How a Teacher Can Bring Excellence in Teaching Learning Process as a Leader? Know Leadership Styles, Traits and Focusing Factors - Smartly!
Abstract:
Collaboration can enhance academic excellence by enabling faculty to exchange ideas, learn from each other, and leverage their diverse strengths and perspectives. Collaboration can also foster innovation, creativity, and problem-solving, and can lead to interdisciplinary and cross-cultural projects and partnerships.
Keywords: Leadership, Collaboration, Innovation, Creativity, and Problem-solving, Partnership
Learning Outcomes
0. Introduction
1. What's Leadership Styles in teaching?
2. What's Effective Leadership Traits for a teacher
3. Why effective traits are necessary in teaching learning process?
4. Why effective Communication is indispensable for teaching
5. How Empathy and Grit be used in teaching
6. Why Focus on Leading Digitally
7. Strategies to be adopted by academic leader to bring excellence in teaching learning process
8. Role of Teachers in Institutional Development
9. What's the challenges to become an academic leader?
The Challenges?
10. Conclusions
0. Introduction
The long-term success of any educational institution is a function of how effective their teacher professional development is. Implement these strategies to bring out the best in your staff.
Continued professional development of teachers is generally regarded as a function of school leaders who can influence the culture and organizational structure of the school. A school leader plays a critical role in the area of teacher professional development, and it reflects upon the success of the school.
Professional Development of teachers is a crucial DNA in successful schools. Yet many schools undermine the importance of empowering their teachers continuously.
School leaders are expected to cultivate a school culture conducive to the teachers' professional development. Providing purposeful staff development programs and one-on-one staff coaching can help create an environment where teachers can strive to achieve their full potential.
1. What's Leadership Styles in teaching?
The authoritative leadership style is one of the most effective in education. These leaders are fair and consistent. They also have high expectations for their students and expect them to meet those expectations. They also provide feedback to their students so they can improve their performance.
2. What's Effective Leadership Traits for a teacher
Key teacher leadership skills. There are several key traits and skill sets that teachers in leadership positions should have. Effective communication, empathy, compassion and motivation to learn and provide counsel can all encompass the different skills teacher leaders possess.
3. Why effective traits are necessary in teaching learning process?
One of the most necessary traits of a good teacher is understanding that every pupil is different. A teacher can further enhance his/her teaching skills by paying close attention to what they have to say. Teachers may build a stronger, healthier, and higher-quality learning environment with excellent listening skills.
4. Why effective Communication is indispensable for teaching?
Good communication skills can help teachers to better understand their students and to build positive relationships with them. In addition, good communication skills can help teachers resolve conflicts and manage their classrooms effectively. Teachers need to be able to communicate with students and parents.
5. How Empathy and Grit be used in teaching learning process?
By developing students skill in empathizing, embracing diversity, exerting self-control and grit, and acting with integrity we can help raise a generation of students of whom we will be proud not only for what they know, but more importantly, for the people that they are.
6. Why Focus on Leading Digitally in teaching learning process?
It provides easy access to all learning resources and allows the facility to interact with the instructor conveniently. Teachers may quickly build and manage groups using learning tools and technology such as social learning platforms.
7. Strategies to be adopted by academic leader to bring excellence in teaching learning process?
If we want learners to achieve their full potential and access the highest grades, we need to establish a culture which promotes excellence. But what are the characteristics of an excellence culture? Here are five principles for starters, based on insights I’ve drawn from my work with schools.
Define success, high standards and appropriate levels of progress
Apply and communicate the language of high expectations and aspirations throughout the school
Celebrate expertise and mastery and normalise intellectual debate
Deliberately set up productive failure in your students by continually raising the bar
Teach students about the role that personal responsibility and effort plays in success
1. Define success, high standards and appropriate levels of progress
What does success look like for the learner, and how do we transmit that awareness? How do we ensure we as teachers know what we’re aiming for? What are the indicators of excellence, and who generates them? How are they specifically taught in subjects? There are many potential gaps to understanding what the appropriate level of challenge might be for our learners in terms of the work we set and accept.
