Evolution of teacher leadership as a challenging paradigm in rethinking and restructuring educational settings

Abstract

This chapter will examine teacher leadership as a challenging concept associated with school effectiveness and improving student success. From a historical perspective, roles and functions of teacher leadership have evolved over time depending on the system paradigm employed in school settings. The shift from the paradigm of machine bureaucracy to the redefinition of the school as a professional learning community has underlined a wide range of critical concepts explaining both formal and informal roles of teacher leadership via teacher autonomy, transformational and distributed leadership, and school improvement. Teacher leadership roles have been accepted as teachers acting as catalysts for disseminating their skills, knowledge, and the best practices to their colleagues, albeit the boundaries of formal structures of school organizations even if they do not have any administrative titles or formal responsibilities in the school processes.