Crtical Reflection 504

I've had a lot of fun this semester surreptitiously measuring up anyone I know in a leadership position (past and present school principals, heads of department, political leaders) against the leadership principles I have come to understand are the best. I've even applied them to myself, both in a professional capacity and as a parent, and that’s been pretty interesting too. In doing so, I’ve realised that leadership is really just a term we use to describe the act of ‘taking charge’ during a time of change. The greater the change, the more imperative it is to have quality leadership. To say that education is in a state of change is a bit of an understatement. Like many other professions, teaching and learning has been impacted in unimaginable ways by the information and technology revolution, and the great news is, it promises to continue to do so. This is the time for a leadership style that can steer both educators and learners through an exciting metamorphosis in the education landscape.

So what key things have I learned in the process of studying ETL504? Let’s start with what good leadership isn’t:

Leaderships is not management

No matter how organised and efficient you are, you’re not leadership material until you have developed a capacity for vision and the ability to transform (Young, 2009). Managers are great making things happen on the ground, but they are not necessarily great visionaries who can see from above. Great leaders seem have the uncanny ability to keep one foot in the present while the other traverses into the future, envisioning what is needed, and organizing what needs to be done in the present to prepare for that place in 3 or 5 years’ time. Learning about that key distinction has been enlightening.

Good leadership is not authoritarian

Equally as illuminating has been learning about the elements that inhibit great leadership. Traditional understandings of leadership have long revered strong, autocratic leadership styles that micro-manage every detail and resist transparency. This kind of leadership is feudal. It looks powerful, it demands respect, but it stifles innovation (Aguilar, 2012), is intrinsically untrusting (Muzio, 2011) and typically, such leaders find it extraordinarily difficult to relinquish control and share responsibility (Hargraves, 2007). On the other hand, leaders who act in teams and share power are unafraid of healthy conflict (Brocker, 2012), tend to invite a range of ideas (Fullan, 1997) and therefore serve the greater community in ways that are called for and needed, rather than according to what a single leader presumes is desirable.

So, that’s what good leaders aren’t. This is what I have learned terrific leaders are:

Great leadership is open and transparent

Well, I can’t imagine that anyone who watched Don Tapscott’s 2012 TED talk on open leadership has remained unaffected by it. It seemed to trigger a paradigm shift. A culture of transparency and openness harvests incredible benefits. This comes as a result of the convergence of many knowledge sources, and demands that leaders relinquish the idea that knowledge is property that can be owned or rightfully withheld from others at their detriment (Tapscott, 2012). In a culture where knowledge is still sold as a commodity, his is a revolutionary idea. This notion also challenges the way we see information in the learning environment; currently intellectual data can be ‘owned’ and transacted like physical property. When I watched Tapscott's video, I realised that the democratisation of information had been going on of its own accord right under my nose, but I hadn't recognised it. The way Web 2.0 technologies are being used is a testament to this. Intellectual property is becoming universal property by virtue of the fact that it is becoming impossible to ‘contain’. This presents a unique philosophical challenge for libraries (both in terms of information literacy and the ethical attribution of intellectual sources in learning) but it is also, according to Tapscott (2012), a truly liberating notion for leadership, which will increasingly become characterised by a nuevo-transparency. Of course, this idea is inextricably linked to technology and the impact it is having on information access. Information cannot be kept back and controlled any more than can a tsunami, and Tapscott’s attitude is not to fight it, but to benefit from it, to use it. It will take a gutsy kind of leadership to negotiate this conundrum.

That every TL is a leader and has the potential to enact change in their school

Stop Press! All Teacher Librarians Are Skilled, Inspiring, and Professional Educational Leaders who Actively Promote Effective, Innovative Ways to Learn and Teach in their Schools!

Well, it ought not be news, but it was to me.

