Interactive leadership really was tied up with the teacher empowerment, only when teachers are empowered than the interactive leadership will take place. This topic reminds me about what the three secondary principals told me last December, they all mentioned that Teachers’ Associations have given a great deal of power to the teachers in Taiwan. There are advantages and disadvantages after the Teachers’ Associations being established. The advantages are: Teachers involve more in decision-making processes, teachers feel being more important in terms of running school affairs and teachers gain more experience in building leadership. However, there are some disadvantages as well. Principals lost the authority to monitor or evaluate teacher’s performance, and have no right to request teachers to improve their teaching. Most of the teachers are not willing to take administrative responsibilities, or to complete projects that are given by the government. Principals have to convince/beg teachers to participate in these kinds of activities. Therefore, interactive leadership is required in Taiwan Education now. There are also some constraints for empowering teachers through the Teachers’ Associations. They are: 1. Time and Energy: To have teachers involved in school decision-making means that they will have less time spent on their students. 2. Lack of Financial Support: Teachers’ Association is formed on a voluntary base. They receive no fund from the state or other public agencies. Without financial input, Teachers’ Associations lack the financial support it needs for teacher training. 3. Lack of Training: Teachers’ Associations need to develop programs to prepare teachers for participating in school affairs, especially in the fields that they are not familiar with. 4. Legacy of Traditional Bureaucracy: Teacher empowerment inevitably changes the power relations at school, but administrators and teachers might not be ready for that. Teachers in Taiwan are used to taking orders from the top. 5. Relations between Schools and Communities: The increase in teachers’ professional authority and power in decision making means less participation from the community. As a result, the voices of community members, especially those of parents, might receive little attention. Their support of educational reform might be reduced, too.
If there are constraints, there are strategies to deal with them. The strategies for empowering teachers through the Teachers’ Associations are: 1. Encourage risk-taking: Teachers’ Associations need to assure teachers that failure is acceptable so that teachers will be willing to express their own opinions or views. 2. Use resistance when necessary: An important concept of empowerment is to have those who were quite willing to express their own opinions, rather than acting passively. 3. Develop collegiality and collaboration among teachers: An important strategy to empower teachers is to develop collegiality and collaboration among schoolteachers. 4. Pursue shared leadership: Teachers’ Associations should increase their control over their work and immediate environment. 5. Develop programs to prepare leaders: Establishing programs to prepare future education leaders are important for developing empowered teacher community and the continuous operation of Teachers’ Associations. 6. Establish transformative vision and restructure teaching profession: Teachers’ job is more than teaching based on some models. Teaching needs to take into account students’ individual difference and invoke quantitative and qualitative changes among their students. Teachers also need to aware of the political dimension of their work.
1) When we learn the mathematics we are all informed that the triangle shape is the most stable structure in the world. The article of “Administrator Participation in promoting effective Problem-solving teams” is actually study on the relationship between admin. support with the teachers (leaders), the relationship between admin. support with the principles, and the relationship between the teacher leaders and the principal leadership. Firstly, the administrative support is determined by the indicators include: time for team meetings, support for inservice training, payment for time spent outside regular school hours, credit toward district service requirements and the clerical support for scheduling and record-keeping. The administrative support was used to increase teachers’ sense of worth, their problem solving skills and self-efficacy regarding planning and assessing the interventions was enhanced. The role that administrative can play to give support to the teachers could be “emotional support”, “Teamwork” and “Parental involvement” or in a commitment to academic quality, the propagation of a culture of change within the school, the encouragement of teacher decision making in the school. The desired administrative support seems to come from some dynamic combination of 1.Leading and allowing leadership. 2. Problem solving and helping others to problem solve. 3. Sharing of responsibilities. Secondly, the triangle relationship among the teacher leaders, principal leadership and the administrative support in collaborative problem-solving team is the result of the struggling the balance among three different forces and then to shape the most effective model of School leadership.
