After reading Law and Glover’s article about “Leading effective teams” it becomes even clearer that the concepts of teamwork and flatter hierachies are key levers for school improvement and effectivenes.
Once a team has been created (and survived the Forming and Storming period) the above goals should be reached.
For the teacher librarian there are different teams that he /she should be a member in and or a leader for: Firstly the library team itself. The TL has to be a leader to a group of peaople, often non academic, such as Library assistant, library technicians, etc. Certainly here the focus is more on operationalthan educational decisions, but one of the teams where I personally had to go through tough times in order to become a true leader!
Other teams a TL should be part of are e.g. the Literacy Teacher Team, English Domain, E-Learning Team. In my case these teams already excist at the school, so being a leader here is possible as “leading from the middle” and through gaining more and more influence by demonstrating knowledge and the willingnes to collaborate.
edda13 