The Teacher Leadership Competencies are designed to fulfill a charge: to frame a vision for transformative teacher leadership and express that vision in a set of competencies that teachers can use as a resource for identification, guidance, reflection, and inspiration. The competencies can serve as guideposts for teachers to learn about their own beliefs, dispositions, and talents and expand their reach, taking action that advances student learning and the teaching profession.

The standards address three vital pathways: association, instructional, and policy leadership, as well as a set of overarching competencies that all teacher leaders must understand and develop and a set of foundational competencies focused on diversity, equity, and cultural competence that ground and infuse the work of teacher leaders to effectively engage with diverse groups of people on their journey within and across the leadership pathways (Instruction, Policy, and Association).

This document was developed by the Center for Teaching Quality, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and the National Education Association (NEA) as part of their Teacher Leadership Institute (TLI) partnership. TLI is a leadership development program for teachers passionate about leading the profession.

Foundational documents for the development process included the NEA Leadership Competencies as well as the Teacher Leader Model Standards developed by the Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium. The Teacher Leadership Competencies is a document created thanks largely to the experience and insightful contributions of the following teacher leaders: Jennifer Barnett, Mauro Diaz, Sandy Merz, Cheryl Redfield, Tammy Wawro, and Blake West