2) Here Anderson defined teacher leadership as “the means to set directions and influence others to move in those directions.” Especially the teacher leaders are a primary method of influence for the principal decision. In the interactive model, the administrative support has been identified as an important factor in team efficacy, but the support they want is varied from situation to situation. Thus, teachers suggest that administrators must provide systematic ways both to identify the needs of teachers and to deliver the appropriate supports within a specific organizational perspective. Portin also identified seven leadership functions based on the work of Sergiovanni: 1. Instructional leadership. 2. Cultural Leadership. 3. Managerial leadership. 4. Human resources leadership. 5. Strategic leadership. 6. External development leadership. 7. Micro political leadership. The instructional leadership was also assigned to a lead or experienced teacher appointed by the principal, while the rest of the responsibilities are specifically carried out by the principal and administrators. Instructional leadership was defined by Portin as “ensuring the quality of instruction, modeling teaching, practices, supervising curriculum and ensuring quality of teaching resources”, which we can see the principal could rely it heavily upon some head teachers with years of experience in teaching and keen in educational transformation. However, The interaction effect between specific administrative supports and principal leadership characteristics on school culture, students achievement, teacher professionalism and empower remain less researched. However, if I could assume that principal’s characteristics and administrative supports are perfectly interacted and fully supported, the impact definitely will change the school culture and result in a positive and nurturing for the teacher satisfaction and in turn, a healthy problem-solving collaborative functioned team could be more easily built up. Empowerment is a magic word that could pull off many unexpected potential that you never expect to get in the first place. In education industry, whatever the problem the school leadership has to face, with the empowered employee and self-motivated spirit, anything come across will collapse in front of the sharpness of the triangle structured school leadership. What exactly you can do in the school environment Shira already giving the strategies from the Teachers' Association as examples. Thanks for the sharing and to put those strategies in real practice, again, the supportive administrator team and visionary principal is the premise.
I agree with Kris and Shira in the way they describe the interactive leadership and important of empowerment of teachers. In fact, a central component of school improvement is the idea of shared decision-making. This movement goes by many names as shared decision-making, school-based management, shared governance. The rationale for shared decision-making is always the same: those persons who are closest to students are best equipped to make decisions about the improvement of instructional programs. Shared governance is viewed as decision-making at the local school level by a leadership team made up of administrators, teachers, parents and other interested stakeholders to take actions aimed at improving instruction and school climate. Therefore, deciding, sharing, and reflecting together as a team is labeled shared decision-making. However the shared decision-making can vary from school to school, but generally involves budgetary issues, curriculum, and assisting the principal with staffing responsibilities. In this regards we understand that the success of shared decision-making depends on the leadership of the principals , as the hidden hazards of managing and leading educational organizations will probably never disappear .Therefore, the work of principals may never again become the simple role of the past; but, by discovering, inventing, and creating new combinations of knowledge, technology and effective communication; the future responsibilities of principals can be even more exciting, and productive than they are today. In school discourse, the extent to which shared governance is actually occurring at the school level is important to determine as well as shared decision-making is necessary to optimize student learning. Knowing what principals believe about school governance and the actual decision-making practices that occur at each level is essential as our schools change to meet the needs of increasingly diverse customers. Principals’ perceptions of shared governance appeared to represent schools that are moving toward collaborative school governance with teachers and administrators working together for school improvement. So currently being an administrator is the easy part; being an effective educational leader is the real goal.
Bonnie said --- A collaborative problem-solving team can allow for team members to be empowered to act when solving instructional problems in the face of district and governmental mandates. As the accountability movement grows, and principals are increasingly pressured to produce positive achievement outcomes for all students, principals may become more invested in organizational structures such as collaborative problem-solving teams. In determining the aforementioned models, Anderson investigated the relationship between teacher leaders and principal leadership. Anderson defined teacher leadership as “the means to set directions and influences others to move in those directions”. Teacher leadership may be identified by some form of recognition or career appointment-such as being name a mentor, lead teacher, or team leader. The principal can organize in a way that promotes educators’ instructional leadership among faculty as a whole. Collaborative problem-solving teams are an example of an organizational structure that will allow a principal to define principal to define instructional leadership by sharing it. IDEL methods help you to make sense: identifying the problems to be solved; defining the problems; exploring alternative solution and looking at the results.
Anderson’s buffered principal, interactive principal and contested principal models explored there tensions between teacher and administrative leadership roles that should not be minimized in collaborative and share decision-making teams. No matter how empowered a teacher may be, differing spheres of influence operate for teachers and administrators. Although administrative support has been identified as an important factor in team efficacy, administrative support may imply something other than administrator participation. Teacher stress and low commitment to teaching as a profession had been associated with a lack of administrative support. Teachers want administrators to be sensitive to their needs and to be knowledgeable about how to assist them in the classroom. Teacher-principal influence model affects principal characteristics and administrative supports to further shape school culture and, thereby, influence successful collaborative problem-solving teams would seem of primary interest.
