms and professional norms in schools. Correspondingly, leadership is being reconceptualized more broadly to emphasize shared influence by many employees across the organization, with teachers as a group (versus individual teachers) exercising greater organizational leadership and having more impact on school effectiveness and other outcomes. The implications of these two complementary developments suggest that the formation of teacher teams (and corresponding sub-schools) holds more promise for substantive teacher involvement and teacher leadership in secondary schools than other currently-emphasized efforts.