Artefact 5

MDDE 660 - Professional Seminar on Leadership in Education Innovation

 

Artefact: Transformational Leadership Theory and Polytechnic Faculty

 

Summary

My choice of MDDE 660, the last of eleven courses for me in the MEd program, proved that my motivations for enrolling with Athabasca University three years ago had shifted.

 

At the outset my rather simplistic vision for the future involved moving from face-to-face teaching one day in the future, MEd in hand, to a ‘retirement’ of teaching online. While that may still occur, I now wish to explore post secondary education leadership by continuing on to complete an EdD. MDDE 660 seemed to be a good warm-up to this continuance.

 

The assignment represented here asked that we write a position paper on the validity, practicality, and usefulness of at least one leadership theory, in a specific educational context. We were to state the merits of the theory as well as the shortcomings of competing theories.

 

I wrote this paper and selected it for inclusion here because the topic directly related to my work at SAIT Polytechnic. It addressed several soft-skill course competencies not fully explored with my other artefacts; management, organization, leadership, communication, interpersonal skills, and the analysis of individuals’ leadership styles. Further, though several leadership theories were at play in my work environment, my Director was a perfect example of a leader who leads in a transformational manner. Thus, the main thrust of my argument in this artefact was transformational leadership theory.

 

Reflections

I had the good fortune of working in an intense teaching and learning environment at SAIT while enrolled in MDDE 660. My department was multi-layered from a leadership perspective and involved administrators, instructors, facilitators, information technology specialists, academic chairs, and directors.

 

During the course readings, I found myself noting descriptions, behaviours, and examples of several leadership theories I was actually seeing in the petri dish of my own work (1.3, 1.5). The reading Leadership: Current Theories, Research, and Future Directions (Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009) provided me with a comprehensive overview of several leadership theories with which to examine my work environment at SAIT (5.3, 5.4). I soon realized that my academic chair was fully distributing the leadership among our team in very much a non-hierarchal, flat approach. In turn, our director was an example of a charismatic transformational, ethical leader. By nature, she was inspiring, empowering, and concerned more with our higher order needs than day-to-day tasks. While the upper echelons of any institute’s leadership is obviously, and by necessity, directive, it was a revelation to me during the writing of this artefact to realize that proven theories were consciously at play under the surface of our daily activities (1.11).

 

Nicholas Clarke’s (2010) descriptions of the importance of emotional intelligence above all other leadership attributes were particularly impactful to me, especially as it pertains to project management. In addition, the writing of Ally, Cleveland-Innes, and Wiseman (2010) on the implications of project management as they relate to teleworking environments were likewise pertinent. They both touched my personal, current experience. At the time, I was involved with a curriculum design project that was, while on-campus, effectively a teleworking environment in that the team rarely saw each other. This project was being led poorly, in my opinion and in agreement with the opinions expressed in the above readings (1.1, 1.2). While writing this artefact I was able to realize what was needed from a project manager perspective on the curriculum design project by contrasting the exemplary transformational and distributed leadership styles of my leadership team (6.2).

 

Conclusions

I recall feeling a touch of resentment at the outset of the MDDE 660 assignment represented here. I recognize the positive learning attributes of positional papers and the similar instructional technique of debate (1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3). One should be able to craft an argument for any position, yet it sometimes feels inauthentic to choose a position with which I do not agree (5.5, 5.6).

 

This was not the case with the assignment represented by this artefact. With the exception of one curriculum design project, I work in an exemplary leadership environment at SAIT. It was both enlightening and a pleasure to explore and associate the theories of transformational, distributed, ethical, and authentic leadership with my emotionally intelligent colleagues. It is always a pleasure when our learning harmonizes with our authentic selves (1.6). I also came to realize in the course of this positional paper that none of the leadership theories presented are ‘bad’ theories. Each has a rightful place in specific organizational contexts, such as with polytechnic faculty, and shortcomings in other contexts.

 

MDDE 660 and this artifact have certainly played an important part in my new desire to continue my studies in the direction of polytechnic education leadership. My sights are now set on exploring an academic chair or an associate dean position in the next few years rather than staying in my current instructor role (1.10, 5.8).

 

Works Cited

Ally, M., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Wiseman, C. (2010). Managing complex distance education projects in a telework environment. Journal of Distance Education,24(1), 1-20.

 

Avolio, B., Walumbwa, F., & Weber, T. J. (2009). Leadership: Current theories, research, and future directions. Management Department Faculty Publications (37).

 

Clarke, N. (2010). Emotional intelligence and its relationship to transformational leadership and key project manager competencies. Project Management Journal, 41(2), 5-20.

Works Cited