Culture, home background and peer group have a huge role to play in setting expectations. For some highly able students, they have become used to being the best in their first school – quite possibly without too much effort. Automatically, their perception of what standards might apply have been corrupted.
2. Apply and communicate the language of high expectations and aspirations throughout the school
Keep this language clear in newsletters, briefings and all communications with parents. Make it ‘the norm’.
Avoid any explicit or implicit reference to the ‘geeks and freaks’ stereotypes for smart kids.
Normalise academic excellence through the school culture and modelling.
Encourage an intellectual curiosity and bravery that never sets academic learning as beyond anyone’s reach.
Be comfortable being the voice of expertise, scholarship and academic excellence.
Be careful never to inadvertently celebrate mediocrity or praise too easily.
Too many students think effort is only for the inept
3. Celebrate expertise and mastery and normalise intellectual debate
Engage effective role-models who embody the joy of learning and the success that results from hard work. Don’t protect students from grappling with difficult tasks as they won’t develop what psychologists call ‘mastery experiences’. Students who have this well-earned sense of mastery are more optimistic and decisive; they’ve learned that they’re capable of overcoming adversity and achieving goals.
Ensure students are routinely expected to give extended, reasoned answers or are at least given that opportunity. And offer teachers CPD time to deepen their subject knowledge.
Teachers can nurture excellence in classrooms by:
talking about learning and studying as a reward in themselves
demonstrating your own joy and passion for the subject
raising students’ engagement and excitement
keeping lessons high in concepts, low in repetition
ensuring the students can see the relevance of your subject
encouraging risk taking by taking risks yourself
talking about your own learning journey to expertise.
4. Deliberately set up productive failure by continually raising the bar
Building the capacity to resist the temptation to quit when the practice task looks like being beyond a learner’s current ability level is critical to long term achievement. Perseverance and diligence are cardinal Confucian learning virtues. ‘No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’
The ‘learning paradox’ is that the more you struggle and even fail while you’re trying to master new information, the better you’re likely to recall and apply that information later. Until we make the high level most challenging demands we will never know if our students would have been capable of reaching the highest standards.
5. Teach students about the role that effort and personal responsibility plays in success
Too many students think effort is only for the inept. It either leads to ‘imposter syndrome’, where a child never really believes that they’re clever and is waiting to be found out, or it leads to a brittle self-image that is way too reliant on externally given accreditation.
Not only does the relationship involving self-esteem and academic results not signify that high self-esteem contributes to high academic results, repeatedly praising children for how intelligent they are has been shown to lower the scores on standardised tests questions.
Teach students that self-esteem cannot be given to them before they embark on a task, but that it comes as the result of tasks being mastered.
8. Role of Teachers in Institutional Development
Roles and Responsibilities of Chairs/Heads of Academic Units
1. Administering the department
• Recruiting and orienting faculty and staff
• Recruiting and orienting students
• Identifying/determining faculty roles, priorities, assignments
• Fostering teaching
• Developing and updating curriculum
• Fostering scholarly activity
• Encouraging service /outreach
• Developing / mentoring / coaching faculty and staff
• Creating a supportive, productive work environment/culture
• Providing feedback and performance evaluation to faculty
• Supervising staff
• Creating a shared vision, setting goals, developing unit plans
• Preparing and managing the budget
• Managing space and facilities
• Coordinating fundraising and relationships with external constituencies
• Administering academic/human resources/legal policies
• Disseminating/sharing department information and dealing with the media
• Serving as an advocate for the department’s interests
2. Performing roles of a faculty member
• Teaching classes
• Developing curricular programs/individual courses
• Advising and mentoring students
• Participating on examination committees
• Seeking research funding
• Conducting research and scholarly activities
3. Providing service and support to varied constituencies (college, University, outside
communities, associations)
• Participating on college/University governance committees/task forces
• Participating on college/University search committees
• Participating in outside committees and task forces
• Performing leadership tasks in professional associations/networks
• Providing pro bono/paid consulting services
4. Enhancing professional/personal development
• Balancing the roles/tasks of a chair/head with personal, family, or community
responsibilities
Handout: Tufts Academic Leadership Development Program
• Participating in development activities of professional associations/networks
• Conducting personal growth activities
Key Functions of Academic Units
Key functions of academic units are the major activities carried out in the unit which influence
the roles and responsibilities of the chair/head. They reflect the official mission statement of
the University.
