‘The International Teacher Leadership project,’ a case of international action research.

Copyright CARNThe paper arises from the International Teacher Leadership project, a research and development project involving researchers and practitioners in 14 European countries. The paper provides a conceptual exploration of the idea of teacher leadership and its role in educational reform, central to which is the idea that teachers, regardless of their level of power and organisational position, can engage in the leadership of enquiry-based development activity aimed at influencing their colleagues and embedding improved practices in their schools. The paper provides an outline of the project’s methodology which builds on that used in the Carpe Vitam Leadership for Learning project (Frost, 2008a). It is a form of collaborative action research which is highly developmental and discursive. It seeks to identify principles, strategies and tools that can be applied in a range of cultural settings. The paper includes a thematic analysis of the cultural contexts and policy environments of the participating countries in order to identify the obstacles to teacher leadership and to inform the nature of the support strategies employed

Instructional leadership in centralised systems: evidence from Greek high-performing secondary schools

This paper examines the enactment of instructional leadership (IL) in high-performing secondary schools (HPSS), and the relationship between leadership and learning in raising student outcomes and encouraging teachers’ professional learning in the highly centralised context of Greece. It reports part of a comparative research study focused on whether, and to what extent, IL has been embraced by Greek school leaders. The study is exploratory, using a qualitative multiple case design to examine two HPSS in Athens. The research design involved a qualitative approach using several different methods, including semi-structured interviews with school principals, deputy heads, subject teachers and subject advisers, plus observation of leadership practice and meetings and scrutiny of relevant policy documents. The findings show that IL is conceptualised as an informal collaborative leadership practice, interwoven with the official multi-dimension role of Greek principals and their ‘semi-IL’ role. In the absence of official IL ‘actors’, teachers’ leadership has been expanding