Accountability policies constitute

Accountability policies constitute a form of surveillance that in many cases serve
to suppress teachers’ leadership from within the classroom for the benefit of
students. However, some teachers working in schools that are operating under
surveillance from accountability policies successfully practice this type of teacher
leadership. The Theory of the U (Scharmer, 2009b; Senge et al., 2005) may
explain why some teachers succeed in exhibiting leadership under conditions of
accountability. In order to explore the theory of the U as a theoretical basis for
teacher leadership, this study employed phenomenology as both philosophical
approach and method to uncover the lived experiences of teacher leaders in lowperforming
and underperforming schools in order to answer these research
questions: