Tag: motivation

Leadership Styles: Thoughts on Transformational Leadership in Education

Charisma is not a required trait for leaders, but it certainly helps.  A leader with personal qualities that positively and effectively influences others to achieve goals lessens the likelihood of objectors, grumblers, complainers, whiners, and protesters.  Unfortunately, many (if not most) educational leaders lack this convenient quality.  (Present company included.)

There are, however, some virtues of the Transformational or Transactional Leadership styles that make it a very effective construct for leading schools in ways that help communities deal with tensions, detractors, and force-fields impacting education.  James McGregor Burns analyzed leadership across disciplines and formulated the basic framework for Transformational Leadership.  This leadership style is guided by two important principles.  First, what a leader does must be aligned with collective goals held by the leader and the followers.  Second, the role of the leader and follower are conceptually united by a relational-interchange or interaction between power and conflict (Stewart, J., 2006.)

In Transformational Leadership, followers are consulted by leaders and allowed to participate in decisions and solutions that affect them.  Leadership decisions/actions are developed through a bottom-up process that both includes contributions from followers and aligns with collective values.  Leaders and followers are motivated by shared wants, needs, and aspirations.  The four factors that characterize Transformational Leadership were later described as the “four I’s.”  They are individual consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and idealized influence.  Transactional Leadership, closely associated with Transformational Leadership, further expresses this branch of leadership theory with a focus on reciprocity or mutually beneficial trades.  The transaction occurs when leaders give something to followers in exchange for something received from followers.  Generally speaking, the Transactional concept focuses on trading to accomplish goals, while the Transformation concept focuses on achieving change (Marzano, R, Walters, T., & McNulty, B., 2005.)

Transformational leaders are best equipped to help communities deal with tensions, detractors, and force fields impacting education because this framework includes all stakeholders in the solution process.  School and community members work toward shared goals and are motivated to achieve mutually beneficial results.  Transformational leaders view stakeholders as contributing members to achieving solutions.  Each stakeholder is given individual consideration for their ideas, wants, and needs.  Each stakeholder is intellectually stimulated by evaluating information, reflecting, and sharing insights and ideas for potential solutions.  Each stakeholder is inspired and motivated by shared goals and the determination to achieve them.  Finally, each stakeholder experiences idealized influence because transformational leaders seek and value contributions from all participants toward the collective development of solutions to resolve problems and/or manage change.

References

Marzano, R. J., Walters, T., & McNulty, B. A. (2005).  School leadership that works: From research to results. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Stewart, J. (2006).  Transformational leadership: An evolving concept examined through the works of Burns, Bass, Avolio, and Leithwood.  Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, #54, 1-29.

Cyber Learning Day. Lesson 1

Today, our school system initiated its first “Cyber Day” for students because of inclement weather.  Instead of attending school and going to each class, students were able to stay home and do their work online.  It’s interesting that many children –and I mean school-aged humans- dislike school.  They say learning should be “fun,” not “boring.”  “Why can’t we stay home and learn on the internet?” they say.  Today, they had that opportunity.

I had my 8th grade Georgia Studies “Cyber Day Assignment” posted by 9:15AM (45 minutes early) for my middle school students.  I explained that I would be available via email or they could post questions to the “Cyber Day Questions Discussion Thread.”  I shared with them that I would check these locations every hour until 4PM.  It’s 4:57 as I write,  and no students have posted their work.

Admittedly, I only have 10 students in this particular class.  Two of them logged in and reviewed the assignments.  One for 1m, 57s and the other for 1m, 8s.  Yes, neither student reviewed my online class for more than 2 minutes.  ZERO students completed the work as of 4:57PM.  Looking forward to discovering the results from my colleagues on my co-taught classes.

Interestingly, my wife is a career & technical education teacher at the local high school.  She teaches classes in Teaching as a Profession and Business Law.  She has 75 students assigned to her in today’s classes.  (Her school has block scheduling so she has a different group tomorrow.)  Of those students, 59 actually logged in with 17 of them completing and posting their assignment (28.8% of those who logged in).

So there you go.  “Learning on the internet is fun,” they say.  “I wish we didn’t have to come to this boring school,” they say.  “We’ll never need the stuff we’re learning,” they say.  So as you can see, our children have just as much difficulty being motivated to learn at home as they do at school.  Let’s be honest.  The best thing about school is the teachers.  They struggle everyday to motivate and challenge children to become better people and better thinkers.  They push them to become successful members of society.

Lesson 1:  Teachers have value.  Never underestimate the importance of people who challenge and inspire you to become the best version of you.  So as they say, “If you can read, thank a teacher.”