Bridging Structure and Agency: Exploring the Role of Teacher Leadership in Teacher Collaboration

Building on York-Barr and Duke's (2004) conceptual framework for teacher leadership, this article explores teacher leadership as an informal influence that arises out of interactions and is exerted through group processes and norms. Through a 4-month qualitative study of two teacher teams’ work during structured teacher collaboration, we sought to understand how teachers’ informal action and interaction influence their colleagues’ sense of self-efficacy and motivation to engage in collaborative work. Given our findings, we theorize an emergent framework for teacher leadership to promote understanding and future investigation of teacher leadership as an informal, socially distributed phenomenon.