Homework answers / question archive / Assessment 1: Reflection 1500-word Discussion Paper Marking Criteria The aim of this assessment is to develop your understanding of personal qualities, and to consider their importance for your own educational leadership

Assessment 1: Reflection 1500-word Discussion Paper Marking Criteria The aim of this assessment is to develop your understanding of personal qualities, and to consider their importance for your own educational leadership

Sociology

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Assessment 1: Reflection 1500-word Discussion Paper

Marking Criteria

The aim of this assessment is to develop your understanding of personal qualities, and to consider their importance for your own educational leadership.

It is widely accepted that it takes more than academic ability to be an effective educational leader. Based on the readings from Module 1 and additional readings from Subject Reading list, reflecting on your own personal experiences, use the sub-headings below to guide the structure of your discussion

Pleas check the pdf named ((Assessment 1expplen very important))

Part 1:

Describe one leading experience in your learning organisation where you have encountered a difficulty. This may be within your own leadership or an observation you have made about another leader (please be mindful of anonymity and do not disclose any distinguishable features in the reporting of this difficulty). Reflect and discuss the personal qualities that were/ are important to successfully lead in this situation based on academic literature. (400 words words approx.)

Reflection : What is a difficulty that you could be the focus for Part 1

Start drafting a possible scenario – it must be explicitly clear – between 2+ people– centered around personal interaction - miscommunication / mis understabding– maintain confidentiality

Remember to use research to support your argument

Scenario Example:

Context: I am in an acting leadership position of a subject area at my educational organization, I have been in the organization for 3 years and in the acting position for 6 months. The only other person in my subject team who has had a substantial amount of time in the organization, 10 years, is an older male who is very knowledgeable and quite dominant (Person X). Prior to my taking the leadership position, he was offered the position but turned it down.

 Difficulty: I presented to my subject team of 10, including Person X, a new assessment idea, during the presentation Person X said ” Well that is just wrong – it wont work” . I found this really upsetting, in the meeting I acquiesced to him and now I question my knowledge and my leadership of the team.

Reflection: ………………

 Part 2:

 Discuss your understanding of personal qualities and why they are considered important for educational leaders, refer to academic literature to support your argument  (500- 600 words approx.)

Part 3:

 Reflecting on your own leadership, what personal qualities do you believe are your strengths and why (provide explicit examples and evidence from Moodle and lecture/ tutorial activities). Are there any that you may need to develop further? How do you know? How would you propose to develop these personal qualities, support your argument with relevant literature? (400 words approx. words)

 You need to put a subheading for each part, and also the reference from 13-15 articles

 

 

Please read the model before you start

 Week 1: Introduction to Self: Inner Leadership

In this first module, you will reflect on the question, “Who am I?” through examining your personal attributes. You will do this through engaging with a range of scholarly papers, theoretical perspectives, presentations and practical activities. The question maybe asked why is there a need to understand and develop our personal selves, and to what end? And what has any of this to do with leading an educational organisation?

Firstly, effective leadership starts from within. Simply if we don’t understand and manage ourselves it is very difficult to lead others. Research shows that our emotions and personal values, significantly impact our school leadership practices and the people we lead (Leithwood and Beattty, 2008). Effective leaders know their beliefs and values, understand their strengths and areas for growth, how these influence their leadership and impact the people they lead. To not deeply understand our emotions and values and their impact, is to disregard a very powerful force within our leadership (Lauder, 2010; Goleman, Boyatzis, &McKee, 2002).

Secondly, School leadership is an emotional activity – leading, collaborating, developing and maintaining positive, productive relationship with other school leaders, teacher colleagues, students, parents and school community requires high levels of emotional labour. Emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983) refers to the regulation and management of emotions as part of our professional work.  To survive and thrive in a highly emotional work environment, there is a need to develop inner personal resources from which to lead (Flintham, 2003). Personal resources and attributes, like high resilience, optimism and empathy.

Thirdly, as school leaders we endeavour for our students, our staff and communities to flourish and enjoy a healthy, happy, productive and fulfilling life.  There is an increase focus on how effective school leadership can build school climates and cultures where wellbeing is central and where all may flourish. Central to this idea is when a school leader is flourishing, they have greater capacity to enable the people they lead to flourish. Critically it is now clear through neuroscience that as a leader you set the emotional “climate” of the team(s) you lead and people you collaborate with – being  a leader mans that impact a wide range of people’s emotions – you have a wide emotional influence. Hence the importance of deliberately understanding “self” and the impact on others. 

