Teacher leadership and communities of practice: Female teachers’ experiences in Pakistan

Abstract

This small-scale qualitative study examines the lived experiences and enactment of female teacher leadership in communities of practice in four schools in Pakistan. The study used the Community of Practice Teacher Leadership Model (CoPTLM) to explore teacher leadership as it develops within a CoP setting and to investigate if this model could be applied in a non-Western context. Our focus on female teachers explored the opportunities that leading CoPs offered them in developing their identities as leaders and the ways in which they structured professional learning for their teaching colleagues. Our findings indicate that supporting professional learning is difficult in contexts where teacher leadership and CoPs present new ways of working, and where numerous other structural barriers exist. The study highlighted the benefits of the CoPTLM in conducting research in a non-Western context and the limitations of this model in that context.

Keywords

References

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Copyright (c) 2026 Marie Clarke, Deirdre Raftery, Magdelina Kitanova, Ruth Ferris, Ellen Regan, Thanh Nguyen Thao Tran, Angeliki Lima, Catherine Nowlan-Roebuck