Teacher leadership is the influence that teachers, individually or together, exercise on their colleagues, their principals and the wider school community in order to improve teaching and learning. In the most widely cited definition, York-Barr and Duke (2004) describe it as a process of influence directed at better teaching practice, with the ultimate aim of raising student learning and achievement. The concept matters because it treats teachers not only as people who are led but as a source of leadership in their own right, and because most efforts to improve schools depend on changes that teachers lead among themselves.
Origins
Teacher leadership grew as a field of practice and research in the last decades of the twentieth century, as teachers took on leadership functions at both the instructional and the organisational level (York-Barr & Duke, 2004).
York-Barr and Duke’s review, covering two decades of scholarship, remains the starting point. They found the construct poorly defined both conceptually and operationally, and noted that most of the research consisted of small qualitative studies describing teacher leaders’ work and the conditions around it. Katzenmeyer and Moller’s Awakening the Sleeping Giant (2009, 3rd ed.) gave the field a practitioner-oriented framework and tools for helping teachers develop as leaders. In the United Kingdom, the idea became closely linked with distributed leadership, and Muijs and Harris (2006) studied teacher-led improvement in schools where teacher leadership was already operating.
Roles and standards
Teacher leadership takes both formal and informal forms. Formal roles carry a title and defined responsibilities: head of department, instructional coach, mentor, curriculum leader or member of a school leadership team. Informal leadership is exercised without a position, for example by teachers who lead a study group, open their classrooms to colleagues or start an initiative that others take up. Muijs and Harris (2006) found both forms in their case-study schools, frequently supported by external programmes.
Wenner and Campbell (2017), reviewing research published after 2004, found that teacher leadership was still rarely defined. Where it was, it usually meant roles beyond the classroom, supporting colleagues’ professional learning, influencing policy and decisions, and an ultimate focus on student learning.
The most detailed attempt to specify what teacher leaders should know and do is the Teacher Leader Model Standards, released in 2011 by the Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium in the United States.
| Domain | Focus |
|---|---|
| I | Fostering a collaborative culture to support educator development and student learning |
| II | Accessing and using research to improve practice and student learning |
| III | Promoting professional learning for continuous improvement |
| IV | Facilitating improvements in instruction and student learning |
| V | Promoting the use of assessments and data for school and district improvement |
| VI | Improving outreach and collaboration with families and community |
| VII | Advocating for student learning and the profession |
The consortium presented them as a first set of standards, intended to prompt discussion of the knowledge, skills and competencies that teachers need to take on leadership roles.
Debates and criticisms
Three problems recur in the literature. The first is definitional: because teacher leadership is defined so loosely, studies of coaches, department heads and informal leaders are often grouped together, which makes findings hard to compare (York-Barr & Duke, 2004; Wenner & Campbell, 2017). The second is theoretical. Wenner and Campbell observed that much of the research was not grounded in explicit theory and that very little addressed questions of social justice and equity. The third concerns power. Principals, school structures and professional norms can empower teacher leaders, but they can also marginalise them (Wenner & Campbell, 2017). Formal roles may also create tension with colleagues who see teacher leaders as part of management, and in some settings teacher leadership amounts to extra work without real influence over decisions.
What the evidence shows
The evidence base is large but uneven. York-Barr and Duke (2004) found much less evidence on the effects of teacher leadership than on its practices and conditions. Nguyen, Harris and Ng (2020), reviewing 150 empirical articles published in indexed journals between 2003 and 2017, mapped how teacher leadership is defined, enacted, shaped and related to outcomes, and identified gaps in the knowledge base that still need research.
Qualitative studies consistently describe the conditions under which teacher leadership flourishes. Muijs and Harris (2006) identified a culture of trust and support, clear and transparent structures, strong headteacher leadership (the head usually initiated teacher leadership) and engagement in innovative professional development. They reported that teacher leadership empowered teachers and contributed to improvement by spreading good practice and teacher-developed initiatives. Links with student achievement are mostly indirect and are rarely tested with designs that could establish cause and effect.
