Education Leadership

• What is leadership and educational leadership, in particular?

Leadership is moving a group of people in a particular direction. Educational leadership is leadership in a school setting. There are many different leadership styles, some more effective than others, depending on the context and individuals you are leading.

• What is the purpose of educational leadership?

The purpose of educational leadership is to support the school community and stakeholders in living and breathing the mission and vision statement of teh school. This includes visionary leadership, strategic planning, professional growth of staff, school growth, meeting individual student needs and developing a cohesive community.

• Where do we gain our knowledge and ideas about both educational leadership and leadership in general?

The best and worst examples of educational leadership is gained through experience. Through various roles, I have encountered leaders that inspire me or frustrate me with their decision making. I admire leadership in many different arenas especially in the school setting with teachers, students and administrators. Through this masters, I hope I gain more theoretical knowledge about leadership that will help me develop my own leadership skills.

• List some  big questions that you have about educational leadership that you would like to examine in this subject.

• What do I need to develop personally to move into more senior education leadership roles?
• How might I enhance my current leadership abilities?
• How might leaders change their leadership styles in given situations?
• How might educational leadership differ for females?

Comparing Challenges and Issues of Educational Leadership Past and Present

My name is Emily MacLean and I am an Education Technology Coach at an international school in Singapore. Working at a private school gives me a very different perspective on schooling and leadership compared to growing up in a public school board. I am doing this course as part of my Masters of Education (Information Technologies) as my role provides me with a unique leadership position where I am not responsible for any teachers but yet responsible for supporting all teachers in their use of technology in the classroom.

• What do you think may have been the demands, key issues and dilemmas facing educational leaders/managers when you were attending school?
• Finances for resources
• Equality
• Parent expectations of their children
• Political pressures for curriculum, class sizes etc.
• Delivering content
• Teacher -centred approach
• Limited support for students with learning needs and special education students
• Accountability
• Reflect upon the current professional setting in which you are working and note down the demands, key issues and dilemmas facing yourself as a leader/administrator. Alternatively, if you are aspiring to leadership/management, list the demands, key issues and dilemmas facing leaders/administrators in your workplace
• Parents as stakeholders (private school setting) - expectations and demands
• Time (in general)
• Professional Development for teachers - Staying current with teaching practice
• Teacher shortage ( in public domains, international schools not facing this issue); Finding highly qualified staff
• Continually upgraded technology resources (finances)
• Technology integration
• Diversity
• Developing learning environments - flexible learning, finances
• Developing skills not content
• Student-centered approach - diverse needs, individualised
• Strategic planning - forward thinking, backwards by design
• Accountability - use of data driving instruction
• School vision
• Changing teaching roles to more of facilitators
• Inquiry learning
• Competing with other private schools for enrollment
• Are there areas that you have listed that are the same on the two lists? What areas/issues/dilemmas have you listed that are different?
• Budgeting and finances - resources, staffing, operational needs
• Teacher professional development
• Student behavior
• Parent expectations- change in parent expectations from student to expectations of the school
• Accountability - although changes to who school is accountable to
• Staying current trends
• Time

• Reflect: What key events have occurred in the world and in our lives which may have led to these differences?
• Some of the biggest changes have been due to the advances in technology. Technology has become more readily available and more affordable. Students have technology at home and now it’s been brought into the educational setting. This changes the learning environment by extending it beyond the classroom and also impacts how teachers must teach. Teachers are now facilitators in the learning environment supporting and co-creating with their students. No longer must teachers be the sole expert but one of many in the classroom. Teachers require more professional development as the educational setting continues to evolve in order to stay current.
• Research is becoming more prominent and more available to educators. Many teachers are becoming researchers themselves as they document their action research. Because of the increase in educational research, educators must continue to stay current by reading up on best practice and again, ensure they are receiving professional development to help them put this learning into their classroom.
• For many countries (like my home country of Canada), there have been changes in the government since I was in school. With the changes of political parties, there is changes to funding, teacher expectation, policies and even curriculum. This continues to be an area that educators have to be aware of to ensure they are aware of the changes as they occur.

