Professional Development in Leadership
Professional development should provide educational leaders with an opportunity to gain knowledge and insight about recent research and practice and reflect on how they might apply to their local context. Reflect on the types of leadership described by Wenger (2000) in a community of practice and on who provides leadership for second language education in your area. Is there a strategic plan for building capacity of teachers and schools? For introducing innovative second language projects? For their sustainability?
Types of Leadership (Wenger, 2000):
Inspirational leadership - leaders by thought and recognized experts
Day-to-day leadership -those who organize activities
Classificatory leadership -collect and organize information in order to document practices
Interpersonal leadership - weave the community's social fabric
Boundary leadership - connect the community to other communities
Institutional leadership - maintain links with other organizational constituencies, in particular the official hierarchy
Cutting-edge leadership - shepherd "out-of-the-box" initiatives.
1. Name a leader in each category that has been a key influence on you and explain why.
2. What kind of leader are you? Why do you think so?
3. What kind of leader do you aspire to be? Why do you think so?
Leadership proverbs – what do they tell us?
- Blessed is the leader who seeks the best for those he serves.
- An army of a thousand is easy to find, but, ah, how difficult to find a general. (Chinese)
- Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men. (Lao Tzu)
- Leadership is action, not position. (Donald H. McGannon)
- The main characteristics of effective leadership are intelligence, integrity or loyalty, mystique, humor, discipline, courage, self sufficiency and confidence. (James L. Fisher)
- All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are moveable, and those that move. (Arab proverb)
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Dr. Olenka Bilash: Leadership means ACTION