Teacher leadership and autonomous student learning: Adjusting to the new realities

This paper focuses on a most significant domain of inner power of teachers’ lives—their leadership of student learning. Traditional conceptions of teacher leadership owe much to the presumption of a classroom, or a formally designated site, where teacher instructed learning takes place. However, the rise of the Internet, with its ready availability of information has resulted in a shift towards much greater autonomy in student learning. The study reported here explores the perceptions of students, teachers, and parents about this shift to teacher-less learning, and the consequences it has for how we are to understand teacher leadership, especially where it concerns student engagement and participation in school. It also explores the efforts teachers themselves have made to understand their role amid these new realities.