Top 10 Schools in Kumbakonam
Pre-service school administrators
enrolled in this program will participate in
mediated, asynchronous discussions with local
and international colleagues to explore issues of
professional relevance. Exploration of authentic
problems of practice, analyses of philosophical
stances on leadership behaviors and orientations,
dissection of the rationales governing daily
actions and decisions, and challenges to strongly
held beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions will
constitute the form and the substance of
interactions in the Global Forum.
Existing groups of neophyte
administrators in training and their professors
and mentors will interact on self selected issues
relevant to their profession and to their studies.
Topics of discussion would include an analysis
of cultural perspectives on any areas of
leadership responsibilities such as strategic,
organizational, instructional, political, and
community leadership.
Interactive Communications Technology and
Human Support Infrastructure
The technology infrastructure necessary
to support this project relies on accessibility to
the internet via appropriate computer interfaces.
In judging the computing and
telecommunications needs of this project, access
to Blackboard and to a website via the internet
for participants at both ends of the interaction is
necessary. Registration of international and local
participants will be a prerequisite for accessing
the discussion.
The approach to instructional design and
pedagogy represented in the description of the
project context will be continued into the
operation of this project. Threaded discussions,
and a web-mediated approach will be
supplemented by full text access to a variety of
field-based action and applied research reports.
A trial website has been established to
demonstrate the potential of sharing practitioner
conducted research.
A university based project development
team comprising representation from the College of Education, the University Library,
the division of Human /Computer Interface, the
Media Resource Center, the University
Computing and Telecommunication Services
division, and students who have completed this
leader preparation program, assisted in the
analysis of project feasibility. The expertise of
this development team will remain available
throughout the development and implementation
phase.
An international teaching team has been
established to mediate and evaluate project
participation, evaluation, and accountability.
The expectation for the international teaching
team is to remain involved in the development
process in order to ensure commitment to
participation following the development phase.
During this phase access to the forum will be
restricted.
Once the Forum has been established
in procedure, in technology infrastructure, and
in pedagogical and content knowledge
processes, the Forum will be opened to general
access.
Pedagogical Strategy
This graduate program was predicated
upon the belief that a collaborative, situated,
problem-based approach to instruction about
leadership would generate an authentic approach
to the study, replicating as closely as possible
the working environment most common to
school leadership in highly effective schools.
Program activities focus around authentic
problems of practice, explored in collaborative
team settings, and generating learner-directed
and setting-enhanced learning. Within this
environment, technology integration is modeled
by faculty (Blomeyer & Clemente, 1997;
Gibson, 2001; Gibson, 2000a). The core tenets
of constructivism, including the ideas of
cognitive dissonance and negotiation of meaning
(Savery & Duffy, 1995), are integral
components of this program. In addition to
preparing effective leaders for schools, this
program has also adopted the task of
emphasizing the transformational role of
technology on the process of learning.
The approach adopted for the graduate
program in educational administration at
Wichita State University requires the acquisition
of high levels of expertise with selected program
technologies designed to provide efficient and
customized personal and professional
productivity.
In this program, students are
dependant upon a foundation of technology
expertise as they assume the role of participant,
collaborator, colleague, leader, and follower, in
a variety of learning environments such as
seminar, field study, content presentation, data
manipulation, research reporting,
group/individual comprehensive examinations,
and the dissertation. Program graduates acquire,
among other things, an understanding of the
impact of information technology on their roles
as visionary leaders of schools of the future and
experience the transformational potential of
technology on their own learning process
(Gibson, 2000b).
Contextualizing the learning and the
instruction in authentic problem situations,
integrating the supporting curriculum, providing
scaffolding though the provision of mentoring
roles derived from the cohort construction of the
program, and emphasizing the orientation
towards constructivist learning approaches
allows a natural interplay between theory,
research, and practical applications to occur
during involvement in professional discourse,
reflective dialog, and the analysis of innovative
projects or problem situations in the field. It is
this involvement in interactive dialog and field
study applications, with meaningful
participation in internet searches, literature
review, field reports, data analysis, report
generation, research presentations, file sharing,
information retrieval, collaborative study, and
sharing of research resources that allows the
technology component of this program to be
integrated, authentic, and meaningful.
Criteria for Success
With such an integrated approach to a
learning environment, as represented in this
program, assessing a student’s leadership expertise must be an holistic, rather than a
fragmented, appraisal of knowledge, skills,
dispositions, and behaviors. Students will
engage in interactive (online) reflective dialog
centered upon specific school leadership topics.
This mediated dialog will be assessed on a
continuing basis for evidence of leadership
insight, reference to the integration of theory
and practice, content knowledge, and metacognitive development. This formative
evaluation will guide the generation of future
dialogic direction for the Global Forum on
School Leadership.
will focus on positive growth and deep
understanding of cultural perspectives, selected
content knowledge, rationalization of leadership
behaviors, and awareness of the implications of
cultural diversity in the context of school
leadership. A critical analysis of reflective log
entries (a program requirement) will provide
additional data for the evaluation of the project.
Students will be asked to address this experience
in monthly submissions. Further assessment data
will be provided through a process of tracking
the number of times the website and forum are
accessed. Assessment and evaluation
expectations will also be incorporated into the
international component of this project.
International partners will be asked to contribute
equivalent assessment and evaluation data from
participating students and colleagues.
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