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EDU
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Bookmarks: Adult learning theory (andragogy)... Thinking about school leadership at Villanova University...
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Seminar #1: As we read books, listen to others, and attend to our projects, we find ourselves struck by thoughts that suddenly intrude into our consciousness. Oftentimes (for example, in a graduate class) these thoughts relate what we have been reading, listening to, and concentrating upon with our work in schools. Suddenly, it is as if an inner voice intrudes into our consciousness and says, “This is how this would (or wouldn’t) work in my school.” While momentarily distracting us from what we are concentrating upon, these intrusive thoughts are, in actuality, very important to if not the very matter of professional practice. They move us between the abstract and theoretical and the concrete and practical, building a conceptual bridge over an unnecessary, but all too prevalent, chasm dividing theory from practice. How often have you thought to yourself at faculty in‑service programs, “That will never work here?”, and then, after reflecting upon the idea and your situation, suddenly discovered a way that it would work? Then, just as suddenly, we find ourselves snapping back into reality, instantaneously returning to what we were doing just prior to our act of reflective thought. I want to argue that these intrusive thoughts, these flashes of imaginative insight, are very important, particularly in a professional graduate program, for they focus us upon the relationships (or lack of relationship) uniting theory and practice. Without reflective thought, we run the risk that our study shall devolve into a purely abstract and theoretical approach to our subject of inquiry, the stuff of quirky professors festooned in their strange regalia in an Ivory Tower but surely not the real stuff of school leadership. Or, perhaps, we shall turn our inquiry into a sharing of war stories, what has or hasn’t worked for us, as if school leadership is nothing more than a series of tales and anecdotes, the stuff of tribal chieftains. Worse yet, we can make our inquiry a matter of following recipes prescribed in school leadership cookbooks, uncritically imitating what we’ve been told to do and, if it doesn’t work, blaming those who told us to do it without accepting any responsibility for our unthinking actions. Surely we do not want to imitate the Nazis at Nuremberg. I call these flashes of insight “left-hand” thoughts. As a concept, left-hand thoughts introduce the notion that our fleeting insights, oftentimes sparked by reading professional literature, engaging in substantive discussion about our craft, or merely thinking about what has happened in practice, are intended to be noted, reviewed, categorized, and acted upon. Our left-hand thoughts, sparked by our mind’s reflective capacity, are the first step on the long pathway of school leadership, that is, unleashing hitherto untapped resources of human creative potential to resolve the nettlesome problems of practice. Our left-hand thoughts are not to be forgotten! But, unless we are attentive and make not of them, they dissipate as quickly as rain droplets on a sun baked sidewalk in July. It is especially important for aspiring school leaders, I believe, to develop the habit of taking note of their left‑hand thoughts and writing them down, what I call “taking left-hand notes.” What I am arguing that you do is to undertake the difficult practice of noting your reflections (those left-hand thoughts), writing them down (left-hand notes), and then, reflecting upon your reflections (left-hand reflections). More abstractly, I am challenging you through this process to become a critical thinker. I want you to move beyond knowing things (the first level of critical thinking, “epistemic thought”) and understanding them (the second level of critical thinking, “cognitive thought”). Most, if not all of us, have been raised in an educational milieu that taught us to focus upon knowing and understanding what we have been taught. And, we were rewarded well when we knew and understood these things. We got good grades, achieved our academic ambitions, and experienced pride in ourselves, especially when we were accepted into graduate school. As graduate students enrolled in a professional program, I want you now to begin exercising your capacity to think about your thinking (the third level of critical thinking, “metacognitive thought”). This does not mean that you skip over knowing and understanding what you are reading, what others are saying, or what you are doing. As a