Educational Leadership and Communication

Educational Leaders need to ask themselves, “How transparent and how broadly shared are the communication systems in our organization”? If the answer is, “communication systems stop at some point within the organization, then there is a lack of trust because of stasis developing within the organization.
As leaders, the language that we use is our most powerful tool in the organization. We as leaders need to understand the language that we use, and that what I say and how I say it can influence those in the organization. By using our influence and not our power, we can increase the value in the people around us and validate their contributions to the organization.
Transparent communication validates everyone in the organization, and does not undermine the power of those higher up the organizational chain of command. In direct contrast; as those around are fully informed, they come to understand the knowledge and credibility of those individuals that they work with. It is at this point that the educational leader’s tacit knowledge becomes increasingly apparent and the members of the organization see the big picture.

FORMING / STORMING / NORMING / PERFORMING

As a graduate student of Education Leadership in a cohort based doctoral program, matriculation to graduation is always a concern. The impact of the cohort structure to facilitate students through the coursework, research, and ultimately graduation is based on building and maintaining a cohesive cohort group.
Bruce Tuckman in 1965 proposed a model of group development; that the group decision making process entails four stages of forming, storming, norming, and performing. These four steps can be defined as:
Forming: getting to know each other, team building, and learning about the opportunities and challenges that the group will face.
Storming: the group breaks down barriers and focusing on the task at hand; the members work independently and together they will grow as a team.
Norming: the group will focus on work now; and the tasks at hand as shared.
Performing: the group works to a common goal as a unit.
As a member of a highly efficient doctoral cohort, the processes and ultimately the tasks that I must master to achieve my goal of matriculation is fostered by my cohort. This process is a reality because as we formed, stormed, and normed, we now continue to work independently and together to perform with a common goal of academic success.

Validation and Educational Leadership - Revisited

Posted 10/13/08: The effective leader is one that displays consistent behavior and that is respectful through personal validation of others. Validation is to focus on someone's feelings, accepting someone's feelings, understanding them, and followed by nurturing them. By validating someone, we provide a safe environment for them to share their feelings and thoughts with respect. This process allows people to feel that their ideas were heard, acknowledged, understood and accepted. As educational leaders validate the people we work with, we enhance those around us, and add value to them in a learning environment without dictating to them.
Posted 1/10/09: Validation: people are emotional beings in a social setting that need to be validated or things DO NOT work. In an organization every person needs to be both formally and informally validated to empower and motivate individuals. The effective educational leader utilizes communication that displays respect of other’s opinions and communicates acknowledgement that they are heard and respected. Regardless of whether or not the leader actually agrees with the opinions of others; not dismissing or marginalizing people’s feelings with a genuine respect as a legitimate expression of their feeling will validate others and this DOES WORK.

Educational leadership is not accepting for what is, but preparing for what isn’t.

Educational leaders should not be teaching to students just to prepare them for our past, but working with students in a collaborative learning environment that will allow these learners to construct their own knowledge to prepare them for their future. This forward thinking will allow the learner to build on the previous knowledge acquired to create new and unique knowledge; and not simply focus on the same or similar information from the past. The learner of today and tomorrow will prepare themselves for the problems of the future and the knowledge yet unknown to solve these problems; and not accepting for what is, but preparing for what is not yet discovered.

Creativity in Higher Education

George Bernard Shaw said, “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will”.
Providing higher education students with a collaborative extraordinary learning environment is one that allows for imagination that fosters student creativity. This creative higher education learning environment drives the student to pursue new ideas and approaches to an ever changing world.
Educational leaders in higher education that provide a creative environment for students to imagine what they desire, will create a pedagogy where the learner can will what they imagine so they can create what they will.

Not just a classroom, but a fun extraordinary learning environment

With the perceived need to teach to the test, and focusing on improving standardized test results; administrators and teachers have focused on cognitive development in the classroom. Cognition is the foundation for learning, but building upon knowledge through the affective domain is the key to learner motivation. Technology in the classroom is allowing education to change rapidly, and one of the changes that will increase learner motivation is the use of 3D learning environments. Examples of this form of technology include, Holographic Google Earth, Good Maps, and Earth Album, where the world itself can be discovered and felt by the learner.
In a 2005 National Geographic geography survey of 510 American students aged 18 to 24, thirty-seven percent of respondents could not locate Iraq on a map, although American troops have been deployed there since 2003. In an earlier survey, National Geographic (2002) concluded that twenty-nine percent of these students could not locate the Pacific Ocean, fifty-eight percent could not find Japan, and sixty-nine percent could not locate Great Britain.
The 3D learning geography learning environment allows for student-centered education that focuses on learner engagement and motivation through various ‘fun’ problem-solving activities that provides for discovery and exploration. Also, this fun form of education provides for the educator and learner to construct knowledge as they experience a supportive environment that will provide solutions to future global problems.

The 4 C’s of Student-Centered Learning

Culture: How we do things here…The educational leaders of today will build a model for the future that allows for an extraordinary learning environment. To accomplish this goal we need to move the learning environment from a teacher-student competitive educational system, to a teacher-scholar collaborative educational system based around student engagement.
Climate: How it feels here… Move from the classroom where students are responsible for student success; to the collaborative learning environment where everyone is responsible for student success.
Context: How it looks here… Move from a passive teaching classroom; to an active learning environment.
Content: What we use here… Move from the classroom/library as a static repository of information transfer from the teacher; to a classroom/library as a dynamic learning center for knowledge and learning through technology.