Echoes and Mirrors: Respectful Teacher Leadership and Leadership Acceptance Among Adolescent Students

Abstract

Teacher leadership has gained some recognition in the context of school improvement and usually pertains to more or less administrative activities. Little inquiry concentrates on the teacher as a leadership figure in the classroom and students' acceptance of their teachers' leadership. Adolescent students especially seem more and more reluctant to accept teachers' leadership in their lives. Although most of them have relatively clear expectations about what they expect from teachers, few teachers seem to fulfill these expectations. Recent leadership studies in the European arena have concentrated on the concept of respect as a crucial part of successful leadership. Critical incident reports and questionnaires yield data, both qualitative and quantitative, to explore adolescent students' perception of respectful and disrespectful teacher treatments and their effects on students' acceptance of teacher leadership.