Teacher leadership: an investigation of early-career teacher leadership development of public schools in Northwest China, Gansu Province

The strong advocacy and the quest for teacher leadership in the twenty-first century bear the premise that teacher leadership is an important ingredient in teacher professional development, student performance, and school effectiveness (Bush, 2016; Katzenmeyer and Moller, 2009; Wang and Ho, 2019). T...

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Main Author: Li, Lin
Format: Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
Language:English
Published: 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/67497/
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author Li, Lin
author_facet Li, Lin
author_sort Li, Lin
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description The strong advocacy and the quest for teacher leadership in the twenty-first century bear the premise that teacher leadership is an important ingredient in teacher professional development, student performance, and school effectiveness (Bush, 2016; Katzenmeyer and Moller, 2009; Wang and Ho, 2019). There is a paucity of the investigation of teacher leadership of young and early-career teachers, especially in Asian context where educational systems are highly centralised (Bush and Ng, 2019; Szeto, 2020). This study is to investigate teacher leadership development of early-career teachers in general and specifically on factors that facilitate as well as factors that impede teacher leadership development in public schools of Northwest China, Gansu Province. This study was underpinned by the constructivist theory (Lambert, 1998; 2003), distributed leadership theory (Muijs and Harris, 2006), and the social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997) through an ecological lens (Bronfenbrenner, 2005). Informed by the pragmatic research paradigm, this study has adopted an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design to answer the research questions and address the research gaps. Evidence shows that teacher leadership development of early-career teachers is a continuum, evolving from classrooms, groups, to school levels, orchestrated by the interplay of school culture, teacher leadership readiness, and leadership strategies or skills. School culture plays a significant and strong predictor of teacher leadership readiness of early-career teachers for their leadership development, especially from the perspectives of professional development and recognition. Early-career teachers practised more instructional leadership in their classrooms because of the cultural characteristics such as power distance, power relationship, and authority openness. The centrality of early-career teacher leadership development is capacity building and gaining recognition, which is the ‘professional expertition’ proposed in this study.
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spelling nottingham-674972024-02-26T04:30:14Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/67497/ Teacher leadership: an investigation of early-career teacher leadership development of public schools in Northwest China, Gansu Province Li, Lin The strong advocacy and the quest for teacher leadership in the twenty-first century bear the premise that teacher leadership is an important ingredient in teacher professional development, student performance, and school effectiveness (Bush, 2016; Katzenmeyer and Moller, 2009; Wang and Ho, 2019). There is a paucity of the investigation of teacher leadership of young and early-career teachers, especially in Asian context where educational systems are highly centralised (Bush and Ng, 2019; Szeto, 2020). This study is to investigate teacher leadership development of early-career teachers in general and specifically on factors that facilitate as well as factors that impede teacher leadership development in public schools of Northwest China, Gansu Province. This study was underpinned by the constructivist theory (Lambert, 1998; 2003), distributed leadership theory (Muijs and Harris, 2006), and the social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997) through an ecological lens (Bronfenbrenner, 2005). Informed by the pragmatic research paradigm, this study has adopted an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design to answer the research questions and address the research gaps. Evidence shows that teacher leadership development of early-career teachers is a continuum, evolving from classrooms, groups, to school levels, orchestrated by the interplay of school culture, teacher leadership readiness, and leadership strategies or skills. School culture plays a significant and strong predictor of teacher leadership readiness of early-career teachers for their leadership development, especially from the perspectives of professional development and recognition. Early-career teachers practised more instructional leadership in their classrooms because of the cultural characteristics such as power distance, power relationship, and authority openness. The centrality of early-career teacher leadership development is capacity building and gaining recognition, which is the ‘professional expertition’ proposed in this study. 2022-02-27 Thesis (University of Nottingham only) NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en cc_by https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/67497/1/Li%20Lin-20007472-PhD%20Thesis.pdf Li, Lin (2022) Teacher leadership: an investigation of early-career teacher leadership development of public schools in Northwest China, Gansu Province. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. teacher leadership early-career teachers school culture teacher leadership readiness professional learning and development
spellingShingle teacher leadership
early-career teachers
school culture
teacher leadership readiness
professional learning and development
Li, Lin
Teacher leadership: an investigation of early-career teacher leadership development of public schools in Northwest China, Gansu Province
title Teacher leadership: an investigation of early-career teacher leadership development of public schools in Northwest China, Gansu Province
title_full Teacher leadership: an investigation of early-career teacher leadership development of public schools in Northwest China, Gansu Province
title_fullStr Teacher leadership: an investigation of early-career teacher leadership development of public schools in Northwest China, Gansu Province
title_full_unstemmed Teacher leadership: an investigation of early-career teacher leadership development of public schools in Northwest China, Gansu Province
title_short Teacher leadership: an investigation of early-career teacher leadership development of public schools in Northwest China, Gansu Province
title_sort teacher leadership: an investigation of early-career teacher leadership development of public schools in northwest china, gansu province
topic teacher leadership
early-career teachers
school culture
teacher leadership readiness
professional learning and development
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/67497/