Leadership for Teacher Learning: A Community of Practice Perspective

Purpose: The study is a two-stage inquiry into the influence of high school principals and department chairpersons on the nature of science and mathematics teachers' community of practice participation. Of particular interest is the extent to which formal leaders influence the formation of productive communities of practice and the extent to which leaders affect teachers' professional beliefs and their instructional skills. Research Design: Using the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) Second Follow-up Teacher File, measures for the analysis are constructed with the Rasch model. Analysis proceeds in two stages using hierarchical linear modeling. The first stage investigates the importance of school leaders to mathematics and science teachers' participation in productive communities of practice. The second stage looks at the relationship between school leadership and teachers' competence and pedagogical skills, net of the influence of communities of practice. Findings: Results suggest that both principals and department chairpersons are instrumental in shaping opportunities for teachers to learn in communities of practice. Furthermore, results show that principals are well removed from the instructional concerns of teachers and that department chairpersons might serve to slow down the rate of instructional change. Conclusions: The connections between school-level leadership and teachers' social learning in their communities of practice have drawn the recent attention of those writing about and conducting research on teacher communities. Researchers, practitioners, and policy makers want to know if school leaders can make a difference in how teachers think about their work and the quality of their instruction in classrooms. Findings offer insight into important links in the causal chain between leadership and student achievement.