Advocacy for Teacher Leadership by Susan Lovett

Author:Susan Lovett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

The Need for Inclusive Rather Than Isolationist Strategies

Research studies disseminating accounts of second-stage teachers’ experiences are valuable because they highlight professional identity formation including aspirations and expectations, the extent to which these can be realised, as well as the supports needed. A clear finding from such studies is that when efforts to include rather than isolate or ignore second-stage teachers are made, these teachers find new opportunities which increase their job satisfaction as they discover the joys of working out how to help others and at the same time continue refining their own practice. One informative example is the study by Gronn and Lacey (2004) following a cohort of aspiring primary and secondary principals using e-journal reflections as identity narratives to reveal feelings, challenges, and uncertainties about future formal leadership. They suggest that these narratives “provide the aspirants with an opportunity, through semi-private reflection, to begin positioning themselves for leadership” (p. 405). The notion of a “positioning space” is offered to show how a supportive holding environment can help aspirants to explore their leadership conceptions and identities. Gronn and Lacey note, “within this transitory zone of professional work … there exists no regime of legitimized feelings and for which there are few clear navigational aids in the form of rules and conventions” (p. 405). This notion of a positioning space is a further indicator of what the profession can do to help discover the potential of second-stage teachers.

Other work on second-stage teachers has emerged from The Next Generation of Teachers Project team. Kirkpatrick (2007) maintains second-stage teachers are “an important yet infrequently studied subgroup of teachers” (p. 2). She describes second-stage teachers as those who have typically gained sufficient confidence to be thinking about their next steps and what they might be. A particular concern she raises about second-stage teachers is the possibility of isolation following the completion of their induction programs. Moreover, she comments “informal reports suggest that their work is often characterized by limited interactions with other teachers, sparse feedback and little reward and recognition” (p. 5). Kirkpatrick’s research on teacher engagement establishes what motivates teachers to remain in the profession and how higher engagement can be encouraged. It must be noted, though, that these levels of job engagement are determined by the personal characteristics of individuals and how supportive their work contexts are. I argue that job engagement is increased when teachers recognise opportunities for teacher leadership and see themselves contributing to the improvement of teaching practice outside their own classrooms.

Kirkpatrick’s (2007) study examining job engagement of teachers in their fourth to 10th years of teaching reveals marked variations amongst the 12 teachers. While some invested more time and energy into their work, others redistributed their energies with some investing less energy because of family demands or simply because they had reached a professional competence plateau. That many of the participants reported being left alone to decide whether and how to invest in their teaching is an alarming finding, prompting Kirkpatrick to argue that “schools may need

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