Teacher Leadership and Professional Status in World Cultureⁱ

“Leadership” has played an increasing role in globally diffusing educational reforms over the last two decades. Both accountability and decentralization movements assume that more active and informed leadership in schools will result in better student academic performance. This vision of leadership has roots in the cultural logic of US schools which divides administration from instruction and reinforces a view of teachers as de-professionalized workers. “Teacher leadership” was then promoted in order to integrate teachers into reform oversight and managing student performance. Beginning with a short history of the development of teacher leadership within the United States, I compare the logics of “teacher leadership” encoded in globalized reforms with older cultural logics (e.g., shidō in Japan). Using examples from Japan I will how recent teacher-focused policies have undermined aspects of teacher professional autonomy. I end by reflecting on recent leadership reforms promoted by international organizations such as the OECD, UNESCO, and The World Bank. I argue that new waves of globalized reform decontextualize the term “teacher leadership” transforming it into a “floating signifier” that can take on multiple meanings depending on the context and aims of reforms.