Redefining the teacher as leader: Problems and prospects in Eritrea

As leadership in business, technology, various professions, and public institutions has become more participatory and representative over the past 30 years. Education has also taken to boasting of the inclusion of teachers, its lowest-ranking professionals, in its policy-creation and management processes. Teacher leadership is not about “teacherpower.” Rather, it is about mobilizing the still largely untapped attributes of teachers to strengthen student performance at ground level and working toward real collaboration, a locally tailored kind of shared leadership, in the daily life of the school. Teachers must be an essential part of that leadership, never more so than when issues of instructional leadership are at stake. There is no exaggeration if we say that teacher as a leader canbring a sustainable development in any country. Establishment of National Board for Higher Education (NBHE) is one of the progressive and a qualitative sign in the history of Eritrean education which undoubtedly will not only bring the qualitative and quantitative changes in higher education but also at each level of education by preparing, orienting and involving teachers as key elements in decision taking process. Leadership in public education is a matter of guiding a community to realize its potentialto do the best job it can for its children. There are many priorities but only limited resources with which to succeed. And no action can really succeed without consensus for a focused, shared vision of what must be done. To provide a starting point for discussion in a community in respect to recruit teachers and to determine their roles in new perspective of education, the present article provides a number of questions that you might want to examine