Discuss the future of Educational leadership in global perspective in detail.

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Only one leadership style actually derived from education; Instructional leadership. It was organic in that researchers wanted to find out how certain urban (often low-economic, high minority) schools were having success. They went in and “identified” the traits of the leaders, and coined it “instructional leadership” (it should be noted that much of the research isolated the transformational traits exhibited by the leaders). This was in the mid 1960s. Prior to this, extensive research had not been done on actual educational leadership. The instructional leadership model dominated for at least 15 yrs after. Then came the massive shift to transformational.

Transformational, transactional, servant, shared and all other leadership styles derived from research conducted in the corporate worlds. The various successes demonstrated by the extensive research made each style a target for possible implementation into the educational field. However, after a 30 yr period of attempting to finance research, training and implementation a shift BACK to instructional leadership was championed, along with multiple variations and hybrids.

Today, the “trend” is shared/instructional leadership.

Bottom line is, educational leadership, like education itself, is contextual. What works perfectly in one school, may not in another. However, research suggests that when a educational leader possess transformational and instructional leadership skills (really they are damn near synonymous; Transformational is “what the leader does” and Instructional is “how they do it) school environments improve, teachers feel empowered and student success is increased.

Sadly, there continues to be debate about which leadership style is best (even with almost 6 decades of research available). So because of this debate educational leadership programs flip-flop with preparatory curriculums, districts shift with the latest “fad” and schools suffer. But hopefully more people such as yourself will continue to inquire, probe, interpret data and shed further light on the topic.

It is no news that leadership as a word can be very and as a matter of fact extremely diffucult to define. Therefore rather than giving it a direct and most likely unfouded definition, it would be much better to gain an understanding of what exactly it entails by deriving a conclusion after putting into consideration several profound definitions.

Wikipedia decribes“Leadership as the process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”.

It goes futher to give the description of Alan Keith, who thinks “leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen”.

A third and even simpler definition descrides leadership as influencing a group of people to achieve a common goal.

From these three definitions of leadership, it is therefore fair to conclude or sum up that Leadership firstlyis a word that cannot be meaningful in isolation and it’s difficult to explain the meaning without followership. Thus in summarazing the need for social influence, support and achieving a common goal, Leadership for this particular paper work can therefore be described as the “process” with which a Leader(an Individual or team) sets out to achieve the common goal of a set of people by the use of social influence.

In an attempt to gain a clearer image of what truly leadership encompasses, one can take to mind very simple and common life examples of how very little things act as leaders. The door to a house for example is the one legitimate way through which the beauties and qualities of a house’s interior can be explored. In the same light, a leader is the way through which the hidden qualities and beauties of a given set of people determined to achieve a common goal can be explored. This house might be a one bedroom apartment, probably a 7 bedroom mansion or even a 15 bedroom palace, whichever or whatever it is, it’s outrightly undebateble that without a way(the door) inside, no one can get to see what treasures this house holds. This is the very same reason why doors exist right from the paper plan of the house. Yet again, so also does a leader serve as the entrance and the medium that guides his followers to achieve their common goal.

With the use of such a simple and direct illustration of Leadership as being the “WAY”, one can easily misconcept leadership to very simple, direct and straight to the point. But in real case scenario, it can prove to be slightly more complicated than the door that opens the way to beautiful treasures. When for example one takes a look at a Primary educational institutions, a primary school to be precise, one can experience and gain an even better understanding of how the process of leadership actually unfolds. The principal or the school director is seen as a leader of this particular institution. Coupled with this overall leader are the sub leaders, which comprise of the Vice Principal or Deputy Director, the Head of departments, the Class Teachers the Subject Teachers and even the Class heads, Class monitors or Class prefects as the case may be, all of which are leaders in their own jurisdiction. While being leaders, in so many different ways, these authorities also happen to be learning. As message and instructions are passed on from the director to his Vice, a lesson or two is also taken on how to ensure efficiency is paramount. Ultimately, we can derive that the efforts and level of organisation of all this leaders plays a very important role in seeing to it that learning as a process takes place, this learning can be either direct or indirect.

In an organisation such as a primary school, there is a serious and despirate need for efficiency in all endeavours and changes need to occur for progress to me made. Changes such as the development of the teaching skills available, the receptiveness of the students, but even more importantly the medium and system of communication that exists between both the teachers and the learner.

For example, a class of ten student would have an entirely different style of communication compared to a class of 45 students if any form of efficiency and productivity must be resultant from these students. A leader in such a scenario must thus be capable enough to Direct both teacher and student into a state of mind that encourages easy and productive communication.

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