Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides to give readers representing a wide audience maximum flexibility in their approach to the material. It describes ways that teachers can become leaders in their schools and ways that aspiring teacher leaders can develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions for the role. The book highlights some of the many roles in which teachers can serve as leaders. Scholars often mark the school reform movement of the 1980s as the time when teacher leadership rose to prominence as a field of study. The Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium released the teacher leadership standards in 2011 to codify, promote, and support teacher leadership as a way to transform schools for the 21st century. University professors of teacher leadership courses are advised to work sequentially through the first part, give students a choice in what they read in the second part.