Respecting Teacher Professional Identity

Respecting Teacher Professional Identity

as a Foundational Reform Strategy

by Michelle Collay

The promise of teacher leadership as a centerpiece of school reform is generally debated as a structural issue: roles and responsibilities, space and time. While those dimensions of the organization shape the work lives of teachers, a structural focus may limit understanding of teachers' beliefs about their work.

I claim that teaching often begins as a vocation to care for and serve children and young people. Teachers' values define their practice, not the values of the policy-makers currently perpetrating yet another district-or federal-level mandate. If we consider relationships with colleagues and young people to be at the core of teacher professional identity, how might we think differently about the challenges of enacting school reform?

Teacher Professional Identity.
A teacher's primary responsibility is to teach in the classroom. Those in their early years are expected to focus on learning the instructional tools of the trade and classroom management. School wide leadership is not part of the job description. Teachers often talk about the negative side of taking formal leadership roles when they find themselves under the same critical lens formerly reserved for positional leaders--mainly principals. They see a loss of colleagueship with peers and they experience firsthand the challenges of taking responsibility and advocating for change (Collay, 1996; Zinn, 1997). Teachers sometimes view taking on formal leadership as an abdication of their primary responsibility for children, perhaps challenging the critical "ethic of care" described by Gilligan (1982). Some believe truly committed teachers must have a deep moral conviction that their first (and perhaps only) priority is serving students directly. Movement into informal or formal leadership can represent abandonment of what many believe is the primary purpose of teaching-- to serve students (Collay, 1996; Collay, 1999; Grumet, 1980; Nieto, 2003).

Advocating directly for children may provide teachers a moral high ground, especially when formal leaders are charged to mandate unpopular policies. Building-level reform is often delegated to the principal or district-level leadership, and is generally perceived by teachers to be reactive to demands by external agencies. The very policies touted to create more equitable education for students may stagnate in the professional hierarchy that limits teacher efficacy. Teachers are still considered "semi-professionals" and recipients of reform policies rather than the change-makers. There is little consideration of cultural and moral values that underlie the stance of teachers who are child-centered rather than school-centered. We should note that much of the research on reform does not even address the fact that teaching is both "a woman's profession" and often the career choice of Americans who are the first-generation college-educated. These facts add both a gender and a class dynamic. This "oversight" is reinforced by the academy, because many researchers are reluctant to use gender and class contexts to frame their work and thus find themselves relegated to the margins of mainstream research (Cooper, et al 1999).

But, the majority of classroom teachers are women and many have family responsibilities and culturally-based expectations that they must juggle (Zinn, 1997). In addition to personal values and internal tensions teachers feel when making a greater commitment to professional collaboration, school-based organizational structures often limit teachers' opportunities to work with other adults to "after hours" or weekends –times when women have conflicting demands.

Historic and entrenched management practices (certification, unionism, evaluation practices, daily scheduling) also limit professional expectations and opportunities for teachers to see themselves as teacher leaders or positional leaders (Fullan & Hargreaves, 1996; Katzenmeyer, & Moller, 2001; Lambert, 2003; Lambert et al, 1996; Murray, 2005; Perrow, 2004). Further, the physical isolation teachers experience in classrooms limits collaboration time and their influence on the organizational culture.

If teachers cannot feel successful balancing classroom teaching with adult collaboration, the structural changes recommended by the reform literature will not be sufficient.

Organizational Roles and Responsibilities
Teachers and principals are themselves products of organizational practices that cast principals as managers and teachers as line-workers. While some schooling practices have moved away from the industrial model and embrace organizational metaphors such as the more professional "learning community" and embrace "democratic decision-making," many reform efforts are structural. "Emphasizing structure in teacher leadership work often results in new rungs in the hierarchical system of school management" (Murphy, 2005, p. 161).

Much of the literature on teacher leadership, shared or distributed leadership, and broader roles of teacher leaders is written by and for school administrators or those who study their leadership. "Teacher resistance," "reluctant leader" and "buy in" are terms that appear frequently in the reform literature and can be overheard at district-level "in-service" activities. In spite of constant discussion about and recommendations for collaboration, these terms reflect our internalized acceptance of leadership and followership. The leader (principal) is the visionary and the followers (teachers) are unenlightened and dependent upon that vision. Teachers continue to be characterized as isolated and uninvolved with school reform, and positional leaders are encouraged to find the few that are willing to purchase the reform du jour and work with them on teams. Marzano, for example (2003), reviews characteristics of effective leaders (meaning positional leaders) and why leaders working with teams are necessary for substantive reform. "We are left with the intuitively appealing option of a strong leadership team; the principal and other administrators operating as key players and working with a dedicated group of classroom teachers" (p. 175). This model maintains the conventional leadership metaphor of leaders and followers, rather than embracing the more equitable and participatory community of learners who lead or leaders who learn.

