Prelims

Teacher Leadership in Professional Development Schools

ISBN: 978-1-78743-404-2, eISBN: 978-1-78743-403-5

Publication date: 6 April 2018

Citation

(2018), "Prelims", Hunzicker, J. (Ed.) Teacher Leadership in Professional Development Schools, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. i-xviii. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78743-403-520181026

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited


Half Title Page

Teacher Leadership in Professional Development Schools

Title Page

Teacher Leadership in Professional Development Schools

Edited by

Jana Hunzicker

Bradley University, Peoria, IL, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2018

Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited

Reprints and permissions service

Contact:

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters' suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78743-404-2 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78743-403-5 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78743-923-8 (Epub)

Contents

Foreword
Bruce E. Field
ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Dedication xv
List of Abbreviations xvii
Chapter 1 Professional Development Schools: An Overview and Brief History
Jana Hunzicker
1
Chapter 2 Teacher Leadership in Professional Development Schools: A Definition, Brief History, and Call for Further Study
Jana Hunzicker
19
Section I: Teacher Leadership and Student Learning
Chapter 3 Collaborative Leadership in Meeting the Needs of English Learners in an Urban Elementary PDS
Nancy Dubetz, Maria Fella, Yokaira LaChapell and Jennifer Rivera
41
Chapter 4 De-Tracking Ninth Grade Algebra: A Teacher Leadership Success Story
Rhonda Baynes Jeffries
59
Chapter 5 Moving from Collaborative Teacher Inquiry to Leadership: Four Stories from Project Teacher Leadership
Clare Kruft and Diane Wood
75
Chapter 6 Teacher Leader Reflections: Teacher Leadership and Student Learning 99
A Courageous, Collegial Partnership
Keri Haley and Christopher Urquhart
From One to Many
Nancy Cryder Jones
Learning and Leading through Collaboration
Jamie Silverman
Questions for Further Reflection
Jana Hunzicker
Chapter 7 Teacher Leadership and Student Learning
Bernard J. Badiali
107
Section II: Definitions, Structures, and Cultures that Promote Teacher Leadership
Chapter 8 Teacher Leader Identities and Influences as Defined by Liaisons-in-Residence
Jennifer L. Snow, Sarah Anderson, Carolyn Cort, Sherry Dismuke and A. J. Zenkert
121
Chapter 9 Lab School Teacher Leaders as Learners and Change Agents
Margaret Hudson and Jayne Hellenberg
141
Chapter 10 National Board Certified Teachers as Bridges for Teacher Candidates Entering the Profession
Anna M. Quinzio-Zafran and Elizabeth A. Wilkins
161
Chapter 11 Teacher Leader Reflections: Definitions, Structures, and Cultures that Promote Teacher Leadership 181
Total Teacher Leaders
Ashley Bennett
Quiet Opportunity
P. Erin Lichtenstein
Bridges
Suzanna Nelson
The Best PDS Perk
Azaria Cunningham
Questions for Further Reflection
Jana Hunzicker
Chapter 12 Definitions, Structures, and Cultures that Promote Teacher Leadership: Making Sense of Section Two
Michael N. Cosenza
191
Section III: Teacher Leader Preparation and Development
Chapter 13 Cultivating Teacher Candidates’ Passions into Leadership for Tomorrow: The Gift that Keeps on Giving
Vail Matsumoto, Jon Yoshioka and Lori Fulton
201
Chapter 14 Developing Teacher Leaders Using a Distributed Leadership Model: Five Signature Features of a School–University Partnership
Brianne W. Morettini, Kathryn McGinn Luet, Lisa J. Vernon-Dotson, Nina Nagib and Sharada Krishnamurthy
217
Chapter 15 Growing our Own: Fostering Teacher Leadership in K-12 Science Teachers through School–University Partnerships
Zareen G. Rahman, Mika Munakata, Emily Klein, Monica Taylor and Kristen Trabona
235
Chapter 16 Developing Leadership Capacity in PDS Master Teachers
Somer Lewis, Amy Garrett Dikkers, Lynn Sikma and Katie Fink
255
Chapter 17 Teacher Leader Reflections: Teacher Leader Preparation and Development 269
Knowing and Being Known
Mark Meacham
Tools for Successful Leadership
Stefanie D. Livers
Lost Voices
Francisco J. Ocasio
Questions for Further Reflection
Jana Hunzicker
Chapter 18 Teacher Leader Preparation and Development in PDS: Themes and Recommendations
Rebecca West Burns
277
More Questions for Reflection and Discussion 289
Tables, Illustrations, and Figures 295
About the Contributors 297
Index 303