We had again a joyful class with Dr. Andy on last Thursday, discussed on effective interactive leadership. The problem solving is the major important key of the leadership roles in school and other organizations. Today management system in many schools has changed from top-down management and decision-making. I think in creating a caring environment a collaborative problem-solving team is the best model for all new modern schools. Based on the literature reviewed earlier, schools with these characteristics are in turn hypothesized to have more effective team functioning, higher participant satisfaction rates, and more successful student outcomes. This, in turn, supports a culture of change, reinforces high student outcome expectations, and increases teacher professionalism. Similarly, these factors interactively contribute to teacher empowerment, and the literature suggests that teacher empowerment is transaction ally influenced by effective team functioning and successful student outcomes. Finally, teacher empowerment suggests an interactive principal–teacher influence model. All processes mentioned in the article are vital because their targets aimed towards the development of the organization or school. These ideas might not workable in all contexts especially Thai contexts, Because of some circumstantial interventions between the private and government sectors in connection to the curriculum, perhaps some of the principles in the context could not be implemented. To improvement the school success, the administrative supports are important and impact the school change in many ways, such as in service training support, reimbursement for time outside the school day, credit toward school district service requirements, clerical/record keeping support, emotional support, parental support, and direct involvement with disruptive student. While the principal is responsible for all risk taking and transitioning leadership and is also share instructional leadership. -Jackie-
Last Monday, I had gone to the meeting of native English speakers in prathom level, primary grade level. Feedback is so good. I had raised some topics to discuss. Everyone shared their idea freely. and finally we got a wonderful conclusion for it. I told them about what I have to do in the next academic year, but I end up with I told them "not my decision to do it or not, I need you think about what I 've told and we will have discussion about it for the next meeting. After the meeting finished I saw a picture that I want to see for a long time but I have never seen it until now. That is the enthusiasm from the staffs. Some of them seem very enjoy with the changing that happened, some of them come and talk to me about their idea, and some of them come to see me at my office since they can't wait for the next meeting to share the idea. This is much beyond my expectation. That's why I said this topic changed my thinking a lot particularly about working as a team, and decision-making together. Even I have read every topics that was assignment from Dr. Andy, I have always questions in my heart. Mostly about culture changing that I think that it seem rather hard for changing will be happened in Thailand. But I forgot something that I figured it now. First, I have something that I can do by myself and without thinking for others. Two, I am working with native English speakers, why I have to think about Thai culture environment. Hit the nail onto the head, I just think about the others' problem, but never look at my problem that actually can work for changing suddenly.
Interactive leadership really was tied up with the teacher empowerment, only when teachers are empowered than the interactive leadership will take place. This topic reminds me about what the three secondary principals told me last December, they all mentioned that Teachers’ Associations have given a great deal of power to the teachers in Taiwan. There are advantages and disadvantages after the Teachers’ Associations being established. The advantages are: Teachers involve more in decision-making processes, teachers feel being more important in terms of running school affairs and teachers gain more experience in building leadership. However, there are some disadvantages as well. Principals lost the authority to monitor or evaluate teacher’s performance, and have no right to request teachers to improve their teaching. Most of the teachers are not willing to take administrative responsibilities, or to complete projects that are given by the government. Principals have to convince/beg teachers to participate in these kinds of activities. Therefore, interactive leadership is required in Taiwan Education now.
ReplyDeleteThere are also some constraints for empowering teachers through the Teachers’ Associations. They are:
1. Time and Energy: To have teachers involved in school decision-making means that they will have less time spent on their students.
2. Lack of Financial Support: Teachers’ Association is formed on a voluntary base. They receive no fund from the state or other public agencies. Without financial input, Teachers’ Associations lack the financial support it needs for teacher training.
3. Lack of Training: Teachers’ Associations need to develop programs to prepare teachers for participating in school affairs, especially in the fields that they are not familiar with.
4. Legacy of Traditional Bureaucracy: Teacher empowerment inevitably changes the power relations at school, but administrators and teachers might not be ready for that. Teachers in Taiwan are used to taking orders from the top.
5. Relations between Schools and Communities: The increase in teachers’ professional authority and power in decision making means less participation from the community. As a result, the voices of community members, especially those of parents, might receive little attention. Their support of educational reform might be reduced, too.
If there are constraints, there are strategies to deal with them. The strategies for empowering teachers through the Teachers’ Associations are:
1. Encourage risk-taking: Teachers’ Associations need to assure teachers that failure is acceptable so that teachers will be willing to express their own opinions or views.
2. Use resistance when necessary: An important concept of empowerment is to have those who were quite willing to express their own opinions, rather than acting passively.
3. Develop collegiality and collaboration among teachers: An important strategy to empower teachers is to develop collegiality and collaboration among schoolteachers.
4. Pursue shared leadership: Teachers’ Associations should increase their control over their work and immediate environment.
5. Develop programs to prepare leaders: Establishing programs to prepare future education leaders are important for developing empowered teacher community and the continuous operation of Teachers’ Associations.