Actions Rather than Roles
We have seen steady movement away from thinking about leadership "traits" toward leadership "actions." Lambert (2003), for example, believes it is essential to recognize this.

When thinking about teacher leadership, we should keep in mind the differences between actions and roles. Actions may precede or accompany roles; they may include asking thoughtful questions in a staff meeting, bringing a fresh perspective to a conversation, sharing ideas and practices with others, or initiate new ways of getting tasks accomplished. Though teachers may not always be in the position to take on new roles, they can always engage in acts of leadership (p. 33).

I agree with Lambert that the actions portrayed here represent a leadership stance. Actions and roles, however, are powerfully linked in the minds of teachers (and positional leaders). Who should take what action? What is the purpose of taking leadership? Will these actions actually serve students? If teachers can see a direct benefit to students from their actions, they can become more strategic in their choices about roles and responsibilities. Crowther, Kaagan, Ferguson, & Hann (2002) caution against characterizing leadership by merely identifying behaviors and traits and suggest that leadership is situational and contextual. Their perspective underscores the belief that teacher leaders act from their own values rather than acting at the will of the principal or district leadership.

Beachum and Dentith (2004) claimed that "school leaders have to build more collaborative and democratic arrangements with teachers and others to achieve the enormous ambitions of schooling and respond to students' diverse needs" (p. 278). This perspective still assumes the formal leader is setting the stage and teachers are players under his or her direction.

Can teachers make decisions about when to accept roles and when to take action? Must they wait until the positional leader creates the framework to do so? It is most often the positional leader who carves out time and space for teachers to collaborate. Katzenmeyer and Moller (2001) devote an entire chapter to "Providing time for teacher leadership" in clear recognition that the structure of the school day is one of the main obstacles to productive leadership by teachers. Principals have some say at the site level about time and space, but are often reacting to the same set of external mandates that have reduced teacher autonomy. As we have learned in the reform business, collaborative time is necessary but not sufficient. Teachers' primary commitment to students must be explicitly recognized and valued for the collaborations to be productive.

Dilemmas of Accepting or Rejecting the Reform du Jour
Teachers may intuitively know that accepting informal or formal leadership roles and responsibilities reduces their autonomy and renders them handmaidens of the district or state. Murphy (2005) has published an extensive review of the literature to define teacher leadership, examine assumptions about teacher leadership, and more fully articulate possibilities, necessary organizational conditions, and tenets for teacher leader development. He has identified a powerful paradox--amid the calls for teacher leaders to become full participants in the decision-making in schools, they are simultaneously being deskilled. "Even more troubling is the possibility that teacher leadership is a rear-guard effort to reduce teacher autonomy by loosening teacher control over operations in individual classrooms" (2005, p. 160).

Judyth Sachs of Sydney University in Australia has studied teacher professional identity using the work of Wenger's Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. She too addresses the paradox teachers now face in response to calls for reform. "The call for teacher professionalism related to a revisioning of occupational identity, is occurring at a time when there is evidence that teachers are being deskilled and their work is intensified" (1999, p. 4). It is no wonder that teachers are experiencing tension as they are pressured by dissonant agendas.

Reframing Purposes for Leading
Critical theory offers an alternative perspective on leadership that recognizes the role of race, class, and gender in shaping teachers' perceptions of their purpose. Teachers' sense of purpose has deeply personal, intellectual, and moral dimensions that must be more fully recognized (Collay, 1988, 1989; Grumet, 1980; Nieto, 2003; Shields, 2004; Zinn, 1997). Much of the literature about teacher sustainability identifies teacher development of classroom practice as critical to their career satisfaction (Shen, 1997). Still other researchers suggest teachers thrive on a more expanded role that includes collaborating with colleagues and influencing school-wide decisions (Barth, 1999; Elmore, 2002; Holloway, 2003).

