Teacher leaders in a professional learning community
preparation, expectations and needs
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18861/cied.2025.16.2.4107Keywords:
teacher, leadership, informal learning, educational cooperation, pedagogical innovationAbstract
Educational leadership as a factor of incidence in the formation of Professional Learning Communities (PLC) has been widely studied, this supposes the development of a distributed leadership that enhances the emergence of other leading actors in the communities, in this way, teachers are projected as necessary in the distribution of leadership. The literature has identified practices and capacities that teacher leaders in PLC deploy for their development. In Chile, the level of preparation that teachers have to lead these processes has not been studied in depth, being the training of PLC an orientation of the national educational public policy, therefore, it is essential to investigate teacher leadership in PLC. The methodology is a multiple case study with a mixed approach, with the participation of 10 teachers who lead PLC, participants of an accompaniment project. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were applied. The findings indicate that teachers feel prepared to support their peers in critical pedagogical situations, since they recognize themselves as referents with specific groups. In addition, they recognize that they can count on the construction of generations of trust with their peers. However, the ability to solve complex relational problems and to design methodologies that strengthen teachers' professional development are practices in which they feel less prepared. It is essential to strengthen teacher leadership by generating opportunities for formal peer-to-peer collaboration, as well as to institutionally accompany those who lead the formation of PLCs.
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