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Teachers’ Leadership in the Classroom:

Bridging Theory and Practice in Classroom

Management

By Carina Tångring and Stina Öhman

Being a teacher is being a professional and confident leader. This article focuses on teachers’
professional leadership as authoritative, trustworthy, authentic, and honest. The authors
highlight some skills and strategies necessary for successful leadership that can be learned and
developed. They give a theoretical background and bridge the research to classroom practice.
Some paragraphs are followed by questions to inspire the reader to reflect upon what has been
discussed.

s adjunct lecturers in need of relevant literature for an international course in
Ahigher education on leadership, we decided to write this article specifically
targeting student teachers at the university and teachers. Our goal was to give a
general overview of knowledge and strategies that a teacher can adopt to become a
good leader in the classroom. From the perspective of classroom management and
nonverbal communication in Swedish schools, we present a reflection on previous
research as well as on a shared experience gained from different fields such as
schools and universities.
Teachers with good leadership skills are more likely to perform high-quality
teaching and to achieve good educational outcomes. Further, teaching is an
interpersonal profession that takes place in a social context where relational
competence and good communication skills are crucial. The way one communicates
verbally and nonverbally will influence how he or she is perceived by people they
meet. A teacher’s leadership affects the learning in the classroom and, therefore, a
good teacher is also a good leader.

Theoretical Points of Departure of Teachers’ Leadership
The Social Context
The socio-cultural field of research started with Vygotsky’s theories about learning
as a social process. Darling-Hammond and Bransford (2005) discussed Vygotsky’s
research and explained that, from originally seeing learning as an individual process,
Vygotsky broadened the concept of learning by connecting the individual process to
an external process including the society and the social context. Thus, the teacher
needs to create a cooperative learning climate in the classroom and should be open-
minded and also show interest in the students’ lives outside of the classroom. Doing
so will shape an atmosphere in the classroom built on trust where students dare to
share their knowledge and ask questions without being afraid of giving a wrong
answer. Consequently, learning outcomes will benefit from the social context in the
classroom. This thinking reflects a paradigm shift that occurred in the early 1990s
in the field of classroom management: from an authoritarian and disciplinarian
perspective to a motivational perspective focusing on leadership qualities, teaching
skills, and learner-centered environments (Randolph & Evertson, 1994).

6 The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin: International Journal for Professional Educators