Viewing STEM Teacher Leadership Through a Communities-of-Practice Lens

In this chapter, we share findings from the collaborative Noyce teacher leadership project, and how communities of practice can provide a lens to view the development and support of teacher leadership activities and identities. With eight Track 3 Noyce projects collaborating to collect and analyze data related to Master Teaching Fellows’ (MTFs) teacher leadership trajectories and influences, we share findings from a variety of contexts. The research reported here centers on the following questions: 1) What are the key features of the Noyce communities of practice, and how do they impact the professional identities of the MTFs? and 2) What are the boundary objects and what are the natures of the border crossings that affect the transfer of meanings and practices between the MTFs’ Noyce and school external communities of practice (CoPs)? This chapter provides a series of vignettes to explore these questions in the context of different Noyce Track 3 MTF projects. The communities of practice allowed MTFs to grow together into professional identities as teacher leaders, and then to use the external Noyce communities of practice to in turn develop and strengthen their internal school communities of practice. This type of boundary crossing, bringing information from one community to another (including bridging research-practice gaps), became a central feature of the work of the MTFs. The chapter concludes with recommendations to various stakeholders for how they can best develop and support teacher leaders.