Fully understanding the cultural roots of teacher beliefs about their potential as leaders, however, is essential to reframing school-based leadership. Research on leaders' actions rather than leaders' roles and responsibilities offers a bridge for teachers who experience conflict between classroom leadership and School wide leadership, but that bridge must be strengthened by including diverse perspectives on leading, learning, and collaboration.

Teachers' Professional Identity and Making Meaning of Leadership
Professional identity is not central to the teacher leadership literature, yet it may be a key to successful school reform. Because of this, teachers' professional identity as leaders needs further exploration. How does professional teacher identity influence choices to work with children and adults? Beachum and Dentith (2004) found "particular processes and identities practiced and shared among teachers" as one of three central themes in their study of teacher leaders. Teacher leaders they interviewed "articulated a love for teaching and a clear sense of their own personal and professional purposes. They regarded their work as valuable and central to their life purpose" (p. 281). The researchers also found that trustworthy collaboration is highly regarded by teachers working toward a common goal.

Sachs (1999) recommends movement away from the "entrepreneurial identity" necessary when educational metaphors are market-driven toward an "activist professional identity in which collaborative cultures are part of teachers' work practices" (p. 9). This stance may be easier when teaching is accepted as a moral enterprise. Teachers who take up formal leadership roles represent a more powerful change than the addition of roles or the list of actions they undertake. If taking formal leadership roles or actions is experienced as abdication of one's true purpose or abandoning one's identity, time and space for collaboration will not resolve the tensions of teacher leadership.

For both women of color and white women, positional leadership may pose a direct challenge to cultural and social role experiences they have of themselves and others. Former teachers who seek or accept positional leadership roles face immediate challenges to their perceived authority. Leadership development coaching must attend to the dissonance created for practicing teachers when they take on formal leadership roles. This is an adult equity issue--teachers who have chosen leadership roles must learn treat each other and positional leaders in respectful ways (Smith and Hale, 2002).

Leadership Actions That Serve Students
Teachers who are fully committed to student learning must take action on students' behalf within flawed organizational structures whether they consider themselves formal leaders or not. Taking action requires both commitment to students and the capacity to enact change within and beyond the classroom. I believe that fully accepting the responsibility to serve students is what compels most teachers to take action beyond the classroom. Such leadership actions not only create greater opportunities for student learning, they can, I believe, only be conducted within an equitable or democratic adult learning community. If leadership values support equitable student outcomes, roles and purpose are congruent. The quest to create true opportunity for student learning takes teachers to every level of the organization.

Summary Thoughts
Distributed or shared leadership may seem more natural for primarily female leadership teams and teams that are culturally diverse, but true collaboration is much more difficult than submitting to hierarchical management (Mohr & Dichter, 2003). Teachers need to build leadership capacity to be successful in school organizations. Several levels of leadership development are necessary for practicing teaches to move from leading children in classrooms to leading colleagues in professional development.

The tensions teachers experience when they perceive that a focus on adult development comes "at the expense of caring for students" must be documented and brought into the mainstream reform conversation.

Educational or instructional leadership has been studied primarily from the perspective of what teachers need to do to be more like positional leaders. Teachers work most closely with students, yet are still invisible in many studies of school organizations and school reform in spite of the rhetoric about the essential role of their leadership. The influence of teachers' race, gender, and class on their own and others' perceptions of their leadership capacity is not well-understood.

Until teachers' beliefs about the primacy of teaching within teacher leadership are respected and clearly portrayed, a key dimension of school reform will continue to be overlooked. Classroom-based, student-focused leadership must be legitimized as central to teacher professional identity and foundational to the development of strong schools.

References

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Beachum, F., & A. Dentith, (2004) Teacher leaders creating cultures of school renewal and transformation. The Educational Forum. 68, Spring, 276-286.

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Sachs, J. (1999) Teacher professional identity: Competing discourses, competing outcomes. Paper presented at the Australian Association of Research in Education Conference, Melbourne, November.

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Smith, Agnes & R. Hale, (2002) The view from the female principal's desk. Advancing Women in Leadership. Spring, 2002.

Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Zinn, L. (1997) Supports and barriers to teacher leadership: Reports of teacher leaders. Teaching and Learning Papers and Reports. LSCNET. Retrieved 10-06-2005. http://lsc-net.terc.edu/do.cfm/paper/8120/show/use_set-careers/page-3

About the author

Michelle Collay is associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at California State University, East Bay (formerly Hayward) where she coordinates the Urban Teacher Leadership Program. Contact Professor Collay at michelle.collay@csueastbay.edu.

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