Teachers' leader functions - an institutional and organizational approach

dr Małgorzata Jaśko, Teacher Training Centre in Małopolska, Poland

 

 

 

Abstract 

The article focuses on teachers as members of a school community participating in the management process of schools as educational institutions and organizations.

An institutional approach to an educational institution implies that it is treated as an element of a larger whole, and therefore we may speak of a state system, or an educational system. In the organizational approach, we refer to a school as a specific institution accomplishing the general objectives of an educational institution in various ways. We refer to the internal conditions, to what is individual and results from the school's organizational culture.

In order to illustrate the teachers' leader functions certain activities related to internal evaluation introduced by the minister's regulation and already implemented in Polish schools have been presented.

Two opposite forms of power sharing in an educational institution have been presented: empowerment based on hierarchical structures and distributed leadership, less formal and more democratic. Empowerment as a form of power sharing has been known to head teachers and applied in accordance with procedures and organizational principles effective in an educational institution. The process of delayering hierarchical structures in an educational institution, or distributed leadership, is another step in a head teacher's initiation in the role of an educational leader.

Key words:  a teacher as a member of a school community, teachers' leader functions, empowerment, distributed leadership, internal evaluation

 

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