Teacher Candidates’ Perceptions of Emergent Teacher Leadership in Clinically Based Teacher Education

ABSTRACT

Emergent teacher leadership is a new concept that refers to teacher leadership in its earliest forms among teachers at any point in their careers but particularly among teacher candidates and early-career teachers. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews to investigate how six teacher candidates perceived their own emergent teacher leadership as they completed yearlong clinical internships in a professional development school (PDS) in which teacher educators had established teacher leadership development as a formalized expectation for all teacher candidates. Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts revealed that although the teacher candidates maintained aspirations for future teacher leadership, they struggled throughout their internships with feelings of illegitimacy as teacher leaders and with skepticism toward the PDS’s expectations for teacher leadership – even as they gradually began to describe their engagement in leadership practices throughout the PDS. Teacher candidates reported leading when they were included within PDS decision-making processes and when they created their own leadership opportunities by taking the initiative and by gathering others to share ideas and to learn together through practitioner inquiry. The findings suggest that teacher educators could promote emergent teacher leadership by assisting teacher candidates in connecting the practices of practitioner inquiry with leadership opportunities and practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Practitioner inquiry
• preservice teacher education
• teacher leaders
• teacher leadership
• professional development schools

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Logan Rutten

Logan Rutten is a teacher educator at The Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include practitioner inquiry, teacher leadership, instructional supervision, and professional learning within the context of school-university partnerships such as professional development schools.

Sebrina L. Doyle

Sebrina L. Doyle is a PhD Candidate in Educational Leadership and a research affiliate at the Bennett-Pierce Prevention Research Center at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research explores methods for the promotion of wellbeing for teachers, administrators, staff, and students in educational environments. She is also a certified facilitator for an evidence-based professional development program focused on improving social and emotional competence and wellbeing for teachers, administrators, and school staff.

Rachel Wolkenhauer

Rachel Wolkenhauer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at The Pennsylvania State University, is a community-engaged scholar who studies and teaches practitioner research as a form of professional learning for preservice teachers, inservice teachers, and teacher educators in school-university partnerships.

Deborah L. Schussler

Deborah L. Schussler is a Professor of Educational Leadership, faculty affiliate of the Bennett-Pierce Prevention Research Center, and faculty affiliate of the Rock Ethics Institute at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research explores how schools function as organizations to meet the social and moral development of learners and how teachers acquire the necessary dispositions to meet the needs of all learners.