- Year 2024
- NSF Noyce Award # N/A
- First Name Jeffrey
- Last Name Rozelle
- Institution Knowles Teacher Initiative
- Role/Position Other: Invited Guest
- Proposal Type Workshop
- Workshop Category Track 3: Master Teaching Fellowships
- Workshop Disciplines Audience STEM Education (general)
- Target Audience Co-PIs, Noyce Master Teachers, Noyce Teaching Fellows, Other Faculty/Staff, Project PIs, Undergraduate and/or Graduate Noyce Scholars
- Topics Developing Teacher Leaders
Goals
Participants will leave being able to do the following: 1) Describe emerging themes in teachers’ stories of teacher leadership and compare those to their own experiences as teacher leaders or supporters of teacher leaders. 2) Describe one new teacher leadership action that they could take in their school setting based on ideas from the presentation. 3) Propose ways that they could write or help teachers write about teacher leadership to learn from their leadership practice.
Evidence
Over the last ten years, Knowles Teaching Fellows have been writing culminating teacher stories based on practitioner inquiry investigations they conduct over the last two years of their Teaching Fellowship. In total, the data set includes 260 stories. Our research team read all 260 stories and narrowed the list of stories to approximately 100 of the stories that were most relevant to teacher leadership. Using those 100 stories, each story was read by two researchers who coded the stories against common themes in the teacher leadership standards (Teacher leader model standards, 2011; Teacher Leadership Foundational Competencies, 2018) as well as allowing for emergent themes to arise. Once themes were identified, we grouped the stories into sets that best represented the various themes. The presentation draws on those themes and will highlight exemplar stories from each set of stories for illustration purposes.
Proposal
Over the past 10 years, the Knowles Teacher Initiative has worked with a diverse group of 260 early-career high school math and science teachers in a 5-year program designed to support teacher leadership development. In that work, our Fellows engage in practitioner inquiry to understand their schools and departments, make efforts to lead, and share what they are learning with our community. Research consistently calls for a clearer definition of what teacher leadership is and better guidance for those wishing to be teacher leaders and supporters of teacher leaders. We explore these important questions through the hundreds of voices of our teachers as they tell their stories of what teacher leadership means to them. Through their stories, they describe varied ways that teacher leaders navigate the challenging middle space of teacher leadership, influence and advocate for equity, build collaborative cultures in their schools, help to build a stronger profession that better serves students, and draw upon deep reservoirs of humility, courage, and vulnerability. These stories of teacher leadership paint a rich landscape of possibilities for new teachers to act as leaders, and the skills and dispositions they need to do so–all grounded in teachers’ experiences. This interactive presentation will highlight key themes in the stories, share excerpts from stories, and have participants discuss the ways that the stories evoke ideas for how they might lead or support leaders.