professional, you should be motivated to know and understand these things because they are so terribly important to you, your profession, and your life. They are the content of your professional knowledge base. Rather, the concept of metacognitive thought suggests that you begin to recognize, focus upon, and note what it is that you are thinking about in response to these important things. This attunes your mind to the intricacies associated with professional practice, moving you away from “knowing and understanding what professionals do” to “being a professional in actual practice episodes.” I call the writing of these left-hand thoughts “taking left-hand notes” simply because the majority of the human species are right-handed and tend to take notes on the right-hand side of their notebooks. I want you to learn to utilize the left-hand side of your notebooks and textbooks to make note of your left-hand thoughts. Write them down, sketch them out, and relate what you are thinking about to the materials you normally would put down on the right‑hand side of your notebooks. (For my part, I am left-handed, but that doesn’t mean my notes are to be “right-hand” notes.) Once you’ve learned to take left-hand notes (even in the margins of your notebooks and textbooks), then go back and reflect upon these flashes of insight again and again. Be systematic about it: go back when you study for a test, as you design a project for a class, as you start a new class or project, or even as you craft a program for personal or faculty professional development. Talk with other members of your cohort as well as other colleagues about your left-hand notes. Share your flashes of insight. Allow others to challenge you with their insights, too. Engage in substantive discourse about your profession, that is, learn what it is that you stand for. Return to your left-hand notes again and again; sketch new notes, discard dated ones. Develop an appreciation for your ideas by categorizing them, seeing how you’ve grown in your appreciation of the intricacies of what, at first, seemed like simple ideas and solutions to the problems of professional practice. Then, given your discourse with others, adapt your notes. Above all, don’t underestimate the value of your left-hand notes. These jottings and scribblings are the difficult, first steps in developing your intellectual life, i.e., stretching your metacognitive ability. Your left‑hand notes are the chief means by which you can examine and interpret your life experience and the ideas you will confront all through your life and professional practice. They are a valuable resource for thinking about problems in practice, an ally in your efforts to make schools work for kids. (And, as an added stimulus, they will be the materials that will be the substance of your School Leadership Statement, that final effort on your part to organize and make sense of all that you will have learned in the School Leadership Program at Villanova University.) To make left-handed notes, students need to:
To effect school change, principals must broaden their perspective from a paranoid preoccupation with problems related to school management, interpersonal relations, and instructional leadership to understanding the school as a system of interdependent subsystems and how the components of the school system—both internal and external—impact the nature of planned programming and the change process. The principal is both a change agent and a programmer who enables the school organization to fulfill its responsibilities to society. Assumptions of planned programming: The school leader is a change agent who functions as a helper and facilitator in involving and helping the faculty to become aware of their needs, to formulate educational goals and objectives to meet those needs, to devise and to implement means for achieving those goals and objectives, and subsequently, to fulfill their needs (to be a “leader of learners”). The school leader is a programmer functioning within the context of a school system, in which interactions with colleagues significantly influence programming decisions (a “shepherd” vs. a “manager”). The school leader’s personality, philosophy, and style influence the system as well as the programming process (and vice-versa). The school leader possesses a strong conceptual base from which to view the programmatic situation, as well as special diagnostic skills in planning and directing the change process within the school system (in Latin, “pro-fidere,” i.e., a professional who "professes" what one believes). The school leader makes decisions from among multiple choices at every stage and step in the programming process (i.e., contingency planning).