Foreword

Professional development schools (PDSs) excel in preparing new teachers, supporting practicing teachers in their professional growth, and engaging stakeholders in carefully crafted examinations of issues that directly shape schools. At their very best, PDSs bridge the gap between the two very different cultures of the P-12 and university worlds and, in doing so, positively boost student learning.

That said, the road to a successful PDS partnership is rarely, if ever, smooth, and those who embark on this path typically have to overcome roadblocks that remind them every day just how difficult a task it is to produce a meaningful and productive school–university partnership. These roadblocks often appear in the form of questions. For example, PDS collaborations that rely on grants have often asked, “What happens when the money runs out?” while those that have limited to no funding at all ask, “How can we sustain this partnership over time?”; other frequently asked questions include, “Can not-yet-tenured university faculty really afford to spend their time in schools in the face of tenure and promotion requirements?”; “How much buy in (and from whom) do we need to make this a successful venture?”; “Can we do this without the full support of administrators at the university, district, and/or school levels?”; and, assuming the partnership does indeed have such administrative support, “What happens when the administrators change?” These last few questions about leadership have been pervasive in the PDS world for quite some time, with it now very well understood that crafting and sustaining a successful PDS partnership is next to impossible if you do not have committed support from your dean, superintendent, or principal. And, since individuals in these particular roles seem to change rather quickly and consistently over time, it truly is critical to ask, “What happens when the administrators change?”

The contributors to Teacher Leadership in Professional Development Schools understand this last point – that successful PDSs require support from above. However, they also believe that top-down leadership, while critical, is not the only form of leadership necessary to build and sustain PDSs. In fact, they argue without fail that PDSs are the perfect venue for a different kind of leadership to emerge – the leadership of teachers. As Jana Hunzicker relates in her two opening chapters, the concept of teacher leadership has gained traction in American schools in the last 10–15 years, a time when, perhaps not coincidentally, PDSs have also taken flight. What those two simultaneous events have produced are a new set of questions that Hunzicker and her PDS colleagues pose in this volume. In three carefully crafted sections – each featuring three or four chapters contributed by teacher leaders and scholars from across the United States, three to four personal reflections written by practicing and/or former P-12 teacher leaders, and a synthesis chapter written by a leading expert in the field – PDS practitioners ask, “How can teacher leadership positively shape student learning?”; “What kinds of PDS-embedded structures can be put in place to promote teacher leadership?”; and “How do we prepare and develop teachers to be teacher leaders in the first place?”

What emerges in the pages that follow, as teacher leaders from ten universities and their P-12 school partners address these questions through the sharing of their work, is a powerful image of teachers taking on roles that heretofore were considered off-limits. Or, as one set of contributors put it, involvement in their particular teacher leader project “provided an opportunity for teachers to be treated as the professionals that they are.” This long-overdue recognition is one of many lessons to be learned from Teacher Leadership in Professional Development Schools, lessons that will serve all educators well, not just those involved in PDSs. Foremost among these lessons is that students must be our collective and primary focus and that teacher leaders have an obligation (one writer said “the courage”) to do what’s right for students – even if what we do for them flies in the face of conventional practice.

