How Teachers Become Leaders in a Fellowship Program: A Normative Discourse Perspective

Abstract

Traditionally, teachers have been at the bottom of the hierarchy of power that exists in education, leading teachers to define themselves as 'just teachers' (Katzenmeyer and Moller, 2001) not leaders. The current movement to professionalize teaching recognizes the classroom teacher as an untapped leadership resource for improving student achievement. This research analyzes the impact of a Fellowship Program for Curriculum and Leadership Development on its participants using the lenses of normative discourse and the culture of power that exist in education. Specifically, this study explored the extent to which participants were taught to 'perform whiteness' (Warren, 2003) in order to gain power and a voice as teacher leaders. In order to examine the Fellows' experiences, narrative inquiry (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000; Mishler, 1986) was used to gather the stories of four Fellows. Both narrative analysis (Hatch, 2002; Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, and Zilber, 1998; Riessman, 1993) and poetic analysis (Gee, 1999) were employed to 'restory' the participants' stories (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000). Then, the Fellows' stories were analyzed to examine how their fellowship experiences affected their self-identification as teacher leaders and, furthermore, to explore the extent to which normative discourse and the culture of power shaped the Fellows' experiences.