Discerning Professional Identity and Becoming Bold, Socially Responsible Teacher-Leaders.

Abstract

Abstract: This essay reviews the powerful influence of professional identity in shaping how school leaders perceive their work. I review factors that mold teacher professional identity, implications for educational leadership pedagogy, and supports and barriers for teacher leaders to consider in their quest to more fully enact bold, socially responsible leadership. Looking at leadership as a calling or vocation offers an opportunity to examine the role professional identity in the context of teacher leadership. The need to prepare teacher leaders is compelling: with each new mandate, teachers do the heavy lifting of classroom-level implementation and with each generational change in communities and school populations, teachers are charged to acculturate the newcomers. Amid a whirlwind of reform efforts, aspiring principals are urged to create democratic organizations and professional learning communities. These demanding educational settings require bold, socially responsible leadership by both principals and teachers, continually expanding the roles and responsibilities each must fulfill. I invite those of us who prepare positional leaders and teacher leaders to consider the powerful influence of professional identity in shaping how school leaders perceive their work. I contend that only through a careful discernment process will leaders fully embrace the deep, personal values that underlie each leadership act. Educational administration faculty must judge our work against the same standards to which we hold our students. Discernment is often associated with vocation. The simple definition, keenness of insight and judgment doesn't begin to address the spiritual aspects of discernment, but offers a workable, secular beginning. Leaders in any setting must continually ask themselves what values are driving their actions and whether they are best positioned to act upon those values. Most of us do not question the idea that teaching is a calling, yet we may not characterize positional leadership the same way. The complex reasons people choose to teach are naturally revisited when they choose (or are chosen) to lead. Looking at leadership as a calling or vocation offers an opportunity to examine the role professional identity plays in the context of teacher leadership. Teacher leadership is not a simple concept and is not clearly defined in the literature. Murphy (2005) has published a thorough review of the literature on teacher leadership and takes ten pages to analyze the many and varied definitions. He stated, Leadership has historically been defined across two axes, one representing a sense of vision about where an organization should be headed and a second capturing the relational work required to move organizational participants toward that end (p. 15). In comparing teacher leadership to leadership in general, Murphy remarked that the impetus for school reform is not portrayed as the teachers' own and that teachers influence rather than direct others (p. 16). As the field of teacher leadership matures, teachers may define leadership for themselves. We must, however, support our colleagues now. If educational leadership faculty are truly active partners in preparing and influencing leaders, we must embrace the emergent concept of teacher leadership and demonstrate bold, socially responsible leadership by acknowledging this deficiency in our pedagogy. In this essay, I examine the powerful influence of professional identity in teacher leader development. The first section reviews factors that mold teacher professional identity. The second section outlines implications for educational leadership pedagogy that acknowledges and supports identity development. The final section considers supports and barriers for teacher leaders to consider in their quest to more fully enact bold, socially responsible leadership. The purpose for this work is to refocus the question of teacher leadership by using the discernment metaphor so that those of us who study teacher leadership can focus our research questions in new ways. …

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