Another lesson from these pages is that teacher leaders can be powerful advocates for turning around what has been a significant weakness of the teaching profession – a collective failure to consistently share the results of our work with others within the profession and with the broader communities we serve. Teachers, and particularly teachers in PDSs, are engaged in remarkable initiatives that significantly benefit their students; yet they typically keep the results of their work, intentionally or unintentionally, to themselves. The end result is that the broader public is kept in the dark about the positive programs taking place in schools, which leads all too often to those involved in the crafting of education policy doing so with limited – and in some cases inaccurate – information. As seen time and again in these pages, teacher leaders can have a major impact on public policy through the simple act of sharing what’s going on in their schools with their school colleagues; teacher candidates; school boards; teachers and administrators in other area schools; and state, regional, and national organizations focused on educational practice.

Teacher leaders can also help schools craft – and stick to – specific goals that meet the unique needs of their individual schools. When the National Association for Professional Development Schools released its Nine Required Essentials of a PDS in 2008, it intentionally began the list with the expectation that PDSs must have “a comprehensive mission that is broader in its outreach and scope than the mission of any [one] partner.” In other words, PDSs are created not for spurious reasons or simply for the sake of coming together, but instead for specific goals and missions. Examples to be found in these pages include helping English Language Learners grow while simultaneously helping their teachers understand the needs of this specific group of students, enhancing the knowledge base and teaching skills of science teachers, providing students not typically given the opportunity to engage in higher level math classes the chance to do just that, and requiring teacher candidates to develop Professional Growth Plans from day one so that they are prepared not only to teach but also to lead. Each of these projects succeeded because a teacher leader, or a group of teacher leaders, took the initiative to introduce and promote an agenda that they believed was important to student success.

In addition to offering these types of lessons, Teacher Leadership in Professional Development Schools makes it clear that, while there are multiple paths to becoming a teacher leader, some intentional and others accidental, most of those paths involve individuals stepping out of their comfort zones and accepting challenges not traditionally ascribed to teachers. This can create some awkward situations, as when an instructional coach is told by a school principal that, “You will not come into my school and bother my teachers,” or when another instructional coach learned that her writing observations in a notebook made teachers nervous, or when a new teacher leader realized that she was now privy to information about colleagues that normally would not be available to her. But, as is clear in many of the stories shared in this volume, the role of teacher leader is a long-overdue and positive addition to the world of education. Who, other than teachers, are better positioned to know their students’ and their community’s needs? Who has a more direct impact on those students – and their families? Who has the proverbial boots on the ground? And who is better positioned to help the other teachers in their schools grow “as the professionals that they are”?

The value of Teacher Leadership in Professional Development Schools is enhanced by the fact that all of the contributors are affiliated with PDSs that have, over a very long span of time, dedicated themselves to promoting school–university partnerships for the benefit of teaching and learning. It was refreshing – and reassuring – to see the names of these institutions and to know that the work they have been engaged in over time has continued and has produced such positive results. It was also refreshing to read the reflections offered by the P-12 teacher leaders who engaged in this work, and, finally, to know that the synthesis chapters come from three exceptionally well-qualified and enthusiastically engaged PDS scholars. Jana Hunzicker is to be commended for bringing together this impressive collection of PDS advocates and for challenging them to examine – and to share – their work.

Bruce E. Field Georgia Southern University

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the support and assistance of many. I especially wish to thank Zoe Morris and Kimberley Chadwick for adeptly ushering me through the proposal and editorial management processes, Rebecca West Burns for critiquing my original proposal and offering suggestions that significantly improved the project, and Bruce Field for reading the book’s introductory chapters–and later the entire book–and providing invaluable feedback.

I also wish to thank the book’s 49 contributors. Thank you to Bruce Field for writing the book’s foreword, to Bernard Badiali, Michael Cosenza, and Rebecca West Burns for writing the synthesis chapters for each section, to the 33 authors who wrote scholarly chapters related to their teacher leadership and PDS work. And most of all, thank you to the 11 teacher leaders who wrote personal reflections about their leadership successes, insights, and challenges. Just as teacher leadership is almost always collaborative, the creation of this book was truly a team effort!