The school leader is adept in
planning, designing, implementing, evaluating, and accounting for program
outcomes (i.e., a strategist and tactician engaged in action research vs. a
theorist devoted to basic and applied research). These assumptions provide a framework for specifying the school leader's goal. Viewing the school organization is viewed as a system, the school leader's role is to effect long-term, planned change in the behavior of all of those people who participate in the system. In light of this goal, the school leader accepts three challenges. The first challenge involves analyzing the sociocultural context of the desired change (the goal to be achieved), identifying educational needs in the particular context (the learning to take place), and acting in congruence with supporting the school as a learning organization (the adult learning process). To this end, the school leader: develops a thorough understanding of and commitment to the school’s mission, philosophy, structure, processes, and culture; and, is committed to the school’s continual renewal as a dynamic, change-focused system. The school leader’s second responsibility is one of forging linkages, that is, to study, analyze, and map the faculty and its leaders, and to interface with them to identify, assess, and analyze expressed learning needs. To this end, the school leader: gathers, interprets, and plans utilizing data from a variety of objective and subjective sources; studies, analyzes, and maps the faculty; identifies and to interacts with faculty leaders utilizing both formal and informal groups; and, identifies, assesses, and analyzes the faculty’s needs through by collaborating with leaders, groups, and individual faculty members. The school leader’s third responsibility is to oversee the change process, from program design through program evaluation and reporting of outcomes. This responsibility includes: translating and incorporating expressed needs into a planned program; designing and implementing a strategic plan to achieve desired goals; assessing and evaluating the impact of the planned program and strategic plan in effecting behavior change in faculty; using assessment and evaluation findings and feedback for program revisions and school renewal; and, reporting outcomes and future plans to school and community. The leadership skills that school leaders need to fulfill include, among others:
Adult learning theory (andragogy)... Andragogy is an educational philosophy which assumes that adults move toward self-direction, use their experience as a learning resource, are ready to learn in accordance with socio-developmental tasks, and desire immediate application of learning to the primary context. Andragogy is not “adult education” nor “in-service” as educators typically understand those terms. Instead, andragogy reflects a humanistic conception of adults as self-directed and autonomous learning, facilitators of their own learning. Andragogy casts the principal’s role in a different light, that is, as the school’s “chief learning officer” or “leader of learners.” Working with teachers to develop their professional knowledge base by integrating theory and skills with each teacher’s experience, principals attempt to inculcate in their teachers a developmental, progressive, increasingly comprehensive understanding of professional practice and what it requires of them. In short, the principal is the individual charged with building a collaborative body of professionals who seek to enact a culture of excellence by inquiring into their actual practice and structuring a learning program that will change practice from “what is” to “what ought to be.” General principles of andragogy: The school leader is a change agent who functions as a helper and facilitator in involving and helping the faculty to become aware of their needs, to formulate educational goals and objectives to meet those needs, to devise and to implement means for achieving those goals and objectives, and subsequently, to fulfill their needs (to be a “leader of learners”). To this end, a school leader must realize that:
Based upon these assumptions and primarily because the school leader views teachers as proactive in their attitude toward school change, the school leader understands professional development and programming for it as:
This goal implies some school leader behaviors, which include:
The primary signal of effectiveness as the school’s Chief Learning Officer is that the school leader provides a positive and compelling rationale that motivates teachers to engage in professional learning. The school leader can assess one's effectiveness in this role by asking oneself:
Thinking about school leadership at Villanova University... By means of introduction, school leadership involves a variety of responsibilities that an individual accepts to see to it that the people, the process, and the technology of schooling—curriculum, teaching, and learning—deliver on their promise to form capable, adult citizens. A school leader is the school's Chief Learning Officer, a person who possesses a "super-vision" about how the individual parts can integrate and create a synergy of effects that enable people, process, and technology to work together in a way that achieves this vision (Sergiovanni & Starratt, 1988). At the same time, a school leader recognizes that building a school culture wherein professional development engenders school change requires carefully planned programming built upon the principles of adult learning theory (andragogy). As important as all of that is, however, it allows for something else, something more substantive, to transpire. That is, as school leaders engage teachers in professional discourse that is attentive to the issues of improving curriculum and provide support and opportunities for the teachers' professional growth and development, school leaders engage the professional members of the school community in democratic self-governance. School leadership, as this concept is understood at Villanova University, requires a new type of person, namely, a "culture builder" who is dedicated to building "teacher leadership" (Barth 2001). This school leader possesses the capacity to construct a shared vision with all the members of the school community, to convene opportunities for professional discourse and conversation among teachers and administrators, is insistent upon improving student learning, evokes and supports teacher learning, models and participates in collaborative processes, helps to pose questions, and facilitates dialogue that addresses the confounding issues educators experience in practice (Lambert, 2002). In sum, this new type of school leader is intent upon school-based educational reform by creating the conditions which build a democratic professional learning community. Barth, R. R. (2001, February). Teacher leader. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(6), 443-449. Lambert, L. (2002, May). A framework for shared leadership. Educational Leadership, 58(8), 37‑40. Sergiovanni, T. J., & Starratt, R. J. (1988). Supervision: Human perspectives (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. |
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