Organised by: Faculty of Education, ABAC, Bangkok
Date: 25-26 November 2005
Location: ABAC Bangna Campus, Bangkok
1. Leadership for Student-Centered Learning in a Culture of Educational Change
Prof. Dr. Deanne Magnusson, University of Minnesota, USA
Dr. Magnusson’s message started of by stating that school managers should become leaders to guide transition into the future, instead of just maintain their schools the way they are.
Her experience in the USA is that the nature of teaching
and learning are changing; students are actively participating in the learning process, construct their own knowledge and are working on challenging and authentic learning tasks. The role of teacher has become facilitator.
New US high standards for teaching and learning comprise ‘No child left behind’ and accountability for teaching and learning. The goal is to reduce the diverse learner achievement gap. Schools should improve continuously to facilitate new ways of teaching and learning.
She followed up with recommendations for Thai education reform, which reflect the student-centered ways of teaching and learning, although she realises that local values should always be taken into account (‘One size does not fit all’).
She went on to discuss the important role of leadership for successful school cultures. A key element of effective schools is distributive leadership, in which responsibilities for success are distributed to all parties involved (‘Collective responsibility creates ownership’).
Continuous assessment, feedback and authentic tasks are parts of successful instruction. Instruction should be differentiated to cater for individual differences between students. Students should work in flexible groups based on skills, interests and / or similar learning patterns, be assessed continuously and feedback should lead to improved instruction.
The last part of her presentation went too fast and she skipped most of the slides. She touched quickly on the new professional development paradigm; student-centered learning requires a new professional development design as a continuous process with the educators involved instead of one-off workshops by experts. Developing school personnel is the key.
Her conclusion is that we should recognise differences in individual students and ends with W. Yeats ‘Is education a bucket to be filled or a fire to be kindled’?, with which I assume she wants to stress the ‘new’ role of educators as facilitators.
2. Building Leadership through Effective Communication - 1
Dr. Maria Bamforth, University of Huddersfield, England
Dr. Bamforth’s distinguished external and internal leadership skills. Components like vision, flexibility, humility, charisma, integrity, motivation, accessibility and communications skills are important assets for a leader.
With regards to communication skills she advised leaders to be assertive. Assertiveness combines the good points of aggressiveness (like stand up for your rights, state your views) with the good points of non-aggressiveness (express feelings, humility).
Assertiveness should be practiced with integrity, directness, honesty and respect for others. Leaders should develop assertiveness as one of their personality traits.
3. Building Leadership through Effective Communication - 2
Dr. Pushpanadham Karanam, Assumption University
Summary
Dr. Pushpanadham continued the subject of effective communication.
He claims that leadership should be a partnership that can be achieved through quality communication. Body language makes up 93 % of a communication, the actual words only 7 %, so it is important to be positive if you want to achieve something.
Another important aspect of quality communication is to be credible, which means one should be dynamic, competent and trustworthy.
Reflections
I was surprised to see that body language plays such a more important role than the actual words spoken; the percentage seems extremely high.
I did some research on the Internet with regards to this percentage. The 93 % apparently originates from psychologist Albert Mehrabian (Chapman), who did extensive research on non-verbal communication from the sixties.
Body language comprises facial expressions, gaze, gestures, postures, tones of voice, but also grooming habits and body positioning in space etc. Biologists distinguish factors that are innate (e.g. facial flush), learned (e.g. thumbs up) or mixed (e.g. laughing). (Givens) This means that it is possible to influence your body language and make it more positive as Dr. Pushpanadham stated. This will be most difficult or maybe impossible for some of the innate factors (How can you stop someone from blushing?), although factors like blinking your eyes too quickly can be controlled. Learned and mixed factors can probably be influenced if you work on it.
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