ABSTRACT

This study aims to explore the understanding and actualization of teacher leadership among teachers and principals in the school development process. Teacher leadership is considered a powerful concept by providing teachers with the opportunity to contribute to sustainable school development by supporting professional development among their colleagues and improving teaching practices. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in five Estonian schools with sixteen teachers and five principals. Deductive and inductive approaches were applied to data analysis. Three analysis themes were used: 1) understanding of teacher leadership characteristics and activities of a teacher leader; 2) the impact and; 3) the conditions for teacher leadership. The results revealed that although some of the characteristics and activities coincided with earlier findings, teachers and principals in this study had a rather limited understanding of teacher leadership. Therefore, we argue that the concept of teacher leadership should be introduced much more systematically during initial teacher education and should be fundamental to the continuing professional development of the school development program. Furthermore, principals need to improve their skills as they play an influential role in creating a school environment that supports teachers to take the initiative.

摘要

本研究旨在探讨教师和校长在学校发展过程中对教师领导力的理解和实现。教师领导力被认为是一个强有力的概念，它为教师提供机会，通过支持同事的专业发展和改进教学实践，为学校的可持续发展做出贡献。在五所爱沙尼亚学校进行了半结构化访谈，共有 16 名教师和 5 名校长。演绎和归纳方法应用于数据分析。使用了三个分析主题：1）了解教师领导特征和教师领导者的活动；2）影响；3）教师领导的条件。结果显示，虽然一些特征和活动与早期的发现一致，这项研究中的教师和校长对教师领导力的了解相当有限。因此，我们认为，教师领导力的概念应该在最初的教师教育中更加系统地引入，并且应该成为学校发展计划持续专业发展的基础。此外，校长需要提高自己的技能，因为他们在创造支持教师发挥主动性的学校环境方面发挥着重要作用。