Revealing the balancing act of vertical and shared leadership in Teacher Design Teams

Teacher Design Teams (TDTs) are professional learning communities in which teachers collaborate to (re)design educational materials. Although studies have indicated that leadership is vital for TDTs’ functioning, providing adequate leadership is challenging. Both shared and vertical leadership are needed, and how to combine them is not obvious. TDT participants and coaches might benefit from insight into what shared and vertical leadership look like in practice. In this study, we monitored two TDTs that used a stepwise method that integrates shared and vertical leadership. Findings reveal that combining shared and vertical leadership in TDTs is possible, but remains a challenging balancing act.