Helping teachers become transformational leaders.

Abstract

Building learning organizations and support for administrators is imperative in today's schools. An overview of our teacher leader program is given with a description of the curriculum stressing professional development. We describe how we build teachers capacity for becoming transformational leaders at their school sites. This includes a required self-assessing, self-reflecting portfolio, use of cohort support, modeling, and reflection. Our evaluation to improve the model and program using internal and external data including questionnaires, quarterly meetings, and interviews is explained.

Introduction

We believe today's schools need to be learning organizations. We especially hold the belief that teachers must not only take on leadership roles in these learning organizations but they need to be transformational leaders. In order to be transformational leaders though we believe they need training and support. We have been teaching in a program that has evolved into a model that assists teachers in becoming transformational leaders. In this article we describe our model and how we are continuously evaluating the growth of the model and program.

Teacher Leader Program Overview

We teach in a Teacher Leader Program (TLP), which began as an off-campus professional development outreach program in 1976. It evolved into a site based course delivery system. The TLP is data-driven, research-based, and designed for in-service teachers and other school-based personnel. The curriculum concentrates on: (a) leadership; (b) philosophical and psychological foundations; (c) curriculum design and evaluation; (d) student assessment; (e) instructional analysis and systems management; (f) school law; and, (g) statistical and research foundations in teaching. Relevant technology is a curricular strand woven throughout the program's tapestry of course offerings. While substantive theory girds under the coursework content, students are encouraged to apply their conceptual and skill-based understandings toward practical applications within their schools.

Learning Organizations and Professional Development

Our definition of a learning organization is that the focus should be on learning, collaborative work, and self-accountability (DuFour, 2004). What is needed though is professional development opportunities for teachers, concentrating on requisite training and knowledge, since many in the school will find that traditional roles will become altered to reflect current organizational needs. Training in skills such as team building, problem solving, and critical thinking enhance the teachers' classroom functions in conjunction with aiding administrative duties. Knowledge is also needed for emergent roles in which teachers can assist school administrators. These include, but are not limited to, mentoring new staff, participating in collaborative decision-making, designing and developing new curricula, and conducting staff development offerings. Our teacher leader masters program provides this needed training and support and alters teacher's beliefs about what true professional development in schools should be. We go even further to help create transformational teacher leaders by assisting them in their educational settings.

Transformational leadership

Teacher leadership in today's schools is essential. Schools can no longer depend solely on the designated building administrator to sufficiently manage the academic and supervisory duties entailed in running an effective and efficient operation. Katzenmeyer and Moller (2001) contend that teachers are leaders within and beyond their classrooms. They know what is actually going on with student learning, what is happening in their classrooms, and have the most direct and frequent contact with parents. These roles are most meaningful though when the teacher is able to become a transformational leader and assist the school in becoming a learning organization.

A transformational leader "seeks to raise the aspirations, ideals, and hopes of the members of his or her organization" (Calabrese, 2002,103). Our beliefs about teacher transformative leadership coincide with the beliefs of Mitchell and Tucker (1992,30). It is "a way of thinking and feeling--about ourselves, about our jobs, and about the nature of the educational process." This is what we attempt to model, discuss, and reflect upon as our teacher leaders progress through and beyond our program. This view of transformative leadership empowers our teachers to return to their classrooms with a new view of teaching and learning that is expressed best by Sagor (1992, 13) who writes that "... finding a way to be successful in collaboratively defining the essential purpose of teaching and learning and then empowering the entire school community to become energized and focused."

Leithwood (1992) discusses three fundamental goals for transformational leaders and although we know he is discussing administrators as leaders, we believe our teacher leaders who understand these goals will assist administrators to create a learning organization within their schools. The first goal Leithwood discusses is to assist staff with developing and maintaining a collaborative, professional school culture. Many times teachers do not understand the bigger picture of what is happening in schools and sometimes not even what is happening in the grade level above and below them. Once teacher leaders have this knowledge and understand the importance of shared norms, beliefs, goal setting, and cultural changes. They will become more supportive or will initiate this change themselves in their schools. In many instances, from our research and experiences with our students, this has led to shared power with administrators furthering the growth of the school into a learning organization.

The second goal is to foster teacher development. Our teacher leaders leave with the definition of professional development as, "... opportunities to grow and develop professionally, learn continuously, and expand their own skills through the work life of the school" (Short and Greer, 2002,152). Our teacher leaders graduate with a strong understanding of the need for their continuing professional development and of others in their school. Additionally, they understand quality, research backed professional development. They return with this knowledge to their schools and will no longer support professional development opportunities that do not support their own growth or their schools mission.

Leithwood's third goal is helping teachers solve problems more effectively. Our teacher leaders learn early that two or three or four heads are better than one. Collaboration becomes the key to growth and solving problems at their school, whether it is a curriculum issue or how to most effectively get the students to the bus. They take this ability to build collaboration to their school and are so enthusiastic about it no one can help but go along with them. They realize their previous classroom isolation is gone and they really are better off for it.

