Maureen D. Neumann

Claiming the Political: The Forgotten Terrain of Teacher Leadership Knowledge

This article argues that leadership knowledge should be included in teacher education curricula. The authors discuss the political realities that affect teachers and how these realities are best met with teacher leadership knowledge. Failure to include ideas of educational leadership in teacher education denies teachers an understanding of the activities they practice daily. More important, knowledge of leadership would enable teachers to label what they see and do. Such knowledge would help teachers understand and navigate the micropolitical environments of their work and, therefore, make more informed actions to improve schooling for all and correct some of our democratic injustices as they relate to education more broadly. The article presents examples of three kinds of teacher leadership practices: managerial, professional development, and social responsibility. The authors conclude with proposed opportunities for the teaching profession to reclaim its pedagogical and curricular knowledge and to understand its own acts of leadership.

Developing Teacher Leaders to transform Classrooms, Schools, and Communities

All teachers are leaders by the nature of their work. They lead within their schools, whether implicitly or explicitly, for good or for bad, proactively or reactively. In this chapter, we present a framework of teacher leadership that is an assemblage of our previously published works. We use this chapter to provide a consolidated view of how to help all teachers to acknowledge, understand, and use their “awesome” power as leaders to transform their classrooms, schools, and communities. Schools are sites of social, political, and economic influence and teachers play key roles in either maintaining the status quo or creating environments that are transformative and equitable for all members. We argue that a teachers power is essential both within and beyond the walls of the classroom. Teachers have the capacity and power to participate in change decisions and efforts that traditionally either have been tacitly assumed by them or deliberately defined by others. By having an understanding of critical leadership or leadership for social justice, teachers will be more prepared to identify and resist the variety of contexts which threaten their professional expertise and contexts that deliberately question their professional knowledge.

Mathematics Teaching: Listening, Probing, Interpreting and Responding to Children's Thinking.

Abstract The perception of what a teacher says s/he does in the classroom may or may not match the reality of their actual teaching practice. This case study considers one second-grade teacher’s instructional methods and pedagogical decisions when teaching number sense and her perception of what informed her teaching practice. This teacher supported students’ development of mathematical strategies, valued debriefing time, and students’ sharing mathematical strategies. Additionally, she listened to students purposely by probing their thinking. Her experience in a mathematics professional development program helped her be consistent in her beliefs about mathematics learning, her perception of her teaching, and the observed practice.