Abstract:

Teacher leaders are teachers who take on leadership responsibilities outside of their classroom teaching responsibilities (Wenner and Campbell, 2017). Teacher leadership has a positive impact on many aspects of education, including student and teacher achievement (Doraiswamy et al., 2016; Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2009), especially in underserved schools (Lotter et al., 2019). Indeed, the Teacher Leader Exploratory Consortium (2011) asserted that teacher leadership is “a potentially powerful strategy to promote effective, collaborative teaching practices in schools that lead to increased student achievement, improved decision-making at the school and district level, and a dynamic teaching profession for the 21st century” (p. 3). For pre-service teachers to develop leadership skills, it is essential that they participate in leadership experiences that help them gain confidence in their leadership skills and perceive themselves as effective future leader educators (Gonzales & Lambert, 2001). Experiential learning projects have been shown to be effective in developing teacher leaders. For example, Hanuscin et al. (2014) reported that science teachers who participated in a blog where they shared pedagogical ideas with peers developed strong teacher leader identities. Thus, it is important to intentionally incorporate leadership-development experiences in teacher preparation programs (Collay, 2006). In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of having undergraduate students studying to become math teachers in a Midwestern USA college offer a Math Day event for school children in the area. The goal of the Math Day experiential learning project was the development of effective math teacher leaders who are prepared to support student learning and support peers in underserved schools. The Math Day experiential learning project involved having the undergraduate pre-service math teachers design and plan the day’s activities, purchase and prepare the needed materials, invite area students to attend, and implement the various math learning activities of the day. The undergraduates in our sample were all enrolled in an NSF-funded Noyce program whose main goal is to train and produce effective math educators dedicated to teaching in under-served schools in the USA. The Noyce program’s training activities centered on the practices of effective math teaching outlined by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) (NCTM, 2014). In planning the Math Day, the pre-service teachers focused on practicing and implementing the NCTM practices they learned about in their training. After the Math Day was offered, the pre-service math teachers reported on their perceptions of gains in their leadership skills by responding to an online Qualtrics survey. The survey contained 22 questions that assess leadership skills based on the Teacher Leader Model Standards (TLMS) (Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium, 2011). The TLMS framework focuses on “the knowledge, skills, and competencies that teachers need in order to assume leadership roles in their schools, districts, and the profession” (Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium, 2011, p. 13). The TLMS describe seven domains of teacher leadership: Collaboration; Using Research; Professional Learning; Improving Instruction; Assessments; Family/Community; and Advocacy. In this presentation, we report on the survey findings and discuss the lessons learned from the Math Day experiential learning project.

Keywords:

Teacher Leadership, Experiential Learning, Teacher Training.