Effective Educational Leader Essay Sample

Effective Educational Leader Essay Sample Effective Educational Leader Essay Sample Effective Educational Leader Essay Sample The ability to lead is inborn only in 5% percent of the population. The rest should either follow the group or develop the key leader ship characteristics. Perhaps, the majority would prefer the second option, yet, not everyone is that talented. The rareness of the ability to lead makes it an important and desirable feature for many people. The leadership is even more important in the school settings where each student aims at achieving high levels. A systematic approach to learning processes as well as managing diverse teams becomes crucial for the future of the children today and adults tomorrow. These children will choose the President and determine the trends for the upcoming days. Therefore, they have to be guided in a quite wise manner by the professionals. Otherwise, the system will be ruined and the talents would be lost. The educational leadership plays a key role in motivating, encouraging, stimulating, and challenging the practices of pedagogy. It refers to many endeavors involving the reflections and inquiries that significantly impact the interactions among the communities, educators, parents, and children. Thus, educational leadership matters. This MA program is believed to prepare professionals who would be able to lead or occupy leadership positions in the communities, schools, districts, states, universities, etc. The curriculum provides critical assessment of the conceptual, organizational, managerial, social, political, and other dimensions that are inherent for the leading schools. The further analysis of these techniques and their implementation would allow increasing educational opportunities for children and youth residing in both urban and rural communities. The overall aim of the MA students is to learn how to enhance the opportunities for the children and youth through the programs that are linked to the practices important in everyday life. Leadership Strengths Self-Appraisal Considering inborn leadership and developed characteristics, I dare say that the following are inherent for my leadership style. The first advantage refers to my natural charisma. This is an issue that I exactly know when I need to apply my inborn charisma, and when I can simply let it shine through. In fact, I consider this feeling to be even more important than simply having charisma. To be honest, I use this natural ability very often as it can help to achieve considerable success. I always feel the moment when the situation is the most suitable and when there is a need for letting others, who are less charismatic or shy, shine. In addition to the mentioned, I consider myself to be able to communicate freely without any barriers and, if needed, to criticize people in a rather constructive way.   Moreover, I always provide a feedback, especially the positive one. In my opinion, it is a good model for cooperation, sharing, and goodwill. All of it would definitely be contributing f or my success as an educational leader. Moreover, I have good manners which make people like me at first glance. Sometimes, I guess I have a heightened feeling of charm or special style, which attracts others. Perhaps, the main reason for this is the fact that most of the time I am rather attentive to the non-verbal means of communication. Using it, I always try to encourage people, to motivate them, to provide them with certain amount of energy, and to allow them to feel my sympathy and loyalty when needed. Thus, I hope that they feel my caring about them. Furthermore, I have drive or dynamism that leaders need. This reflects my inner metal power that helps me to continue going. Additionally, I am well organized and can control my temper. There are practically no barriers in communication with others. I used to give feedbacks and criticize people in a constructive way providing them alternatives. In my opinion, such a constructive yet inspiring method of indicating one’s mistakes makes the world a better place and helps to remove everything secondary. I can cope with stressful management. I am not hasty in making decisions. Finally, I am sympathetic with regard to others, and this makes me rather tolerant person. The Attitudes, Behaviors and Skills that Ensure the Effective Educational Leadership In terms of the leadership appraisal provided above, there are a lot of things that should be mastered in order to become a qualified educational leader. They primarily refer to the building of four dimensions: the enhancement of the instructional leadership skills, the development of the unique management style (as provided below), the ability to build the community, and the ability to create the vision. The instructional leadership provides some features of character that are either inborn or needed to be developed. First of all, effective educational leaders have to improve their qualifications on ongoing basis. The frequent methods of learning and counseling and other educational assistance become outdated with time. Thus, in order to ensure that the children are guided by the best techniques possible, this theoretical background of the leadership should be reviewed repeatedly. Secondly, the leaders themselves have to understand, realize, and accept the commitment to academic success of all students, especially those who are struggling for learning new things. An effective educational leader must also have an efficient communication system within school facilities. The teachers, students, administration, etc should provide feedbacks. All of this is important to ensure two- or multiway communication and interaction that would help to address the emerging challenges immediately. Special attention is to be paid to the feelings and perceptions of the students as they are usually in their most vulnerable age, and everything should be explained to them in a wise manner. The traumas that could be acquired at this age might influence their entire lives. Thus, the educational leader should encourage the interactions among teachers and students as well as school administration. And, therefore, it requires certain skills to be learned and sharpened by a successful educational leader. The concept of the instructional leadership also provides such a behavioral pattern when educational leader is engaged in educational practices (Green, 2012). They are frequently recommended not only to observe learning process but also to be engaged in and to monitor the reactions of the group. All if would help to recognize moods and expectations of the students and take steps to meet their expectations towards learning process. Most importantly, the leaders should develop some new rules. That