What is teacher leadership and how is it different from administration?
Teacher leadership is what happens when teachers make and implement decisions that improve teaching and learning — without necessarily leaving the classroom or becoming administrators. It's instructional leadership exercised by the people closest to the work.
Administration involves a formal role with positional authority: evaluating staff, managing budgets, setting policy. Teacher leadership doesn't require any of that. It requires expertise, information, and the opportunity to put both to use. A teacher who helps redesign the hiring process, leads a curriculum adoption, or mentors a new colleague is exercising instructional leadership — even if their job title is still "teacher."
The distinction matters because most schools treat leadership as something that only happens when you leave the classroom. That assumption creates a bottleneck where all important decisions flow through a small number of administrators who may not have the best information for making them.
Keith Fickel and I unpack this distinction and its practical implications throughout Cultivate and Activate.
From the Book
Cultivate and Activate: Building Teacher Capacity for Instructional Leadership
About the Authors
Justin Baeder, PhD
Justin Baeder, PhD is Director of The Principal Center, where he helps senior leaders in K–12 organizations build capacity for instructional leadership. A former principal in Seattle Public Schools, he is the creator of the Instructional Leadership Challenge, which has helped more than 10,000 school leaders in 50 countries around the world:
- Confidently get into classrooms every day
- Have feedback conversations that change teacher practice
- Discover their best opportunities for school improvement
Dr. Baeder directs the Instructional Leadership Association, the premiere professional membership for school leaders, and is the author of three Solution Tree books on instructional leadership:
- Now We’re Talking! 21 Days to High-Performance Instructional Leadership
- Mapping Professional Practice: How to Develop Instructional Frameworks to Support Teacher Growth (with Heather Bell-Williams)
- Cultivate and Activate: Building Teacher Capacity for Instructional Leadership (with Keith Fickel)
Justin is the host of Principal Center Radio, a long-running audio podcast featuring more than 400 education thought leaders and more than 500 books, as well as The Teaching Show and The Eduleadership Show. A prolific education commentator, he has more than 250,000 followers and 30,000,000 annual impressions on social media, and is frequently consulted by major media outlets on issues of education research, policy, and practice.
As a consultant, trainer, and speaker, Dr. Baeder has worked onsite with groups across the US, Canada, and Central America, and virtually with groups across the Middle East, Australia, and around the world. He is a frequent speaker at conferences, and regularly provides administrator professional development on classroom walkthroughs, teacher evaluation, and instructional leadership.
He holds a PhD in Educational Leadership & Policy Studies from the University of Washington and an MEd in Curriculum & Instruction from Seattle University, and is a graduate of the Danforth Program for Educational Leadership at UW.
Keith Fickel
Keith Fickel is a retired middle school and high school principal in the southwest Houston, Texas area. His focus during his decade as principal was to ensure that high levels of student learning, achievement, and personal development occurred in every classroom, every day. He accomplished these aims through the intentional empowerment of teachers and staff to effectively lead not only their classrooms but the school as a whole. Keith prioritized building and maintaining a strong bond with the school community through trust during his principalship.
He began his career in education in 1991, serving first as a classroom teacher and a band director for seventeen years, then as an assistant principal, associate principal, and campus principal during the second half of his career. His entire educational career was at the secondary level in both private and public school settings.
Keith has facilitated or cofacilitated professional learning sessions at the district, regional, and state levels on a variety of topics. He is a member of the Texas Association of Secondary School Principals and ASCD. In 2008, he was a campus Teacher of the Year, as well as a finalist for the Fort Bend ISD Secondary Teacher of the Year. In 2022, he was named the Fort Bend ISD Secondary Principal of the Year, and he had the honor of serving as the founding principal of the district’s newest high school in 2023, prior to his retirement.
Keith earned both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in music education from Texas Tech University, and he completed his principal certification through the University of Houston. He resides in Sugar Land, Texas, with his wife, Anne, who was also a music teacher. Together, they have an adult daughter who is also in education.