EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

The first concept towards better educational leadership is creating cohesive teams. According to Bush “a team is a group of individuals whose mission is to achieve a set of common goals or solve the problems affecting them”.

Every team member is committed to the targeted goals or objectives. A team will succeed if it has a good mentor or leader. A motivated team will achieve its goals much easier. The class readings have also explored some of the best practices towards better educational leadership.

Team Leadership

Team leadership is a dynamic approach that ensures every learner achieves his or her academic goals. The readings have widened my skills as a team leader in an academic environment. The application of proper leadership ensures every team achieves its goals.

Every team leader should be competent and self- Team leaders should be ready to promote cohesiveness and improve the level of communication. Team leadership is “the ability to solve every problem affecting a given group”

Distributed and Middle Leadership

Distributed leadership remains a major practice in many learning institutions. This leadership approach helps every manager devolve his or her responsibilities across the institution. This leadership approach follows a top-down strategy.

This leadership approach is effective because it improves the level of academic performance The class materials have also informed me about the importance of middle leadership. Middle leaders examine every aspect of their learning institutions.

Instructional And Pedagogical Leadership Versus Administrative Leadership

An oration by William Walker during a conference held by educational leaders in Australia gives a clear analysis of who qualifies as a pedagogical leader. Delivered by Viviane Robinson, the article seems to focus on educational leadership and their ability to give instructions rather than just being mere managers (Robinson 2007).

The roles in this kind of leadership are differentiated from that of a school administrator in various ways. One distinctive role is the mode of discharging their administrative duties. While the administrators apply a rather strict approach, a pedagogical leader has clear set goals that involve all the participants.

The latter is more involved in the implementation of the curriculum, monitoring process and evaluation of teachers and allocation of resources to make the program successful. They also encourage team work and transparency as opposed to their counterparts through delegation of powers to their juniors, a tactic that enhances learning growth.

Recent definition of an instructional and pedagogical leader by Pont, Nusche and Moorman (2008) has shifted to include teaching and learning. Some of the scholars have further defined this kind of leadership as ‘learning leadership’. The community in such a learning environment uphold team work as the guiding principal.

This entails constant meetings by staff members to discuss, reflect and modify the learning process together as a team. To further avoid any future conflict that may arise, the members are armed with a problem-solving model to come up with a solution.

The community creates a learning culture that leads to student’s success. Administrative leaders on the other hand are more attentive to the general running of the school as regards its finances, school projects and other factors affecting the general management of the school.

They isolate themselves from the learning and teaching process leaving it entirely to the juniors to device their own curriculum. This leads to teacher’s laxity which in turn leads to a decline in students’ performances

The leader “promotes enquiry, professional development, and curriculum” This leader also encourages his students and teachers to establish new teams.

CONCLUSION

Every manager should portray the best organisational behaviours. Different leadership models such as transformational and transactional practices will ensure every learner is contented with the learning environment. I will always use these practices in order to create the best teams.