Teacher Leadership in High Schools: How Principals Encourage It—How Teachers Practice It

This policy brief, produced by the Institute for Educational Leadership and the MetLife Foundation, highlights the importance of teacher leadership at the high school level. Principals can play an integral role in fostering teachers as leaders and as active participants in decision-making at the school level. The empowerment of teachers has the greatest effect in classrooms, and principals support this process by providing professional development opportunities and encouraging staff to collaborate, thus enabling an improved learning environment for all students. This brief provides a definition of teacher leadership and describes findings from several schools where teacher leadership is supported and practiced.