Importance Of Teacher Leadership

The importance of teacher leadership is considered crucial in education (Williams 2011). Traditional theories on leadership have focused on the role of the individual leader to lead the organisation (Bush 1995). The limitation of this theory is that it overlooks the kinds of leadership that are distributed across teachers during the everyday processes (Williams 2011). Given the challenges faced by most organisations in the demanding contemporary society, it is essential to understand that leadership is not the excusive role of an individual in an organisation but rather a shared role amongst many people, including teaching staff. At this point we can agree with Lieberman (1986) who argued that: “Contexts, needs, talents and commitments differ,

1995). This involvement implicates the process of leaders distributing the power, sharing organisational resources and encouraging teachers´ participation in future planning. Amongst educators, it is commonly known that the more teachers participate in decision making the more they enjoy job satisfaction (Blase and Blase 1994; Blase et al.

This dynamic approach, which is termed resilience, seems promising. As Mansfield, Beltman, Price and McConney (2012) suggest, promoting resilience gives the opportunity to identify more effective interventions to address teacher challenges and promote ‘quality retention’ (Gu and Day, 2007). According to Hong (2012), this focus on resilience can also help to understand teachers’ job satisfaction and motivation (Kitching, Morgan, and O’Leary, 2009), and teacher effectiveness (Gu and Day, 2007). Research on teacher resilience is also in line with positive psychology because it is focusing on teachers’ wellbeing and psychological health (Théorêt, 2011). According to Patterson, Collins and Abbott (2004), resilient teachers consider their professional development as a priority. These teachers seem to prefer an active approach to resolve problems. Moreover, Howard and Johnson (2004) highlighted that some teachers involved in their study admitted that they had developed survival skills by reflecting on their practice when things were going wrong. Teachers who participated in Huisman et al’s study (2010) also considered both formal and informal professional development opportunities as a priority. As mentioned earlier in this paper, societal developments in several domains confront schools and teachers