Throughout “Inside the Fellowship“ blog series we have shared how early-career high school math and science teachers use collaborative inquiry to strengthen educational opportunities for their students. Fellows do this by examining the impact of their identities on their teaching practice, building collaborative learning communities, systematically examining data to inform their instructional decisions, and learning alongside veteran teachers. In this final blog of the series, we describe how we support Fellows in knowledge sharing, the impact of this support, and broader implications for early-career teachers and those that support them.

What is Knowledge sharing and why is it important for teachers?

At Knowles, we support teachers in systematically investigating their practice to generate knowledge that strengthens the profession. We view knowledge sharing as a professional stance— an orientation toward making learning visible. This means teachers intentionally name what they’ve learned through study, reflection, and growth, and share those insights with others in their local and national communities. In doing so, they demonstrate that teachers’ expertise matters, that localized knowledge has value, and that sharing this knowledge creates ripple effects beyond a single classroom. When teachers share their knowledge, they not only deepen their own practice but also amplify their impact across classrooms and systems.

How does Knowles support teachers in sharing their knowledge?

Knowles’ vision of teacher leaders encompasses teachers working collaboratively with others to impact education, including generating and sharing knowledge about teaching. In the previous blog, “The Power of Inquiry: Cultivating Equitable Teaching Practices through Collaborative Knowledge Generation,” we highlighted knowledge statements Fellows generated about their classroom practices. Just as critical and important for the future of education, however, is teacher-generated knowledge about leading, creating change in school communities, and developing identities as effective teacher leaders.

In the final year of the Teaching Fellowship, we ask Fellows to do just that — expand their focus outward to issues affecting their broader educational communities. While Fellows have already discovered that nothing in schools happens in isolation, this is the first time we formally introduce them to systems thinking. Fellows spend the year analyzing their school communities as systems and examining the impact of different changes on their systems. At the end of the year, Fellows craft and share stories about what they have learned about teacher leadership through this system-based inquiry work. The results are powerful, candid accounts of the trials and triumphs of early-career teaching within complex systems of multiple stakeholders and competing visions.

The Final Year Inquiry Structure

Throughout the Fellowship, Fellows engage in collaborative inquiry within critical friend groups, called inquiry groups, that focus on cohortwide questions. In the final year, the inquiry question is “What does teacher leadership mean in my professional context?” This question requires Fellows to generate knowledge that impacts teachers and students beyond their own classrooms.

• Summer: At the Summer Meeting, Fellows begin with reflections and conversations to continue building their shared understanding of teacher leadership. Fellows who are completing the Fellowship model knowledge sharing by presenting their leadership stories during a listening party, sparking dialogue with Year 5 Fellows. These conversations help Fellows envision their school communities as systems and begin developing personal, context-based inquiry questions. Between Summer and Fall, Fellows collect data that they will then analyze at their Fall Meeting. This launches their first inquiry cycle.
• Fall: At the Fall Meeting, Fellows are introduced to a framework to help them identify leverage points in their contexts. They analyze their own data, others’ data, and select leadership stories through this lens, generating knowledge together about what leadership looks like in different settings.
• Winter/Spring: Fellows engage in two additional inquiry cycles. In the second cycle, they deepen their understanding of how components of school communities interact to shape teachers’ work. With these insights, they then take a leadership action designed to make positive change. In the third cycle, they gather and analyze data from that action, further adding to their collective understanding of teacher leadership.
• Spring: At the Spring Meeting, Fellows then bring together their inquiry work across the year. They draft knowledge statements about their school systems, reflect on their growth as leaders individually and collectively, and begin drafting their own leadership stories.

How has this supported Fellows’ leadership development?

The final year of the Fellowship helps Fellows recognize their own teaching stories as valuable contributions to the profession. By engaging in cycles of inquiry and knowledge sharing, Fellows come to see that their everyday experiences hold lessons that others can learn from. One Fellow reflected that even when they doubted the significance of their story, colleagues “got a lot out of my sharing.” Another noted, “I learned that my story had value to others and that I had created something useful.”

Sharing knowledge publicly also shifted Fellows’ understanding of teacher leadership itself. Early in the Fellowship, many wrestled with questions about whether leadership must be formal or tied to specific roles. By the end of the final year, after inquiring into their schools as systems and sharing their insights, Fellows described a broader definition—one that includes listening, relationship-building, small-scale collaborations, questioning and inquiry, and community-building. As one Fellow recognized, “the decisions we make, the questions we ask, and the actions we take every day…are all demonstrations of leadership.” Another captured the spirit of this stance by asserting, “thoughtful questioning IS a form of action (it’s not passive!).”

These reflections illustrate how inquiry and knowledge sharing cultivate a professional stance toward leadership—one that values local knowledge, prioritizes collaboration, and affirms that teacher leadership is dynamic and relational. Importantly, this stance does not end with the Fellowship. Fellows described future actions ranging from pursuing professional development on small scale-collaborations to communicating with district leaders about funding to sharing and publishing their stories in wider professional and affinity groups.

Implications

For those who support early-career teachers, the work described here carries important implications. Teachers benefit from spaces where their classroom insights and professional experiences are recognized as vital and worth generating, sharing, and building on. In addition, our work with teachers should encourage an understanding that early-career teachers contribute insights just as essential as veteran educators. And all teachers, including early-career teachers, need structures that make their leadership visible—through inquiry, data, and storytelling—and communities that affirm the value of their local expertise. Supporting early-career teachers in this way not only strengthens their practice, but also enriches the profession by amplifying the impact of their learning across classrooms and systems.