Teacher Leadership with Technology

I recently wrote a paper with my colleague Hank Becker, on teacher leadership with technology that was a chapter in The Handbook on IT in primary and secondary Education (Download 08 Riel Becker teacher leadership tech ).  I am currently at the Florida Educational Technology Conference in Orlando and I have a presentation on learning to lead with a focus on the role of action research and adaptive expertise which is largely based on that paper. The main premise is that there is a pyramid path to expertise. A pyramid because the group of teachers who are seen as leaders gets smaller as more characteristics of leadership are added.  At the base, teacher leaders are those who know how to learn from practice. They are not just teaching but they are actively learning from their teaching. One effective way to do this is through action research which leads to adaptive expertise. At the second level, they share what they learn with others locally but not just telling but in a way that helps others develop new skills. To do this well, they need to be able to develop "service leadership" skills. The effective leaders are not the ones with the plans that everyone else "should" follow but rather the person who can foster great groups that together change their practice in effective and innovative ways using evidence to guide them. Teacher leaders can operate locally but they can also extend their reach over distances and across time. Over distances they can play leadership roles in conferences and professional communities. Over time they can create conceptual artifacts (papers, videos, blogs, books, or podcasts) that share their wisdom with teachers who will follow their intellectual footsteps. I am also attaching the powerpoint slides for the talk (Download Riel-FETC-2009-teacher leadership).