6. Establish transformative vision and restructure teaching profession: Teachers’ job is more than teaching based on some models. Teaching needs to take into account students’ individual difference and invoke quantitative and qualitative changes among their students. Teachers also need to aware of the political dimension of their work.
1) When we learn the mathematics we are all informed that the triangle shape is the most stable structure in the world.
ReplyDeleteThe article of “Administrator Participation in promoting effective Problem-solving teams” is actually study on the relationship between admin. support with the teachers (leaders), the relationship between admin. support with the principles, and the relationship between the teacher leaders and the principal leadership.
Firstly, the administrative support is determined by the indicators include: time for team meetings, support for inservice training, payment for time spent outside regular school hours, credit toward district service requirements and the clerical support for scheduling and record-keeping. The administrative support was used to increase teachers’ sense of worth, their problem solving skills and self-efficacy regarding planning and assessing the interventions was enhanced. The role that administrative can play to give support to the teachers could be “emotional support”, “Teamwork” and “Parental involvement” or in a commitment to academic quality, the propagation of a culture of change within the school, the encouragement of teacher decision making in the school. The desired administrative support seems to come from some dynamic combination of 1.Leading and allowing leadership. 2. Problem solving and helping others to problem solve. 3. Sharing of responsibilities.
Secondly, the triangle relationship among the teacher leaders, principal leadership and the administrative support in collaborative problem-solving team is the result of the struggling the balance among three different forces and then to shape the most effective model of School leadership.
2) Here Anderson defined teacher leadership as “the means to set directions and influence others to move in those directions.” Especially the teacher leaders are a primary method of influence for the principal decision. In the interactive model, the administrative support has been identified as an important factor in team efficacy, but the support they want is varied from situation to situation. Thus, teachers suggest that administrators must provide systematic ways both to identify the needs of teachers and to deliver the appropriate supports within a specific organizational perspective.
ReplyDeletePortin also identified seven leadership functions based on the work of Sergiovanni: 1. Instructional leadership. 2. Cultural Leadership. 3. Managerial leadership. 4. Human resources leadership. 5. Strategic leadership. 6. External development leadership. 7. Micro political leadership. The instructional leadership was also assigned to a lead or experienced teacher appointed by the principal, while the rest of the responsibilities are specifically carried out by the principal and administrators. Instructional leadership was defined by Portin as “ensuring the quality of instruction, modeling teaching, practices, supervising curriculum and ensuring quality of teaching resources”, which we can see the principal could rely it heavily upon some head teachers with years of experience in teaching and keen in educational transformation. However, The interaction effect between specific administrative supports and principal leadership characteristics on school culture, students achievement, teacher professionalism and empower remain less researched.
However, if I could assume that principal’s characteristics and administrative supports are perfectly interacted and fully supported, the impact definitely will change the school culture and result in a positive and nurturing for the teacher satisfaction and in turn, a healthy problem-solving collaborative functioned team could be more easily built up.
Empowerment is a magic word that could pull off many unexpected potential that you never expect to get in the first place. In education industry, whatever the problem the school leadership has to face, with the empowered employee and self-motivated spirit, anything come across will collapse in front of the sharpness of the triangle structured school leadership. What exactly you can do in the school environment Shira already giving the strategies from the Teachers' Association as examples. Thanks for the sharing and to put those strategies in real practice, again, the supportive administrator team and visionary principal is the premise.
Kris
I agree with Kris and Shira in the way they describe the interactive leadership and important of empowerment of teachers. In fact, a central component of school improvement is the idea of shared decision-making. This movement goes by many names as shared decision-making, school-based management, shared governance. The rationale for shared decision-making is always the same: those persons who are closest to students are best equipped to make decisions about the improvement of instructional programs. Shared governance is viewed as decision-making at the local school level by a leadership team made up of administrators, teachers, parents and other interested stakeholders to take actions aimed at improving instruction and school climate. Therefore, deciding, sharing, and reflecting together as a team is labeled shared decision-making. However the shared decision-making can vary from school to school, but generally involves budgetary issues, curriculum, and assisting the principal with staffing responsibilities. In this regards we understand that the success of shared decision-making depends on the leadership of the principals , as the hidden hazards of managing and leading educational organizations will probably never disappear .Therefore, the work of principals may never again become the simple role of the past; but, by discovering, inventing, and creating new combinations of knowledge, technology and effective communication; the future responsibilities of principals can be even more exciting, and productive than they are today. In school discourse, the extent to which shared governance is actually occurring at the school level is important to determine as well as shared decision-making is necessary to optimize student learning. Knowing what principals believe about school governance and the actual decision-making practices that occur at each level is essential as our schools change to meet the needs of increasingly diverse customers. Principals’ perceptions of shared governance appeared to represent schools that are moving toward collaborative school governance with teachers and administrators working together for school improvement. So currently being an administrator is the easy part; being an effective educational leader is the real goal.
