Educating Teachers Matters Seminar: Dr David Frost

Register for this edition of the Teaching Education Matters seminar to hear Dr David Frost’s paper on the non-positional teacher leadership approach, most recently explored in his new book (Routledge, 2026).

Over the course of three decades, David has developed an approach to teacher leadership grounded in a fundamental principle: that anyone working in a school, regardless of status, experience or position could be enabled to exercise leadership for change.

David’s work on teacher leadership began as a school-based programme – a framework of support through which teachers would be empowered and enabled to improve practice. In the early 2000s, the HertsCam Network was founded, eventually becoming a charity led by teachers and schools. In 2008, HertsCam launched the International Teacher Leadership initiative. Certification from the university was a motivating factor, but more importantly, enablement came in the form of protocols for reflection, discussion and planning activities within a series of after-school workshop sessions. The approach was developed in schools in the UK and abroad and informed by critical scholarship, doctoral studies and external evaluations. Its evolution featured the development of school-based facilitators, the use of tools to enable structured reflection and discussion and inter-school networking. Each participant designed their own action plan for a development project through which they managed a collaborative process, focused on addressing a particular instance of educational injustice.

Dr David Frost

David is currently an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College and was a member of the Faculty of Education at Cambridge for twenty years. Having taught in state schools in the 1970s and 1980s, David transferred to the university sector to teach on initial teacher education programmes. He later concentrated on programmes for practising teachers and on educational leadership and school improvement. He co-founded the Leadership for Learning Network and was founder of the HertsCam Network which he directed until recently. With colleagues in HertsCam, he launched the International Teacher Leadership initiative which led to programmes to support teacher leadership in countries in Europe, the Western Balkans, the Middle East and Central Asia. He has developed strategies to enable teachers to become agents of change as an approach to educational reform. He launched the Teacher Leadership in Kazakhstan initiative and in 2024 he worked with UNESCO to launch the Remote and Rural Schools project in regions across Kazakhstan. He continues to publish and address audiences of educational leaders around the world.

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