Degree Name

EdD (Doctor of Education)

Program

Educational Leadership

Date of Award

8-2026

Committee Chair or Co-Chairs

Virginia Foley

Committee Members

Pamela Scott, John Boyd

Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study is to examine the processes through which teacher leadership is fostered and sustained among elementary and middle school educators who participate regularly in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), with a focus upon schools implementing the DuFour and Eaker PLC model with fidelity during the winter and spring of 2026. This study looked for evidence of the presence of teacher leadership in a middle school and an elementary school. The theoretical frameworks of Distributed Leadership and the Teacher Leadership Standards created by the Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium were employed in this study, and observations of PLC meetings in the two Solution Tree-recognized schools were analyzed for emerging themes.

Three sub questions guided this study and focused upon three key attributes of distributed leadership. The transcripts of interviews and observations were analyzed, and occurrences of recurrent language and recurrent processes within PLCs were coded. From these codes, three themes were derived: A Culture of “We”, Collaborative Thought and Action, and A Focus on Student Success. When aligned with the theoretical frameworks of distributed leadership and The Teacher Leadership Standards, these themes suggest that teacher leadership emerges from PLCs as a result of school-wide collaborative culture and a primary focus of success for all students.

Document Type

Dissertation - unrestricted

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

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