Jana Hunzicker Bradley University

To America’s teacher leaders, past, present, and future.

List of Abbreviations

AACTE American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education
AAT Architecture of Accomplished Teaching
AFT American Federation of Teachers
ASCD Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
BCPS Baltimore County Public Schools
CAB Community Advisory Board
CAEP Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation
CFG Critical friends group
CIP Continuous improvement plan
CP College prep
CCSSO Council of Chief State School Officers
CTQ Center for Teaching Quality
CV Curriculum vitae
DC District coordinator
DRA Developmental Reading Assessment
EL English learner
ELL English language learner
ELA English/Language Arts
ELAS English Language Arts Standards
ENL English as a New Language
EPP Education preparation providers
IEP Individualized Education Program
IIRP International Institute for Restorative Practices
IRB Institutional Review Board
K-8 Kindergarten through eighth grade
K-12 Kindergarten through twelfth grade
LOG Learning objective goals
MAP Measures of Academic Progress
MEdT Master of Education in Teaching
MSU Montclair State University
MSUNER Montclair State University Network for Educational Renewal
MTA Master teacher associate
NAPDS National Association for Professional Development Schools
NBCT National Board Certified Teacher
NBPTS National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
NCATE National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
NEA National Education Association
NNER National Network for Educational Renewal
NYC New York City
NYSESLAT New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test
P-12 Pre-school through twelfth grade
P-20 Pre-school through post-graduate school
PDS Professional development schools
PK-12 Pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade
PLC Professional learning community
PLS Professional learning series
POL Promise of leadership
PTO Parent and Teacher Organization
SBS Side By Side
SEC Supervisory effectiveness continuum
SEF Science Education Fellowship
SMED Department of Secondary and Middle School Education
STEM Science, technology, engineering, mathematics
TC Teacher candidate
TESOL Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages
TIG Teacher Impact Grants
TLEC Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium
TLC Teacher Leader Competencies
TLMS Teacher Leader Model Standards
ToM Targets of Measurement
TPP Teacher Preparation Program
TQP Teacher Quality Partnership
TU Towson University
UHM University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
UNCW University of North Carolina Wilmington
UNLV University of Nevada, Las Vegas
US United States
UW University of Wyoming
WCE Watson College of Education
WPU William Paterson University

Prelims
Professional Development Schools: An Overview and Brief History
Teacher Leadership in Professional Development Schools: A Definition, Brief History, and Call for Further Study
Section I: Teacher Leadership and Student Learning
Collaborative Leadership in Meeting the Needs of English Learners in an Urban Elementary PDS
De-tracking Ninth Grade Algebra: A Teacher Leadership Success Story
Moving from Collaborative Teacher inquiry to Leadership: Four Stories from Project Teacher Leadership
Teacher Leader Reflections: Teacher Leadership and Student Learning
Teacher Leadership and Student Learning
Section II: Definitions, Structures, and Cultures that Promote Teacher Leadership
Teacher Leader Identities and Influences as Defined by Liaisons-in-Residence
Lab School Teacher Leaders as Learners and Change Agents
National Board Certified Teachers as Bridges for Teacher Candidates Entering the Profession
Teacher Leader Reflections: Definitions, Structures, and Cultures that Promote Teacher Leadership
Definitions, Structures, and Cultures that Promote Teacher Leadership: Making Sense of Section Two
Section III: Teacher Leader Preparation and Development
Cultivating Teacher Candidates’ Passions into Leadership for Tomorrow: The Gift that Keeps on Giving
Developing Teacher Leaders Using a Distributed Leadership Model: Five Signature Features of a School–University Partnership
Growing our Own: Fostering Teacher Leadership in K-12 Science Teachers through School–University Partnerships
Developing Leadership Capacity in PDS Master Teachers
Teacher Leader Reflections: Teacher Leader Preparation and Development
Teacher Leader Preparation and Development in PDS: Themes and Recommendations
More Questions for Reflection and Discussion
Tables, Illustrations, and Figures
About the Contributors
Index