Module 1: Designs for Social Learning

As I worked through the rubric identifying where I believed myself and the international school that I work at falls on, I was pleasantly surprised.

My shading fell under ‘more recent times’ and/or ‘new learning’ with blurred lines often between the two. I believe in empowering our students to learn what they want, where they want and when they want to. This is changing the institutional locations fo learning. Whether it’s students inquiring into their personal interests at home or in the community or supporting a younger student develop their learning of a topic, the four walls of the classroom are no longer stuck in place. Rather we have a global classroom at our fingertips as we can connect with other learners and experts from around the globe.

I am fortunate to work at a school with a plentiful amount of technology, allowing the tools for learning to be under ‘new learning’. What is most important now, is that we are asking the hard questions about what is happening with these technologies. It is not enough to just have them anymore. How we are using these devices for education and personalisation of learning environments is becoming more and more under the microscope.

I strongly believe students should have agency in their education. To see ‘new learning’ shaded for the balance of agency was not a surprise. Working in an inquiry school encourages our students to ask their own questions and seek answers to solve them. Students often take action through their inquiries and teachers are merely the facilitators of this learning. The responsibility of teachers is changing as they become one of many learners and experts in the classroom.

Module 1: Future of Learning Reflection

It was interesting watching Future of Teaching which was created in 2011 and comparing it to how today’s role of the teacher is. I believe that he is correct in saying that we need to use the tools we have to teach students more effectively. In our Early Years classroom, we have a set of 5 iPads per class and 4 iMacs. On almost a weekly basis, I hear one teacher saying that she needs more in order to do her job. But instead of asking for more, we should be looking at how we can use what we have and leverage this technology to benefit our students and facilitate learning. In the Early Years classrooms, students should have time for play-based learning, exploring and inquiring in the world around them. If every child had an iPad, it would be tempting to glue them all to them. In addition, with  the current iPads, how can we use them most effectively? Are we having students simply play drill and kill games? Or are we nurturing higher-order thinking through application and creation?

Personalised learning environments is something I am very passionate about and often use technology to facilitate this. By providing students choice and voice in how their learn content and demonstrate their understanding of it, they gain a deeper understanding of the content.

Introduction - Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Hi all, 

Great to see familiar names/faces popping up in the introductions already :) Hard to believe the journey is coming to an end so quickly! I'm finishing off my last 2 courses for my Masters of Education (Information Technologies) this term. I'm also taking  Educational Leadership in Contemporary Organisations. I'm looking forward to reflecting over the past year and a bit and really seeing how my thinking and practice has evolved. 

I'm currently living and working in Singapore at an international school as the Education Technology Coach. I've been in the role a year now and prior taught Year 5 for 2 years at the school. I have also worked in Beijing, Toronto and briefly in Japan. 

Mishra & Koehler's TPACK has been a reoccurring theme in my courses helping us think about how technology is integrated and the need for multiple types of knowledge to ensure effective integration. Vygotsky has always been a key player in my educational career. It has been nice to look back on a lot of educational theorists such as Howard Gardner, Jean Piaget,  and then learning new theorists such as George Siemens and his connectivism theory. As an education technology coach, this helped me think deeper into how students, teachers, and our communities are connected locally and globally and how we can best use these connections to develop a broader and more meaningful understanding of topics studied. 

Congratulations everyone on making it to their last course and best of luck this term! :)

Week 9 - Problem solving from a leadership perspective

One key issue is ensuring ongoing professional development meets the needs of turnover with staff and ongoing changes to technology to create implement effective pedagogy with technology integration. Every staff member is going to be at slightly different places on their learning journey with technology and it is crucial that, just like with our students, we try to meet all their needs. In international schools, there is a high turnover rate in comparison to public government-funded schools. This means that every year is a challenge to bring teachers up to a base level of knowledge when joining a school. It is important that the professional development is timely and ongoing according to Flanagan & Jacobsen (2003). While our school has a lot of professional development run by the education technology department, it also needs to be prioritized by the senior leadership team of both primary and secondary so that teachers feel the need to continue to upskill. Technology is constantly changing. Therefore, the professional development needs to continue to evolve with the technology with a focus on pedagogy and transferable skills to ensure teachers feel that professional development is a good use of their time. Some strategies to approach this problem would be for looking for edtech leaders within the organisation or each year group to mentor their teammates and find times to allow staff members to work together on personal goals in a collaborative environment.

