Saturday, January 06, 2007

Leaders as Teachers

Now that I’m in central office administration, I am often asked the question: Do you miss teaching? That question reflects a pretty typical paradigm that most people have of district leaders. I think they imagine we push paper around all day, responding to email, voice mail and are consumed by meetings much of the time. While some of our work includes those things by necessity, to neglect viewing leaders as teachers simplifies the job to the basic and mundane.

As I’ve been reading Ken Bain’s entertaining book, What the best College Teachers Do, I am reminded of how much effective leadership is like excellent teaching. In chapter 3 he articulates a series of questions that his research indicates are important to think about as a teacher prepares to teach. I think they can also be applied to leaders preparing to lead....and actually leading.

  1. What big questions will my course help students answer, or what skills, abilities, or qualities will it help them develop, and how will I encourage my students’ interest in these questions and abilities?
  2. What reasoning abilities must students have or develop to answer the questions that the course raises?
  3. What mental models are students likely to bring with them that I will want them to challenge? How can I help them construct that intellectual challenge?
  4. What information will my students need to understand in order to answer the important questions of the course and challenge their assumptions? How will they best obtain that information?
  5. How will I help students who have difficulty understanding the questions and using evidence and reason to answer them?
  6. How will I confront my students with conflicting problems (maybe even conflicting claims about the truth) and encourage them to grapple (perhaps collaboratively) with the issues?
  7. How will I find out what they know already and what they expect from the course, and how will I reconcile any differences between my expectations and ttheirs?
  8. How will I help students learn to learn, to examine and assess their own learning and thinking, and to read more effectively, analytically, and actively?
  9. How will I find out how students are learning before assessing them, and how will I provide feedback before - and separate from - any assessment of them?
  10. How will I communicate with students in a a way that will keep them thinking?
  11. How will I spell out the intellectual and professional standards I will be using in assessing students’ work, and why do I use those standards? How will I help students learn to assess their own work using those standards?
  12. How will the students and I best understand the nature, progress, and quality of their learning?
  13. How wil I create a natural critical learning environment in which I embed the skills and information I wish to teach in assignments (questions and tasks) that students will find fascinating - authentic tasks that will arouse curiosity, challenge students to rethink their assumptions and examine their mental models of reality? How will I create a safe environemtn in which student can try, fail, receive feedback, and try again?

Good leadership is more than just the management of things, checking items off that list. It’s about making a difference and developing the most effective strategies to motivate others (our “students,” I guess) to see a new paradigm. By seeing ourselves (leaders) as teachers, we can begin to expand this discussion that we often seem to be having in an echo chamber. Technology use is embedded in so many components of the system, most importantly good teaching. As technology leaders, we can create the necessary culture to change paradigms by thinking of ourselves not solely as leaders, but also as teachers.

Posted by Randy on 01/06 at 11:56 PM
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