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<p>Instructional leadership teams (ILTs) have become popular reforms, described as teams of teacher leaders and administrators who collaborate to lead instructional improvement. While ILTs can be important vehicles of distributed leadership, their potential rests, foundationally, upon developing collective agency<i>—</i>or group capabilities to accomplish tasks and solve problems together. Little empirical research has focused on ILTs and how they may develop such capabilities. Drawing on literature about group development, work teams, teacher leadership, problem solving, and professional learning, we conceptualize four domains that may shape ILTs’ development of collective agency: basic self-organizing capability, seeing ourselves as leaders, navigating problem complexity, and conceptualizing professional learning. We applied this framework to trace group dynamics in four ILTs based upon 230&#xa0;h of participant observation, action research, and reflective conversations collected as part of a district research-practice partnership. Tracing how collective agency became constrained, emerged, or expanded over two years in each ILT, our findings revealed collective agency for ILTs to be a context-specific emergence, but two domains appeared particularly critical across the schools: basic self-organizing and conceiving of professional learning. The findings reveal ILT development as non-linear and contextually-embedded, posing implications for policymakers, district leaders, and researchers for understanding differentiated ILT supports and finer-grained developmental dynamics as work groups.</p>

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Collective agency in instructional leadership teams: tracing development at the next level of work

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年3月11日

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  • Elizabeth Zumpe,
  • Corrine M. Aramburo

摘要

Instructional leadership teams (ILTs) have become popular reforms, described as teams of teacher leaders and administrators who collaborate to lead instructional improvement. While ILTs can be important vehicles of distributed leadership, their potential rests, foundationally, upon developing collective agency—or group capabilities to accomplish tasks and solve problems together. Little empirical research has focused on ILTs and how they may develop such capabilities. Drawing on literature about group development, work teams, teacher leadership, problem solving, and professional learning, we conceptualize four domains that may shape ILTs’ development of collective agency: basic self-organizing capability, seeing ourselves as leaders, navigating problem complexity, and conceptualizing professional learning. We applied this framework to trace group dynamics in four ILTs based upon 230 h of participant observation, action research, and reflective conversations collected as part of a district research-practice partnership. Tracing how collective agency became constrained, emerged, or expanded over two years in each ILT, our findings revealed collective agency for ILTs to be a context-specific emergence, but two domains appeared particularly critical across the schools: basic self-organizing and conceiving of professional learning. The findings reveal ILT development as non-linear and contextually-embedded, posing implications for policymakers, district leaders, and researchers for understanding differentiated ILT supports and finer-grained developmental dynamics as work groups.