References

Flanagan,L. & Jacobsen, M. (2003).Technology leadership for the twenty-first century principal, Journal of Educational Administration, 41( 2), 124 - 142.

Week 8 - ICT Resource Management Planning

Younie (2006) suggests that the UK ICT implementation had many challenges at the micro level such as slow internet and lack of technology in schools. In an international school, this is very much the opposite. We have a plethora of resources available to use with quality internet speed, funding to support new technology initiatives, education technology coaches to support staff and students and access to a number of different platforms for technology. The biggest challenge at the school micro level is that we have comes back to teacher training. With all of this technology and the international school turnover rate, teachers are constantly needing to be trained and upskilled to use the technology we do have effectively. At times, I wonder if so much technology being available to staff can be overwhelming. My role as a technology coach is to support teachers in figuring out what technologies are best for which task to make the learning meaningful and the technology integration enhance their learning.

Thinking from my Canadian experience, it is sometimes challenging for schools to gain buy-in on policies that were created by individuals who are not on the ground working with children and the technology every day. There is often a disconnect between a policy being created at the macro level and practice at the micro level. Policy creating takes time and with the changing of technology so quickly, it is essential that a policy for ICT implementation is created with this mind to allow for innovation and change. It is also important for policies to be reviewed and reflected on a yearly (at minimum) to ensure that what is written fits the needs of what is happening in reality.

I think international schools are unique to government schools as the school has more control over the policies for education. This can be both good and bad. While we don’t have a government creating the policies for us, we do still need to answer to certain governing or accrediting bodies. Firstly, we have our board of directors that oversee what happens in terms of policies in the school. We are accredited by WASC (Western Association of Schools and Colleges), the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) as an IB World School as well as EduTrust (Singapore governing body). Our policies and procedures need to meet the needs of all of our accrediting bodies. This can be tedious when each are slightly different while also creating policies that meet the individual needs of our school community. The Singapore government requires are quite different than an inquiry approach for the IBO, which can be challenging when creating policies. WASC and IBO are more similar in their accreditation processes and expectations of evidence, which makes creating policies at the school level easier when the accrediting bodies are aligned.

Our school looks to a lot of other schools who are similar to ours to see what they are doing. This greatly influences our own policies as we combine various policies to meet the needs of our community. While we borrow some, we also have to make sure our policies fit our specific environment and community. Therefore, we are constantly reviewing, adapting and ensuring that our policies are guiding us forward.

We do not have any ICT specific planning documents that we use. For next year, we are generating a large database of appropriate, tested and vetted technology resources for staff that support the different ICT skills in the PYP (International Baccalaureate, 2011) for teachers to reference. If the resource/software is not on the list, then they must apply through a Google Form explaining their rationale for wanting to use the resource and how it would be incorporated into their teaching and learning. This will help us gather more data on how and what teachers are using technology for in their classroom. In addition, our budget serves as an inventory of paid subscriptions and purchases every year. I also create various documents to keep a record of technology resources such as a spreadsheet with the various iPad apps stored on the iPads at different grade levels. Overall, I create a lot of my own planning documents for various tasks to demonstrate how I’m planning out technology integration across the Primary school so it’s been great to see some examples.

References

International Baccalaureate. (2011). The Role of ICT in the PYP. UK: International Baccalaureate.

Younie, S. (2006). Implementing government policy on ICT in education: Lessons learnt. Education & Information Technologies, 11(3/4), 385-400. doi:10.1007/s10639-006-9017-1