Dr. Joshua Barnett is an educational thought leader who has spent his career working to improve the effectiveness of teacher leaders. In an interview, he discussed how teacher leaders can establish trust, develop deep instructional knowledge, and build credibility with their colleagues. He also shared his thoughts on why the teaching profession is challenged with recruitment and turnover and how teacher leaders can be a key solution to helping principals manage the teaching situation. Barnett emphasized the importance of getting it right, rather than being right, and reminded us that localized solutions are often the most effective.
- Bringing professional learning to effective teacher leaders.
- Supported over 300,000 educators and 3.5 million students
- How teacher leadership matters.
- Engage with and serve as the bridge between the leadership team and the rest of the school
- Provide instructional support -
- Collaboration with other teachers
- Coaching other adults
- Instructional feedback
- 1. Establish trust
- 2. Deep instructional knowledge
- Identify the needs of other adults
- 3. Credibility
- Ownership of their learning
- How do we help them take ownership of their learning
- What is the expectation that teachers have by going?
- Autonomy, capacity, and support
- Teacher leader as conduit from national/regional training.
- The only learning that is valued is the “approved” learning.
- System-wide approach to help teacher leaders take on an approach
- Why is our profession challenged with recruitment and turnover.
- Committed to building educator effectiveness.
- Practical conversations - teacher leaders are a key solution to helping principals manage the teaching situation.
- Get it right, rather than being right.
- Reminded vs. instructed.
- Localized solutions.
- How the role of the principal plays into this paradigm.
- District-based certification model
- How to be a transformative principal? Key strategy is to rely on teacher leaders for success. Giving them the time to go through the building and have a conversation.
Dr. Joshua Barnett is NIET's chief executive officer, responsible for overseeing all of the organization's operations including service delivery, research and evaluation, professional learning and learning technology development, policy and communications, financial operations, and higher education partnerships. He is also the author of Unleashing Teacher Leadership: A Toolkit for Ensuring Effective Instruction in Every Classroom
Previously, Josh served as president and chief operating officer for NIET, where he supported NIET partnerships with strategic oversight of research, NIET's higher education innovation, and service delivery. He was also the principal leader and investigator for NIET's successful federal projects. He has been with NIET since January 2013 when he joined as the organization's senior vice president of research and evaluation. In that role, he led NIET's research agenda and production of evidentiary support for all initiatives and grant programs. He also directed all external evaluation projects and research services.
Josh's research work throughout his career has explored how to improve educator quality in all schools for all students by addressing two related issues: examining how teachers and principals are evaluated and how resources are distributed to and used within schools.
Before joining NIET, Josh worked as an assistant professor of education policy and evaluation at Arizona State University, a visiting scholar at Massey University in New Zealand and a research associate in the Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas.
Josh has taught courses in research methods, school finance, evaluation, and educational psychology; worked as an evaluator for nearly three dozen federal and state grants; served as an evaluator for the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences; and worked with local, state and national government agencies and organizations on projects aimed at improving educator effectiveness.
He is author of Unleashing Teacher Leadership: A Toolkit for Ensuring Effective Instruction in Every Classroom and has been published in a variety of outlets, including Review of Educational Research, Teachers College Record, Educational Leadership, New Zealand Education Review, and Issues in Teacher Education. He is also co-author of A Straightforward Guide to Teacher Merit Pay: Encouraging and Rewarding Schoolwide Improvement and Learning on the Job: How Evaluation Systems Can Support Teacher Growth.
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