Essential Leadership Competences for School

Course details

On completion of this course, participants will be able to analyse ad assess how leadership is practiced in their own school community, analyse how the school self-evaluation process has been (or will be) facilitated in their own school and assess the current strategic infrastructure of the school and identify areas where they can begin to use the concepts discussed. The course will also cover how Instructional Leadership influences school self-evaluation and school improvement and why delegation is an important management technique.

Course Modules

Module 1:

• The differences between leadership and management in education
• Different conceptualisations of leadership
• Why leadership is not necessarily the province of school management only
• Analyse ad assess how leadership is practiced in your own school community
• Skills required to exercise leadership and assess your own leadership capabilities

Module 2:

• Assess the current strategic infrastructure of the school and identify areas where you can begin to use the concepts discussed
• Explain the nuances and importance of strategic thinking
• Court and woo strategic intent using the ABCD model
• Learn various tools and strategies to help apply the concepts of Strategic Management within the school community

Module 3:

• Clearly articulate the meaning of instructional leadership
• Identify and outline its characteristics
• Describe the powerful forms of leadership influence upon what happens in classrooms
• Analyse and outline their own school organisational structures, systems and processes critical to supporting learning-centred leadership

Module 4:

• Be able to describe how the management and leadership of teams contribute to the effectiveness of the school
• Assess the needs, responsibilities and motivations of your team
• How a manager/leader could benefit from knowing team member’s preferred team roles
• Analyse how these roles could benefit he school in the school self-evaluation and improvement processes
• Recognise and influence the stages of team development

Module 5:

• Plan and allocate work to their teams, e.g. a school improvement team
• Explain why delegation is an important management technique
• Use the process of delegation to delegate effectively
• Control your team(s) more efficiently
• Engage in distributed leadership through delegation

Assessment

Each module will require participants to contribute a post to the course forum in response to a question posed by the course facilitator. Each question will require critical thinking and stimulate discussion among the community of learners, all of which will be discussed using the moderated forum and will in turn develop a community of practice. During the course, participants will answer multiple-choice questions to encourage knowledge retention.

When finished the five modules the learner is expected to do an end of course assignment.

This is to be presented in printed or electronic format:

A detailed Mind Map of any one of the modules (This may also be drawn by hand)

Give an account of how you have used or how you intend to use in your school community, the ideas, concepts, skills, or/and techniques discussed in any of the modules in this course.