As a full-time English teacher, I can see now that there are certain drawbacks to learning about the role of the teacher librarian solely from a theoretical perspective. I can see that there would be advantages in being able to apply the learning in ETL504 to actual, rather than imagined scenarios. Nonetheless, I have discovered two things by observation have escaped my extensive readings for this subject:

1) that the existing skills of the TLs at many schools are lamentably under-promoted (otherwise I’d already know that the TLs at my school are pretty fantastic)

2) and that a lack of time, belief in the role, and funding for professional learning inhibits the true potential of the TL from being realised.

Part of my strategy for building the best possible future library in Assignment 2 included placing the TL at the center of all professional learning and teaching (Hargraves, 2009). In the past, we showed how much we revered libraries as the repositories of knowledge and the heart of all learning in the grandness of their architecture. Today, we must show how much we revere the same principles by investing not in buildings, but in people (Godin, 2010). As leaders of learning TLs have a most noble function, but this can be thwarted by what Sergiovanni (2005) refers to as a lack of trust and belief in the role. The TL must be empowered to positively influence the practices and thinking of others (Young, 2009). Not ‘investing’ in the TL by way of professional learning, especially in technology, effectively clips the wings of the TL, and the whole organisation suffers from an inability to take flight.

Abbey Library, St.Gallen, Switzerland

And this brings me to my final observation.

That a special kind of leadership is required for 21^stcentury learning

The way we seek and process information in the digital environment has revolutionised libraries and will surely continue to do so. The impact of technology is everywhere; it is the ubiquitous ‘given’ in every aspect of our lives, the least of which is the way we learn. We know that for a library to remain viable in the 21^st century it must adopt 21^stcentury practices, and this means that TLs must get with the times and skill up. I liked the cheeky way Hay (2010) put it when she said “shift happens”, the implication being that we may be uncomfortable with the pace of change, or nostalgic about the past, but our job isn’t to get sentimental; it’s about being proactive and dealing with it by putting the learning of our students first. The TL is beautifully positioned to lead schools holistically into the future of learning in the digital age. They are uniquely placed across the whole curriculum, they support both teachers and students, and their core business is lifelong independent learning ( (Kulhthau, C., Maniotis, L. & Kaspari, A., 2007). The challenge for them is to ensure that they become, and remain, proficient in the new universal democratic language of the digital age.

References

Aguilar, E. (2012, November 28). Effective Teams: The Key to Transforming Schools? Retrieved from Edutopia - What works in Education: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/teacher-teams-transform-schools-elena-aguilar

Brocker, B. (2012, March 22). Leadership Theory and Critical Skills. Bellevue University. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzAzhiEsZtY&feature=player_embedded

Fullan, M. (1997). Leadership for Change. In M. Fullan (Ed.),The Challenge of School Change (pp. 97-114). Australia: Hawker Brownlow Education.

Godin, S. (2010). The future of the library. Retrieved from http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/the-future-of-the-library.html

Hargreaves, A. (2007). Sustainable Leadership and Development in Education: creating the future, conserving the past. European Journal of Education, 42(2), 223-233.

Hay, L. (2010). Shift happens: It's time to re-think, rebuild and rebrand. Australian School Library Association, 24(4), 5-10. Retrieved from http://www.asla.org.au/publications/access/access-commentaries/shift-happens.aspx

Kulhthau, C., Maniotis, L. & Kaspari, A. (2007). Introduction to Guided Inquiry: what is it, what's new, why now? In Guided Inquiry - Learning in the 21st Century. Westport: Libraries Unlimited.

Muzio, E. (2011, June 8). 7 Step Problem Solving. Bnet. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZXDGQSuF9I&feature=player_embedded#!

Sergiovanni, T. (2005). The Virtues of Leadership. The Educational Forum(69), 112-123.

Tapscott, D. (2012, June). Four principles for the open world. Edinburgh, Scotland: TED. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/don_tapscott_four_principles_for_the_open_world_1.html?awesm=on.ted.com_Tapscott&utm_campaign=&utm_content=awesm-publisher&utm_medium=on.ted.com-static&utm_source=direct-on.ted.com

Young, H. (2009). (Un)Critical times? Situating distributed leadership in the field. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 41(4), 377-389.