Teacher Leaders as Agents of Change: Creating Contexts for Instructional Improvement for English Learner Students

Abstract

Providing an equitable education for English learner (EL) students continues to challenge educators. Existing research suggests that instructional leaders, such as teacher leaders, play a central role in improving the teaching and learning of EL students. Using a distributed leadership framework, this study examines how 2 teacher leaders influenced instructional change and created educational opportunities for EL students at the interconnected levels of classroom, school, and district. Findings show how the teacher leaders, with a dual focus on capacity building and advocacy, used distributed leadership as a tool to create a shared vision for EL instruction and to generate spaces for EL-focused work to occur. This study contributes to our understanding of employing teacher leadership to support equitable learning opportunities for EL students, identifies instructional and teacher leadership practices that support EL student learning and instruction, and highlights the epistemic and political nature of EL-focused teacher leadership to bring about instructional change.