The Model for Helping Teachers become Transformational Leaders

We build this leadership skill, knowledge, and belief in four ways: modeling, reflection, the use of a personal portfolio, and cohort group building. We model transformational leadership not only by our curriculum but by how we act and teach as instructors' including how we get along with others and deal with conflict, and by sharing case studies, and our own personal stories.

The curriculum and the required portfolio assists our students in learning to experience relationships between problem identification, action research, reflection, and the pursuit of continuous improvement of individual and collective professional practices. Critical theory, professional literature, and experiential histories provide lenses for students to scrutinize the multi-faceted topics and issues found in educational organizations. Throughout the TLP students compile artifacts from each course reflective of their acquired knowledge and skills. This reflective portfolio is submitted to a program faculty member in lieu of a thesis or a comprehensive examination. Requisite components of the portfolio include: (a) a student's mission statement; (b) belief statements pertaining to education as a profession; (c) belief statements about children and their learning; (d) a professional development plan; (e) an ongoing professional dialogue journal; and (f) course artifacts with reflective entries assessing the projected personal or professional growth resulting from program involvement. Faculty examine these reflections at the end of each course noting growth, thinking, concepts, and misunderstandings. Basically students constantly must reflect on what they do, what they believe, and back it up with research, including action research. During the final quarter, students present their self-assessing, self-reflecting portfolios in a formal exit interview to program faculty.

An additional component of the TLP, student cohorts, affords program participants an inherent interaction dynamic, and subsequently, exposure to colleagues from different backgrounds, abilities, knowledge, beliefs, and with a variety of content area-, grade level-, and leadership expertise. The cohort structure also provides students practice with an authentic learning experience that they may deem an appropriate model to emulate in order to build transformative leadership learning communities within their respective organizations and classrooms. This programmatic format enables students to learn in a climate of cooperation and trust (Burnaford & Hobson, 1995) and to practice their leadership roles. This furthers their own personal and professional growth as individuals but also as group members. The three years allows them to grow in these leadership roles and find their own voices at their own pace.

Continuous Assessment of the Model and Program

We continuously self assess and reflect on our own growth for assisting these teacher leaders and continuously attempt to evolve in response to internal and external input. Formative and summative data from program participants, program graduates, area school personnel, and program faculty and administration drive the model and program revision processes. Quarterly advisory council meetings serve as a forum for cohort representatives, program faculty, and college- and university-level administrators to discuss openly programmatic topics and issues. These assessments provide opportunities to report on the constructive activities at the multiple cohort sites, to disseminate essential information pertaining to program business, and to respond to cited concerns in a timely manner. All program graduates complete a session of focus group interviews and individual questionnaires for summative program evaluation purposes.

Conclusion

Lambert (2003,32) writes, "Teachers ... find joy and stimulation in the daily dilemmas of teaching and are intrigued by the challenge of improving adult learning communities." We find this quote true. Many of our teachers do stay in the classroom and some go on to take administrative positions in their schools and districts furthering this view of leadership. We hear from administrators of schools and districts that they wish they had more teachers like them and that their schools and districts are forever transformed because of our graduates. We also know, however, that many of our teachers return to schools and districts that do not support their new leadership skills and knowledge. In a few cases we have heard that our graduates have moved to other schools and districts, but by and large, they continue to fight to become partners with administrators and assist in doing what is best for the children. The learning community they formed from the cohort group has been one support for them in this battle. We know that all of our teacher leaders do not return to "pie in the sky", experiences. As was written earlier, some change schools, some take administrator roles, and we have received some anxious phone calls and emails to get some reassurance from us.

The potential for developing a higher caliber profession increases when its associates take charge and initiate innovations based on sound theoretical and experiential models, thus improving itself from within and beyond. We attempt to model these concepts and transformational leadership through our program's structures and practices so that our teacher leaders can observe and emulate a viable exemplary model. These programmatic actions typify the proactive leadership potential needed in today's schools rather than relying on the past reactive approaches toward conducting school affairs.

References

Burnaford, G., & Hobson, D. (1995). Beginning with the group: Collaboration as the cornerstone of graduate teacher education. Action in Teacher Education, 17 (3), 67-75.

Calabrese, R.L. (2002). The Leadership assignment: Creating change. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

DuFour, R. (2004). What is a "professional learning community"? Educational Leadership 61 (8), 6-11.

Katzenmeyer, M., & Moiler, G. (2001). Awakening the sleeping giant: Helping teachers develop as leaders 2nd Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Lambert, L. (2003). Leadership capacity for lasting school improvement. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Leithwood, K. A. (1992). The Move toward transformational leadership. Educational Leadership. 49 (5), 8-12.

Mitchell & Tucker (1992) Leadership as a way of thinking. Educational Leadership 49 (5) 30-35.

Sagor, R. D. (1992). Three principals who make a difference. Educational Leadership, 49(5) 13-18.

Short, P.M. & Greer, J. T. (2002) Leadership in empowered schools, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice.

Kathy Adams, Wright State University, OH

Grant Hambright, Wright State University, OH

Kathy Adams, EdD and Grant Hambright, PhD are professors in the teacher leader program in the educational leadership department in the College of Education and Human Resources.