Measuring teacher leadership
Instruments fall into two groups. Some measure individual teachers’ leadership behaviours or readiness, often through self-assessment. Others measure the school conditions that support teacher leadership. Katzenmeyer and Moller (2009) include both kinds of tool, among them a school survey (the Teacher Leadership School Survey, TLSS) that asks teachers to rate conditions such as collegiality, autonomy, recognition and participation in decisions. The Teacher Leader Model Standards have also been used as a basis for self-assessment and rubrics.
In Turkey a widely used instrument is the Teacher Leadership Scale developed by Beycioğlu and Aslan (2010). Validated with 317 teachers and administrators in state elementary schools in Hatay, it has 25 items in three factors: institutional improvement (9 items), professional improvement (11 items) and collaboration among colleagues (5 items). It has a perception section and an expectation section, with Cronbach’s alpha values of .95 and .93 respectively.
Evidence from Turkish Research
In Turkey, decisions on curriculum and staffing are largely made centrally by the Ministry of National Education, and research on teacher leadership has concentrated less on formal roles than on how teachers perceive their own leadership behaviour and how this relates to school climate and teachers’ working lives.
- Kılınç (2014), in Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, surveyed 259 primary school teachers in Bafra, Samsun. A restrictive school climate was negatively related to all three dimensions of teacher leadership, while a directive climate was positively related only to institutional improvement.
- Kılınç, Cemaloğlu and Savaş (2015), in the Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, surveyed 302 primary school teachers in 16 schools in Kastamonu. Teacher professionalism was positively, and perceived stress negatively, correlated with all three dimensions of teacher leadership; together they explained between 11% and 21% of the variance in the dimensions.
Both studies are cross-sectional and based on self-report, so they describe associations rather than effects. Related Turkish evidence on shared and empowering leadership is summarised in the digests on distributed leadership outcomes and empowering leadership and teacher well-being.
Related concepts
- Distributed leadership: a perspective that treats leadership as spread across many people, providing much of the theoretical background for teacher leadership.
- Instructional leadership: leadership focused on teaching and learning, increasingly shared between principals and teacher leaders.
- School culture: shared norms and assumptions that determine whether teacher leadership is welcomed or resisted.
- Professional learning communities: collaborative groups of teachers in which informal teacher leadership often develops.
- Teacher professionalism: teachers’ commitment to high standards of practice, frequently studied alongside teacher leadership.
Key takeaways
- Teacher leadership is influence exercised by teachers beyond their own classrooms, with the improvement of teaching and learning as its aim.
- It takes formal forms, such as coaches and department heads, and informal forms that rest on expertise and relationships.
- Reviews agree that the concept is loosely defined and that evidence on its effects lags behind descriptions of its practice.
- Turkish studies, many using Beycioğlu and Aslan’s three-factor scale, link teacher leadership with school climate, professionalism and stress.
References
- Beycioğlu, K., & Aslan, B. (2010). Öğretmen liderliği ölçeği: Geçerlik ve güvenirlik çalışması [Teacher leadership scale: A validity and reliability study]. İlköğretim Online, 9(2), 764–775.
- Katzenmeyer, M., & Moller, G. (2009). Awakening the sleeping giant: Helping teachers develop as leaders (3rd ed.). Corwin.
- Kılınç, A. Ç. (2014). Examining the relationship between teacher leadership and school climate. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 14(5), 1729–1742.
- Kılınç, A. Ç., Cemaloğlu, N., & Savaş, G. (2015). The relationship between teacher leadership, teacher professionalism, and perceived stress. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 58, 1–26.
- Muijs, D., & Harris, A. (2006). Teacher led school improvement: Teacher leadership in the UK. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22(8), 961–972. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.04.010
- Nguyen, D., Harris, A., & Ng, D. (2020). A review of the empirical research on teacher leadership (2003–2017): Evidence, patterns and implications. Journal of Educational Administration, 58(1), 60–80. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-02-2018-0023
- Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium. (2011). Teacher leader model standards.
- Wenner, J. A., & Campbell, T. (2017). The theoretical and empirical basis of teacher leadership: A review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 87(1), 134–171. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654316653478
- York-Barr, J., & Duke, K. (2004). What do we know about teacher leadership? Findings from two decades of scholarship. Review of Educational Research, 74(3), 255–316. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543074003255
Last reviewed: October 2026