Non-Positional Teacher Leadership

Non-positional teacher leadership is a practice developed over several decades through scholarship and experience led by David Frost.

What is non-positional teacher leadership?

The term non-positional teacher leadership refers to the conviction that teachers, regardless of their status or position in the organisation of the school, can be empowered and enabled to lead change. This is unlikely to occur however unless teachers are provided with appropriate forms of support.

David Frost, an academic and former teacher, has collaborated with many teachers, academics and partners in civil society organisations over a period of more than three decades to develop and promote the kind of support that enables teachers to become agents of change.

About this site

The NPTL site has been created as a repository for books and other resources connected to the development of support for non-positional teacher leadership over the past 30 or more years.

The creation of this site, alongside the open access publication of a book and support materials, are a core part of the legacy of the HertsCam Network. HertsCam is a UK-based charity dedicated to enabling teachers to become agents of change. It is hoped that these resources will enable school principals, teachers, academics, government agencies and civil society organisations to launch programmes of support for NPTL.

History of NPTL
International projects
Books & papers

History of NPTL

The idea of non-positional teacher leadership (NPTL) began when David Frost took over the leadership of an Advanced Diploma programme at Canterbury Christchurch College in Kent, UK. One of the students told David that he did not have the time for his written assignment because he was very busy leading an innovation at school. This raised the question of whether the focus of the assignment could be adjusted to match the actual professional problem he was committed to solving.

MORE ABOUT NPTL

ABOUT DAVID FROST

International projects

NPTL has become an international initiative. Our books have been read all over the world and translated into several languages to make them accessible to international teachers and policy makers. The cause of non-positional teacher leadership has been advanced in many parts of the world where programmes were initiated under the banner of the International Teacher Leadership (ITL) initiative.

Books & papers

Over the years David Frost and colleagues have written, edited and contributed to a number of books, papers, reports and guides on NPTL and related topics. These are all linked to via this website, with many PDFs available to download free of charge.

BROWSE BOOKS

BROWSE ARCHIVE

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Read our latest book

Our latest book, Teachers and the Practice of Leadership: Enabling change for transformation and social justice, is available in various formats, along with comprehensive Support Materials from Routledge. This book will be available to pre-order from 14 July 2025.

ACCESS THE PUBLICATION

Change comes about when people articulate hope, focus their imagination, envisage possibilities and then organise pathways to that better future.

Browse the archive

For those who wish to find out more about about NPTL, we have a wealth of downloadable resources in our archive such as papers, book chapters and reports which have been compiled over the years by David Frost and his colleagues.

VIEW THE ARCHIVE

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