Finally, what is known through research is that for positive impactful leadership personal attributes are important, perhaps even more important than academic attributes for successful outcomes both personally and professionally (Harvard Business Review).

This subject is about knowing one-self more deeply, with the purpose to support your continued personal and professional growth, so as a leader,  you and the people and educational organisation you lead flourish.

 

Week 2: Introduction to Self: Personal attributes for educational leadership

Within personal attributes research there are a number of “tensions”,  which are summarise below.

Terminology There is a range of nomenclature used to provide an overall term for non-academic/ personal attributes, with no one agreed upon. It has been argued that the focus should not be the semantics rather on the importance of personal attributes (the term we will adopt in this subject) for personal success and fulfilment. Based on OECD report from 2018 on Students Social and Emotional Attributes for success, the below provides a summary of some of the terminology.

 

Personality Traits is a term that describes the “relatively enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that reflect the tendency to respond in certain ways under certain circumstances” (Roberts, 2009). The definition suggests that personality traits tend to be consistent characteristics of an individual, however that they are not set in stone, are susceptible to change but ultimately represent habitual responses to everyday situations.

Temperament is the term used primarily by developmental psychologists to describe personality characteristics of infants and children, these characteristics are assumed to be, at least partly, biological in nature as they emerge early in life.

Personality characteristics is a term that maybe referred to as “character skills”, “soft skills” or more usually, “non-cognitive skills”. The term “non-cognitive skills” contrasts them with cognitive knowledge, skills, and abilities. The term is increasingly viewed as too broad and not useful as it indicates the absence of cognitive activities, despite the fact that some form of  cognition/information processing is needed for any aspect of mental functioning. More recently personality characteristics have been labelled as 21st century and employability skills stressing their importance to modern day life.

“Social and emotional skills” is a term often used in policy settings to emphasises the importance of the social and emotional aspects of these skills, the term suggests their malleability and their potential to intervene and effect improvements.

What are Personal Attributes?

Similar to the lack of clarity regarding terminology there is not total agreement on what constitutes personal attributes, the term has often been used as “umbrella terminology” for about 80 attributes in the categories of ethical responsibility, dependability, service orientation, social skills, capacity for improvement, resilience and adaptability, cultural competence, communication, and teamwork.

Heckman and Kautz (2012; 2013) argued for five major non-academic traits:

Openness to experience (includes aspects such as intellectual curiosity and creative imagination)

Conscientiousness (organization, productiveness, responsibility)

Extroversion (sociability, assertiveness; its opposite is Introversion)

Agreeableness (compassion, respectfulness, trust in others)

Neuroticism (tendencies toward anxiety and depression)

Week3:Introduction to Self: Self Awareness

Last week we focused on personal attributes, a critical personal attribute central for high levels of emotional and social intelligence (focus of Module 2) and to personal and professional success is self-awareness. Without self-awareness we would continue to make the same mistakes, have the same personal and professional outcomes. But self-awareness is not something that comes to any of us easily or naturally, we need to understand what it is and work on developing and growing  as an individual so as to have better outcomes for ourselves and the people we live and work with.  For leaders in education, there is increasing research evidence demonstrating a strong connection between self- awareness and leader effectiveness (Gardner et al., 2005; Luthans and Avolio, 2003)

6. Week 4: Self Awareness & Brain Science

Ancient Greek philosophers considered the ability to "know thyself" as the pinnacle of humanity. Over the last 30 years neuroscientists have been investigating how humans  "know thyself" through neuro-imaging techniques like MRI with EEG scanning. Research has shown that human self-awareness is a product of a patchwork of neurone pathways throughout the brain - rather than being confined to one specific area. 

There are two major way we may form new neural pathways:

1] Experience-dependent neuroplasticity, which is  a passive process that reinforce habits by doing them unconsciously over and over again, whether they’re good or bad. 

2] Self-directed neuroplasticity: his is where one intentionally rewires their brain to create positive habits, primarily through active reflection.

What this means for self awareness is that  we need to continuously and deliberately develop our self awareness through self-directed neuroplasticity.