Teaching and Learning
• Design, update, and deliver undergraduate, graduate, or professional degree programs
and sequences of study
• Implement multiple, effective teaching approaches and styles appropriate to student
learning needs and outcomes
• Provide advice on academic and career choices for students
Research and Discovery
• Develop a unit research agenda appropriate to the needs of academic disciplines and
fields of knowledge, the demands of society, and the interests and abilities of faculty
• Conduct and support sustained scholarly research, artistic performance, and inquiry to
enhance and advance human knowledge and academic disciplines
• Develop and apply methodologies and techniques of research
Outreach and Public Service
• Transmit knowledge to a range of constituencies
• Apply knowledge to problems/issues of society
General
• Determine policies/procedures for the recruitment, admission, socialization,
development, performance assessment, and graduation of students
• Determine policies/procedures for the recruitment, socialization, development, and
performance assessment of faculty and staff
• Sustain a scholarly community linked simultaneously to the University and the
professiorate and, where appropriate, professional constituencies, associations, and
bodies
• Acquire and manage the physical, technological, and financial resources to support unit
functions on a sustained basis
• Carry out unit functions while interacting effectively with other units in University
colleges, schools, programs, and support areas.
9. What's the challenges to become an academic leader?
The Challenges?
But an academic career also has numerous challenges: the continuous drive to obtain research funding, the insecurity of short-term contracts (for you or members of your team), and the need to balance research with teaching, in ways that will enhance both. Add to the mix the pressure of having to “publish or perish”, and it is no wonder that a core attribute of a successful academic is being able to manage and overcome the perception of inevitable failure.
So, despite all these pressures, how is it possible to be an academic leader? And what does it entail? A common way of demonstrating academic leadership is to become a Principal Investigator (PI).
A wonderful ambition, but one that comes with heroic responsibilities, which some may feel unachievable. This is understandable. Although being a PI offers the tantalizing opportunity to sample high-level academic success, it is weighted with considerable responsibility and the need to manage success with potential failure. Few, if any of us, are born with all of the 68 skills and characteristics suggested as core components of a successful Principal Investigator.
Leading happens between people - leadership is a social process, not an entity owned by any one individual. Good leadership is about connecting with people, in a moment, a situation, or a task. It is often most successful when there is a feeling of reciprocity. This is particularly relevant to academia which can thrive on strong connections and collaboration: between colleagues, with funders, and between those who identify research needs and those who use research to meet those needs. Think about a successful research collaboration you have worked in: how did you connect with each other and what was it about the connection that made the collaboration a success? How did the leader of the collaboration achieve good collaboration?
Leaders are shaped by context - the process of leadership is shaped by context, the environment, the individual situation you find yourself in. Think of the leadership needed when a deadline is due, say for a large grant submission. It may sometimes be completely justifiable to give those around you specific instructions (or directions) ensuring that all team members know what they should be doing, and when it needs to be done by. Compare this with the leadership needed when helping a new student to settle into a team, when a coaching or advisory approach may be far more appropriate and far more effective. In academia, an effective leader is someone who is capable of adapting themselves to maximize the full potential of the leadership process.
People are most effective when they bring themselves to leading - to connect with people while being sensitive to the context in which they are connecting, leaders should bring a bit of themselves to the process of leadership. People respond to people, not a brand or a logo.
Unlike the business world, true academic currency is not money, it is shared intellect. It is turning thoughts, ideas, and visions into realities, rarely on one's own. Making the most of this currency means drawing on the humanity of leading, guided by ones own values, senses, and experience.
10. Conclusions
You may bring excellence in teaching learning process as an educational leader by
1. Embracing technology and innovation in your vision, strategy, and operations,
2. Fostering a culture of creativity, collaboration, and experimentation, and
3. Supporting the adoption and integration of effective and ethical technologies.
4. Set SMART goals with your students.
5. Prepare for lessons ahead of time.
6. Commit to lifelong learning.
7. Complete self-assessment.
8. Repeat Plan Do Check Act
9. Remain calm in adverse situations.
