Objective: The Teacher Leader Concept

The main objective of IMED is to contribute to the professional and personal growth of educators, who are currently working in the public school system, in such a way as to promote their leadership potential as teacher leaders.  Although individuals are likely to define this term differently, the IMED faculty members have identified four components of the teacher leader that are emphasized in the program.  These include:

1.  Vision: helping teachers develop a vision of specific changes they would like to implement in their classroom, school, or community is the first component of the teacher leader model used in the IMED program.

2. Knowledge and skills: Fostering an increased level of knowledge and promoting specific types of teaching, consultation, and advocacy skills is a necessary part of achieving one’s vision of change.

3. Evaluation and Planning: To effectively create organizational changes in one’s classroom, school, or community involves the use of various types of evaluation and planning skills.  Increasing teachers’ evaluation and planning skills is another major aspect of the teacher leader mode.

4. Creating Individual and Systemic Changes: The essence of the teacher leader is one who can effectively stimulate changes among individuals (i.e., students, parents, school administrators, etc.) and within various human systems (i.e., within the context of one’s classroom, school, and/or community).  While the IMED faculty comes from different departments and fields within the College of Education, they all direct time and energy to discuss the ways in which teacher leaders might go about fostering individual and/or systemic changes in the courses they teach in the program.

It is expected that teachers in IMED will develop a variety of school leadership skills, which will emerge out of their increased understanding of contemporary social issues in education.  Specific attention will be directed to expanding students’ awareness of various educational reform and change movements in the state and country.

In short, teacher leaders are distinguished from other educators, in part, by their willingness to take a more active role in the decision-making processes that occur at their schools, as professional educators in the State of Hawai`i.  This role may include a number of activities such as becoming more actively engaged in the curriculum development decision-making at one’s school, the creation of new policies that impact the overall climate of the school, contributing to school/district policy development, and increasing their school’s outreach and participation in the community.

Teachers who enroll in this strand should expect to develop instructional leadership skills.  More specifically, participating teachers will be encouraged to acquire and apply new educational concepts and practices related to effective teaching and classroom management. 

The professional renewal gained from participating in the course work and interactions with UH professors and their peers routinely occurs within this unique strand and represents the basis for graduates to contribute to the intellectual leadership in their own school settings.  Actual leadership roles for graduates of IMED may include administrative positions, but generally consist of internal leadership roles among fellow teachers, contributing to school/district policy development, curriculum change, and community outreach and participation.  

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              Web editor: Robert Jahier