Teacher Leadership: Though Much is Known, More Remains to be Understood

With the realization that school improvement efforts are less likely to be successful if managed single-handedly by a school principal, there is a growing tendency to involve teachers in teacher leadership roles. As research has steadily converged on teacher leadership, we have quite sufficient knowledge on its conceptualization, the way it is practiced in different contexts and the factors influencing the enactment of this emerging concept. However, do we have a consensus on who are teacher leaders, how teacher leadership can be promoted and what factors support teacher leadership across the globe? This paper reviews the existing literature on teacher leadership to document what we know and what we still need to know in relation to this concept. Using the search strings, namely, “conceptualization of teacher leadership”, “teacher leadership development” and “teacher leadership practice”, literature is drawn from Scopus, Emerald Insight, Taylor & Francis and Wiley Online Library databases restricted to the time period from 2012 to 2022. Although teacher leadership has evolved and developed over a period of almost four decades, as this review shows, there are still significant questions that remain unanswered. The paper argues that we still lack not only a uniform conceptualization of teacher leadership but also convincing evidence to show a model of teacher leadership to be more effective in terms of its impact on instructional practices and student learning. The existing knowledge on how teacher leadership can be developed is also limited. Since teacher leadership is a dire need of the current day, we should address the knowledge gap to confidently use this model in any context to reap its benefits especially in relation to student learning.