Write Your Transformational Leadership Plan to Effect Meaningful Change in Schools Today
If you are a leader in education, or even a teacher with ambitions, you should consider reflecting on your practice and setting goals for transformational leadership. At my current school, an English — Thai bilingual school near Bangkok (with over 600 students from Year 1 to Year 12) I am the Head of Year 2, or the Year 2 Coordinator. I always reflect on my teaching practice, but seldom reflect on my management practice. I decided it was time to make this a regular feature of my working life. As a member of the management team, but also a full time teacher, I decided upon the following goals to improve my leadership skills and positively impact student learning outcomes.
Improve leadership skills. Mentor’s suggestion was to keep a reflective leadership journal which focuses on constant improvement.
More effective project management. Winning over, and taking the rest of the management team with you when leading a school project.
Really know the organisation. Form effective lateral working relationships to connect with more people in the organisation.
Be the change. Always lead by example to model expectations: in manner, work ethic, courtesy and team spirit.
I believe in social constructivism and how children make important breakthroughs in their own learning in cooperation with peers. I believe in a reflective teaching practice because it is a source of constant improvement and embodies the lifelong learning we expect of students. It is consistent, as well as a good leadership strategy, to incorporate these elements into my management style. I spoke to a current immediate HOD supervisor (mentor A, advised me on goals two and four) and a former immediate HOD supervisor (mentor B, advised me on goals one and three) who both were or are in roles equivalent to assistant principal in a large school.
It is helpful to examine these goals through the three separate components of educational leadership: Characteristics, concepts and practices. The goal of being the change falls under the characteristics of educational leadership, which covers behaviors, styles and traits. The plan is to transform, change or improve an organisation and its learning outcomes I should always lead by example. To model expectations: in manner, work ethic, courtesy and team spirit, with the focus always on the ‘we’ rather than ‘you’ or ‘I’.
Concepts of educational leadership, such as management vs. leadership, power structures and cooperation covers the goal of more effective project management. Specifically, winning over, and taking the rest of the management team with you when leading a school project. The plan here is to involve other coordinators in a remedial literacy program for lower primary. To collaborate so we make breakthroughs in our teaching and management practices together. It must have enough structure to succeed too. Such as IEPs (individual learning plans), resources, teachers allocated and regular (but not onerous) assessment to provide data to revisit IEP in a reflective way. We will also meet monthly as a management team on this project so it doesn’t fizzle out. While the focus is on what ‘we’ are doing together as a management team, I proposed, planned and sought approval for this remedial project. It is about to start, and in effect I lead it, but without it being overtly obvious. This leadership approach is an extension of the ‘guide on the side’ teaching strategy. I’m merely helping to facilitate another, albeit larger, learning process. If it is successful in assisting improved learning outcomes then it is a shared victory for the larger school community.
Finally, practices of educational leaders, such as ways of leading, covers my goal of Improving leadership skills. I plan to do this by following the suggestion of keeping a reflective leadership journal. This focuses on constant managerial improvement. This component also covers another goal, to really know the organisation. By this I mean to form effective working relationships to connect with more people in the organisation. By learning names and taking an interest in others, grassroots working relationships form with those outside of the managerial structure you report to, or others report to you in. This extends to knowing students at every year level and support staff as well. If teachers can gain from grassroots learning communities, then coordinators/HODs can gain from knowing their organisation in a grassroots way. That is by knowing the people that make the organisation up better, which leads to a more constructive working relationships, and thereby improved outcomes or innovations. Improvements made, best practices used, good suggestions and areas of improvement will more easily come to light.
The leadership mentoring in this task, the goals and the plans all ultimately link to transformational leadership:
“transforming leaders convert followers to disciples; they develop followers into leaders. They elevate the concerns of followers on Maslow’s need hierarchy from needs for safety and security to needs for achievement and self actualization, increase their awareness and consciousness of what is really important, and move them to go beyond their own self-interest for the good of the larger entities to which they belong.” (Onorato, 2013)
Rather than seeing it as an extension of Maslow hierarchy of needs (As Bass and Onorato do), I see that teaching leadership through mentoring provides necessary scaffolding to a teacher’s or coordinator’s own zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) due to its social and cooperative nature.
If I can be a part of transforming or improving my educational organisation through success at the middle management level, then ultimately I may be tapped for a higher position with more potential to affect meaningful change that improves learning outcomes, teaching practice and leadership practice in a transformational way.
