ABSTRACT
MEASURING TEACHER LEADERSHIP
John William Triska
With schools under increasing public scrutiny and political pressure to show
evidence of improved student achievement, leadership must emerge to sustain healthy
school environments for teachers and students. The drive for school reforms should not
overlook the leadership potential of classroom teachers, perhaps best positioned to make
meaningful changes. This mixed-method study sought to fill a gap in the literature by
measuring the degree of classroom-based teacher leadership evident in 56 teachers at
three public elementary schools in Northern California. Through a synthesis of the
literature, 25 subscales of classroom-based teacher leadership were developed and
organized into five constructs: Focus on Student Achievement and Relationships,
Initiating and Taking Risks, Trust, Collaboration, and Traditional Leadership. The
constructs were assessed though teacher surveys and interviews.
Statistical results were explained through themes that emerged from the interview
data, suggesting supports and barriers to teacher leadership. An important finding was
predictability of the constructs, whereby a high degree of teacher leadership in one
construct predicts a high degree in another. The most correlated of the five, Collaboration
is also the most visible construct in schools, and may be a reliable indicator of a school’s
overall teacher leadership.