Leadership and professional identity in school teacher training in Spain (Catalonia)

ABSTRACT

A holistic distribution of leadership, where the entire community is committed both to learning and the organisation’s development, is considered an important factor in educational success. Initial teacher education should contribute towards building teachers’ identities as leaders (teacher-leaders). Our research examines how teaching competences are built with regard to coordination, leadership, and collaboration with the community during teacher training. In this paper, we present the results of a questionnaire comparing the vision and perception of these competences in the context of student teachers, university lecturers, and teachers in state school. The results show visions aligned with a holistic form of leadership distributed amongst the three groups. Moreover, they reveal a close link between the construction of the identity of teacher-leaders and the practical and specific challenges of students’ teachers, university lecturers, and teachers. This implies that the initial training must expressly include the distributed leadership competences in the teacher education course, while also providing situations in which students, together with their tutors, gain these competences.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher education
• leadership competences
• professional identity
• self-perception
• community networks

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Agency for Management of University and Research Grants-Catalonia. Project: ‘Coordination Competences, Shared Leadership, and Networking with the Community for the Development of the Teaching Profession and Educational Improvement’ [ARMIF2015-0041].