Who Can Lead Schools? Differences in Perceived Teacher Leadership Opportunity in Georgia (USA)

Using the Teacher Leadership Inventory, a validated instrument, responses from teachers and school administrators were collected from across the state of Georgia (USA) regarding perceived teacher leadership opportunities measured across four sub-scales: Sharing Expertise, Sharing Leadership, Supra-Practitioner, and Principal Selection. As one of the few U.S. states that have formalized teacher leadership with both standards and credentialling, Georgia is an important setting within which to measure opportunities to utilize this domain of practitioner expertise. One-way ANOVAs and non-parametric equivalent tests using response data to the survey revealed statistically significant differences between how teachers and their supervising administrators perceived opportunities for teacher leadership with teachers perceiving significantly less opportunity than did school administrators. Additionally, sub-scale survey responses reveal that school administrators perceive that campus principals are less influential at making room for teacher leadership than the teachers report. Subgroups of teachers created using the attainment of teacher leadership credentials as well as individual and campus demographic variables were also examined but significant differences were largely not present. The exception to these null results concerned the Principal Selection sub-scale with male teachers and those without a master’s or lower degree believing that principals exerted less influence in creating teacher leadership opportunities than their female and more highly educated counterparts.