Abstract
As schools implement improvement initiatives, teachers hold expertise that can support effective decision making and the actions related to school improvement efforts (York-Barr and Duke, 2004). Incorporating teacher leaders into school improvement initiatives is a way for principals to harness teachers' expertise and empower them in schools. Teacher leaders provide insight into the collaborative decision-making process that informs organisational development oriented toward student outcomes. Principals' distributed leadership practices related to teacher leadership have the known potential to improve overall instruction in schools. Therefore, principals are central to developing the entire school organisation by engaging in actions to remove barriers to teacher leadership and create structures to facilitate teacher leadership. In this article, we briefly describe teacher leaders, explore existing teacher leadership barriers, and describe five principal actions to augment teacher leadership in schools, providing practical examples of the principal actions. Through these actions, principals can overcome barriers, mobilising the power of teacher leaders to enhance student outcomes.
