Teacher Leadership in the Age of the Internet

In recent years teacher leadership has undergone one major revolution and is in the process of undergoing another. The first came about as schools turned out to be far too complex for the responsibility of formulating and achieving their goals to be vested entirely in principals and head teachers. As a consequence, the rise of distributed leadership as an alternative model for understanding schools and their functioning is now commonplace. The second major revolution affecting teacher leadership is the rise of the Internet and ICT, and the way these give rise to greater and more flexible opportunities for students to become autonomous learners. Autonomous student learning now occurs in significant new ways and under parameters that are far more expansive than school-based learning. An effective model of teacher leadership thus needs to capture these changes in order to reflect the new realities of student learning and student engagement with their schools.

Kokila Roy Katyal is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education working in the area of educational leadership. Her doctoral work focused on teacher leadership and its impact on student engagement in schools. Her research interests include teacher leadership, theories of leadership, training and education for teacher leadership, teacher leadership roles, barriers and facilitators to teacher leadership, student learning in schools, autonomous student learning, home-school interactions and its connection to teacher leadership and research methodology.

Colin William Evers is Professor of Educational Leadership in the School of Education, University of New South Wales, His research interests are in educational administration, philosophy of education, and research methodology. He has written many papers and is an author and editor of seven books including Knowing Educational Administration (Pergamon, 1991), Exploring Educational Administration (Pergamon, 1996), and Doing Educational Administration (Pergamon, 2000), all co-authored with Gabriele Lakomski, and Leadership for Quality Schooling (Routledge/Falmer, 2001), co-edited with K.C. Wong, and was co-editor of the journal International Studies in Educational Administration.