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Introduction
In this paper, we discuss Ontario’s Teacher Learning and Leadership Program (TLLP) as an approach to teachers’ professional learning and leadership development that advances the concept and application of the combination of human, social and decisional capital to form “professional capital” (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012) with positive benefits for teachers’ work and for students’ learning. We situate our discussion and findings in a wider international context where approaches to policies for teacher quality have evolved over time and in different contexts. We propose that teachers’ learning and leadership requires enabling teachers to be agents at the center of educational changes rather than the subjects or recipients of externally mandated reforms only. This shift involves changes in educational policy and practice led by and for teachers in partnership with educators throughout the education system – school, district, state/province, nation – and indeed in an increasingly interconnected international network of teachers seeking to be the advocates, experts and leaders of educational practices and improvements locally and globally.
Teachers’ leading professional learning and practice
Central to recent international movements in education has been the phrase “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers” (OECD, 2010, p. 3) promoted by reports from the Programme for International Student Assessment and from international research on educational systems that have improved over time (Barber and Mourshed, 2007; Mourshed et al., 2010). In light of evidence that teachers and teaching are central to school effectiveness and improvement, indeed some evidence suggests that teacher effectiveness is the most important element within a school (National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996; Sanders and Rivers, 1996); there has been growing attention to teacher quality and to effective instruction internationally.
However, this emphasis on teachers at the center of educational improvement has proven to be a mixed blessing with divergent views on whether teachers should be the subjects of external changes – for example, with the imposition of teacher performance measurement and evaluations – or the agents of change with opportunities for teachers themselves to develop and exercise their collective professional judgment. Of particular importance is the nature of opportunities for teachers’ to lead professional learning and practice.
Over the last several decades many proposals and programs have been...