School leaders and policymakers must look carefully at the roles available to teacher leaders, recognizing the value in leading on ideas that emerge from others or from groups with which those leaders are involved.

As schools nationwide respond to increasingly complex CCSS requirements, such as tailoring general reading comprehension strategies to better fit disciplinary-specific reading, writing, and communication stan­dards, collaborative models for professional learning, and particularly mod­els led by teacher leaders, may become increasingly necessary

the roles played by teacher leaders are becoming more vital for supporting these types of models, ultimately facilitating systematic changes in school culture and teachers’ practice

In fact, PLC structures, perhaps due to their recent hurried and often mandatory implementation in many districts across the country, often fail to live up to the ideals behind the model

He went on to explain that this mix of participation and leadership meant that team members could literally “see” her involvement in the work, which bolstered their interest and commitment.

structures she provided, such as clear agendas, detailed fol­low-up notes, and what one teacher described as a running “to-do list” for the group, helped her team members to stay deeply and intently engaged on their chosen focus for inquiry, and the result was what she described as “massive momentum [for] our group

mportant balance between structure and inquiry and the vital role that structure plays in allowing the inquiry at the heart of PLCs to play out

Ultimately, team leaders’ focus on and commitment to the structure of PLCs and the content of the inquiry cycles was crucial as they planned and led focused meetings.

The structure of PLCs, alone, may not have produced the new learning and the ultimate benefits to teachers’ practice described above.

Teachers require guid­ance as they learn to move from what Nelson, Deuel, Slavit, and Kennedy(2010) term “congenial conversations”—which focus on safety, privacy, and preserving the status quo, to “collegial conversations,” which focus on digging into practice, wrestling with disagreements, and building new knowledge and practice together (

However, even with a leader present, teachers do not always know how to collaborate effectively, nor is it always clear what they might discuss (

The structure provided by PLCs may allow teacher leaders to realize their full potential as they facilitate colleagues’ growth, without encountering some of the hindrances that can come with more informal leadership

The current study adds to this body of research by discussing specific ways teachers work with teacher leaders and how these teachers perceive the teacher leaders’ work as shap­ing their practice