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This article argues that leadership knowledge should be included in teacher education curricula. The authors discuss the political realities that affect teachers and how these realities are best met with teacher leadership knowledge. Failure to include ideas of educational leadership in teacher education denies teachers an understanding of the activities they practice daily. More important, knowledge of leadership would enable teachers to label what they see and do. Such knowledge would help teachers understand and navigate the micropolitical environments of their work and, therefore, make more informed actions to improve schooling for all and correct some of our democratic injustices as they relate to education more broadly. The article presents examples of three kinds of teacher leadership practices: managerial, professional development, and social responsibility. The authors conclude with proposed opportunities for the teaching profession to reclaim its pedagogical and curricular knowledge and to under...

This article describes a comparative framework for identifying, analyzing, and practicing acts of leadership. The triadic framework identifies transactional, transformational, and critical domains of leadership, and argues that teachers, heretofore ignored or neglected in discussions of school management, are pivotal leaders in school reform efforts. Empirical data from the authors' current studies are used to illustrate how teachers engage in acts of leadership, and contemporary literatures on leadership are used to extend these descriptions. This discussion intends to be educative; that is, this article intends to better define the elusive concept of leadership, better understand the dynamic processes involved in decision-making, and better describe who leaders are.