Classifying Leadership Frameworks

    Leadership can take many forms, and people can approach it from various perspectives.  In their comparison of four different models of teacher leadership Angelle and DeHart (2016) cite no less than eleven different definitions of teacher leadership from Boles & Troen (1994) “a collective form of leadership assumed by many individuals” in which teachers develop expertise by working collaboratively (p. 19); to Youitt’s (2007) definition that states teacher leaders, “lead learning by embracing new methods of teaching and learning” (p.1).  From my perspective, a teacher leader is someone who unites people to accomplish tasks that could not be achieved individually. A teacher leader should set the bar for other teachers by modeling research-based best practices and strategies, while at the same time, remain completely approachable, open, and willing to engage their colleagues with the goal of improving student outcomes and striving to meet their school’s goals.  This blog post offers a comparison and analysis of three different models of teacher leaderships that align with my personal approach to leadership.    

 Three Leadership Models

    There are a wide variety of models of leadership that offer differing perspectives as to the primary role or function of a leader.  Some models approach leadership as a very traditional top-down, authoritarian practice; whereas others present a leader as a person who inspires their colleagues.  From my perspective the models of teacher leadership that closely align with my philosophy of leadership and practice are the transformational-style, the servant-style, and the coaching-style models of teacher leadership.   

Transformational Leadership

• According to Anderson (2017), “James MacGregor Burns coined the term transformational leadership in his book, Leadership, to define a process where leaders and followers work together to advance motivation and morale” (p. 3). 

• Transformational leadership is a long-term form of leadership that is focused on ethical behavior (Jovanovic and Ciric, 2016), motivating others, thus transforming colleagues to go, “beyond current levels of achievement and performance to even higher levels of achievement and performance” (Anderson, 2018, p. 3). 

Servant Leadership

• According to Stewart (2017),  “To be a servant leader, one must put aside the traditionally authoritative style and approach leadership as a servant first” (p. 1). 

• Servant leadership is an approach to leadership that suggests an effective leader is a humble leader who seeks to create an  “all-encompassing and satisfying workplace” (Haider and Mushtaq, 2017, p. 167) and who works for their community by putting the needs of others before their own egotistical needs (Stewart, 2017).

Coaching-Style Leadership

• According to Peláez,  Salanova, and Martínez (2020), coaching-style leadership can be defined as the “day-to-day process of providing support, and helping employees identify opportunities to achieve individual development goals” (p. 2). 

• It is very similar to transformational style of leadership as it looks at leadership as a means of “developing people for the future” (Gurley and Wilson, 2011, p. 3).

Leadership Table

Out of all of the models of teacher leadership these three models are perhaps the most similar and the most aligned with my philosophy of leadership.  However, the most important model would largely depend on the position of the teacher leader and the size of the group of teachers that the teacher leader supports. 

Summary Analysis (Conclusion)

    As an English language learner coordinator, or English language development teacher leader, I have supported colleagues and students beyond my classroom in a variety of ways.  One of the most visible ways in which I provide support beyond my classroom is by analyzing and presenting language proficiency data to the staff members that I serve.  I strive to make this data accessible, meaningful, and up-to-date, so the teacher will know what their students can do and what the next steps should be in terms of their English language development.  I also strive to present workshops or professional development opportunities for staff inside and outside of my school, so that they will be able to understand and implement research-based strategies such as translanguaging, culturally responsive pedagogy, and differentiation in a wide variety of content areas. I maintain a repository of resources that I share with staff members, such as graphic organizers, sentence frames, functional language conversation starters, etc. Lastly, I also model best practices for academic language development in my classroom and try to share it with others.  My colleagues are always welcome to come observe my classes and I have time in which I can help co-oplan, or co-create linguistically appropriate and cognitively challenging formative and summative assessments for students.  

 In terms of which form of leadership model is more appropriate for teacher leaders, I feel that transitional leadership model is philosophically excellent, but logistically it  is perhaps more thoroughly aligned with the role of a  principal or head of school as it places a greater emphasis of the organization's long-term outcome; whereas the other models of leadership are more appropriate for a smaller scale of leadership.  Whether I align myself more with being a servant leader or a coaching-style leader would depend on the size of staff I am supporting.  At a smaller school with fewer teachers to support, I believe the coaching-style leadership model would be most effective as I would have time to coach individual teachers.  However, at a larger sized school in which all of the supported staff may not have regular one-on-one time with a teacher leader, the servant leadership model    would be a better fit as it is somewhat broader in scale.  Ultimately though, I firmly embrace all of the positive attributes of all three of the aforementioned leadership models. 

References

Anderson, M. (2017). Transformational Leadership in Education: A Review of Existing 

       Literature. International Social Science Review, 93(1), 1–13.

Angelle, P. S., & DeHart, C. A. (2016). Comparison and Evaluation of Four Models of 

       Teacher Leadership. Research in Educational Administration & Leadership, 1(1), 85–119.

Gurley, K., & Wilson, D. (2011). Developing Leadership Skills in a Virtual Simulation: 

       Coaching the Affiliative Style Leader. Journal of Instructional Pedagogies, 5.

Jovanovic, D., &; Ciric, M. (2016). Benefits of Transformational Leadership in the 

       Context of Education. The European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences , 496–503.       

       https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2016.09.64 

Peláez, M. J., Salanova, M., & Martínez, I.M.. (2020). Coaching-Based Leadership 

       Intervention Program: A Controlled Trial Study. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03066

Stewart, G. J. (2017) The Importance of Servant Leadership in Schools. International 

      Journal of Business Management and Commerce, 2(5), 1-5.