Chapter

Special Education Teacher Leadership: A Vital Component in Enhancing Inclusionary Practices in Schools

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Abstract

The implementation of effective inclusive school practices requires strong leadership and understanding of procedures, services, and programming for students with disabilities. While school administrators often provide instructional leadership, many do not have preparation in special education, undermining their ability to enact a schoolwide vision for inclusive practices. This chapter provides an overview and summarizes the findings of four special education teacher leadership studies conducted over a three-year period to learn how school leaders can effectively support special educators in teacher leadership and promote inclusive practices that support the success of all students. The authors highlight four major themes (school culture, collaboration, process, and aspiration) that emerged from this series of studies. The chapter describes each theme and how they relate to supporting special education teacher leadership to enhance inclusionary practices in schools.

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... This study is part of a larger body of work that investigates the roles, perspectives, definitions, and outcomes of special education teacher leadership (Hughes et al., 2021;Maggin et al., 2020). This paper seeks to identify and define specific factors of special education teacher leadership that inform the development of a leadership framework for professional development that is more inclusive of special education teachers. ...
... Through EFA procedures, we were able to define four constructs as they are related to special education teacher leadership. During development, our measure was focused on five overarching areas that named skills that special education teachers had previous identified as necessary for effective leadership (Hughes et al., 2021). However, through the EFA, the manner in which items hung together demonstrated overlap of some of these skills, and constructs that could be more broadly defined were necessary. ...
... Currently, teacher leadership research has a significant focus on general education teachers, scarcely including special education teachers. Often, special education teachers are overlooked for formal roles as leaders within their schools, however our measure demonstrates that the special education teachers have an individual capacity for leadership (Hughes et al., 2021). ...
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The changing demands being placed on schools and schools' characteristics as professional workplaces require that educators expand their views of leadership to include more flexible, inclusive, and varied leadership models. Teachers play an increasingly important role in school leadership, and inclusive, interactive, and reciprocal models of leadership provide more appropriate ways of understanding the social processes involved in teacher leadership. New work designs for teachers promote teacher leadership for a variety of reasons: to nurture a more democratic, communal, or communitarian social system for schools and schooling; to draw on teachers' expertise and experience as a school resource; to provide more appropriate work designs and incentives for teachers; and to create a more professional workplace in schools. Teacher leadership structures prominent in many reforms are examined in light of these purposes and the goals they seek to advance. Nonhierarchical theories of leadership from the general leadership literature are used to analyze these new work structures and the goals they seek to advance.
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ThiS article examines special educatian's role in prepar­ ing knowledgeable and skillful leaders for inclusive schools that strive to serve a wide range of students. Special education and educational leadership Intersect, and the professional literature of both fields has been used to describe the work of school adminis­ tration at their interface. A conceptual framework for special education leadership is presented, with suggestions for Its use in planning cooperative leadership development. This analysis pro­ ceeds from the perspective that special education can add value to educational leadership preparation by articulating and communicating not only its legal requirements but the core principles that guide the meaningful education of learners with except/analities.
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As part of a comprehensive qualitative study of 6 schools noted for teacher leadership 28 respondents were interviewed. It was noted that teacher leadership often involved the mutual influence between teacher leaders and principals. These influences are discussed from the perspectives of each of the 6 schools and respondent status as teacher leader, teacher nominator, and administrator. Further to these influences, the data suggest relationships between teachers, teacher leaders, and principals, in these schools, which are reflective of 3 models of “leadership reciprocity” based on unique features found to be typical of these schools.
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Based on 5 years' experience, the Project Challenge coordinator for the Pittsford (New York) Central School District explains how to implement differentiated instruction. Teachers should find a buddy, align objectives, find out what students know, plan flexible grouping, encourage student responsibility, and provide choices. (MLH)