ReplyDeleteBonnie said ---
ReplyDeleteA collaborative problem-solving team can allow for team members to be empowered to act when solving instructional problems in the face of district and governmental mandates. As the accountability movement grows, and principals are increasingly pressured to produce positive achievement outcomes for all students, principals may become more invested in organizational structures such as collaborative problem-solving teams. In determining the aforementioned models, Anderson investigated the relationship between teacher leaders and principal leadership. Anderson defined teacher leadership as “the means to set directions and influences others to move in those directions”. Teacher leadership may be identified by some form of recognition or career appointment-such as being name a mentor, lead teacher, or team leader. The principal can organize in a way that promotes educators’ instructional leadership among faculty as a whole. Collaborative problem-solving teams are an example of an organizational structure that will allow a principal to define principal to define instructional leadership by sharing it.
IDEL methods help you to make sense: identifying the problems to be solved; defining the problems; exploring alternative solution and looking at the results.
Anderson’s buffered principal, interactive principal and contested principal models explored there tensions between teacher and administrative leadership roles that should not be minimized in collaborative and share decision-making teams. No matter how empowered a teacher may be, differing spheres of influence operate for teachers and administrators. Although administrative support has been identified as an important factor in team efficacy, administrative support may imply something other than administrator participation. Teacher stress and low commitment to teaching as a profession had been associated with a lack of administrative support. Teachers want administrators to be sensitive to their needs and to be knowledgeable about how to assist them in the classroom. Teacher-principal influence model affects principal characteristics and administrative supports to further shape school culture and, thereby, influence successful collaborative problem-solving teams would seem of primary interest.
We had again a joyful class with Dr. Andy on last Thursday, discussed on effective interactive leadership.
ReplyDeleteThe problem solving is the major important key of the leadership roles in school and other organizations.
Today management system in many schools has changed from top-down management and decision-making. I think in creating a caring environment a collaborative problem-solving team is the best model for all new modern schools. Based on the literature reviewed earlier, schools with these characteristics are in turn hypothesized to have more effective team functioning, higher participant satisfaction rates, and more successful student outcomes. This, in turn, supports a culture of change, reinforces high student outcome expectations, and increases teacher professionalism. Similarly, these factors interactively contribute to teacher empowerment, and the literature suggests that teacher empowerment is transaction ally influenced by effective team functioning and successful student outcomes. Finally, teacher empowerment suggests an interactive principal–teacher influence model.
All processes mentioned in the article are vital because their targets aimed towards the development of the organization or school.
These ideas might not workable in all contexts especially Thai contexts,
Because of some circumstantial interventions between the private and government sectors in connection to the curriculum, perhaps some of the principles in the context could not be implemented.
To improvement the school success, the administrative supports are important and impact the school change in many ways, such as in service training support, reimbursement for time outside the school day, credit toward school district service requirements, clerical/record keeping support, emotional support, parental support, and direct involvement with disruptive student. While the principal is responsible for all risk taking and transitioning leadership and is also share instructional leadership. -Jackie-
Last Monday, I had gone to the meeting of native English speakers in prathom level, primary grade level. Feedback is so good. I had raised some topics to discuss. Everyone shared their idea freely. and finally we got a wonderful conclusion for it. I told them about what I have to do in the next academic year, but I end up with I told them "not my decision to do it or not, I need you think about what I 've told and we will have discussion about it for the next meeting. After the meeting finished I saw a picture that I want to see for a long time but I have never seen it until now. That is the enthusiasm from the staffs. Some of them seem very enjoy with the changing that happened, some of them come and talk to me about their idea, and some of them come to see me at my office since they can't wait for the next meeting to share the idea. This is much beyond my expectation. That's why I said this topic changed my thinking a lot particularly about working as a team, and decision-making together. Even I have read every topics that was assignment from Dr. Andy, I have always questions in my heart. Mostly about culture changing that I think that it seem rather hard for changing will be happened in Thailand. But I forgot something that I figured it now. First, I have something that I can do by myself and without thinking for others. Two, I am working with native English speakers, why I have to think about Thai culture environment. Hit the nail onto the head, I just think about the others' problem, but never look at my problem that actually can work for changing suddenly.
ReplyDeleteTom your honesty and open communication on this is courageous. I appreciate it very much!
ReplyDelete