is all that educational leadership is about. The leaders have to show positive examples and encourage others to take responsibilities. They also should defend others so the latter realize their own initiatives that would positively impact community or even the whole country they live in. The educational leader has to strengthen the community where he or she operates and to contribute to developing cohesiveness among its residents. The role of educational leaders widens together with the need for building strong relations inside certain community. Naturally, the traditional approach of top-down decisions could not be applicable under the conditions of the modern society. The traditional community is filled with teachers, leaders, students, parents, etc, and the mission of an educational leader is to reach synergy in his/her efforts in order to achieve common goals. Thus, the communication is crucial for educational leaders, and these skills are to be developed at the highest level possible. Finally, a vision of an ultimate goal has to be established by the leader that everyone follows. The goal-setting is quite challenging process as it involves audit of the current resources and drawing of the action plan off these resources. The actions are frequently limited by various factors, thus the educational leader should learn how to retrieve maximum utility from the resources available at the moment. Management Style The effective educational leader has to ensure that the personnel are managed properly and that the conflicts are resolved in a timely manner. To ensure that the leader should adopt strategy of building strong and cohesive team, be able to produce new initiatives, set the procedures for the conflict settlement, and, finally, elaborate the plan for dealing with the resistance to changes that are introduced within the educational environment. The challenges that are faced by educational leaders may vary by a group of educators or by the rules of the schools, academic communities, etc. However, the most serious issue that concerns all leaders is their ability to engage in, effectively manage, and motivate their followers or team members. It is particularly important when the entire educational personnel are given the task or project which is to be performed with the help of all members’ efforts. Moreover, the success of it depends on how much energy and creativity such educators are going to produce. There are no issues that will reach the stage of its implementation if group members are uninterested in its development. At this point, the lack of motivation or focus on work might cause the decrease in productivity. Thus, the goal of the successful educational leader is to engage everyone into activities in the most productive way. Productive educators are easily recognizable. First of all, they know their goals and use wisely all the resources given to them. The effective use of time, skills, and abilities of everyone is their key priority. Any worker gets his/her orders and is responsible for a certain part of work. At the same time, those activities, which require team efforts, are performed in groups where the guidance is made through the orders of an educational leader. They are not prohibited from criticizing the results of others, and their ideas are born during hot discussions in which virtually every member of the group actively participates. Even if there is a glimpse of disagreement, it is considered as a good thing. The atmosphere the personnel operate in is rather comfortable, informal, and relaxing. In order to realize all the things described above, an effective educational leader should introduce the following steps. First of all, he/she must establish the goal or task that is to be reached through the joint efforts of the whole team. Secondly, he/she must introduce the rules of a game or, in other words, explain how the process of achieving common goal will be implemented. He/she determines the tasks being performed separately and the areas of work needing joint activities. In addition to this, an effective leader should determine strengths and weaknesses of his team members at first sight. Moreover, he/she has to divide duties accordingly to ensure the high productivity of the team. All of these will simultaneously make the team cohesive and the tasks oriented towards many common activities. This will also prevent the conflicts due to the existence of clear rules for everyone to follow. The conflict is defined as the â€Å"interaction of interdependent people who perceive opposition goals and values, and who see the other party as potentially interfering in their realization† (Green, 2012). In case the conflict occurs, the following steps should be taken. First, the dispute should be assessed in terms of its intensity, clarity, longevity, etc. The golden rule in this regard is that the conflict should be resolved in a timely manner. A hidden conflict equals to time bomb; and the longer it remains unresolved, the more disastrous the consequences of its explosion may be (Green, 2012). Definitely, there is no such a way that would allow decreasing and minimizing all the conflicts. They are an integral part of any daily routine, and they help in identifying the truth. In case of their occurrence, an educational leader should identify the positions of the parties involved and their key arguments. Afterwards, he/she has to make decisions either solely or together w ith the board. The latter is viewed as the means of a more objective way for conflict resolution as more people are involved, and it is harder to bribe them all. Therefore, this method of dealing with conflicts is recommended for the introduction within school settings. Finally, an effective educational leader should develop strategies in order to cope with the change resistance. The reasons for resistance to changes vary. Therefore, it is rather silly to infer that somebody is reluctant to simply change his/her private reasons or character inclinations. The truth lies in the middle. Some individuals are just afraid of anything unfamiliar due to their temperament, while others are not ready to face new challenges due to poor management of changes implementation. People resist changes because of mistrust and individual predisposition towards these changes. It should be noted that educational leaders can significantly decrease the resistance to changes while applying the techniques and following the models that help employees to go through transitional period. They should serve as the means of communicating messages of change. On the other hand, such leaders are those who can provide the board with the feedbacks received from employees being of great importance for change-implementation process and needing to be addressed to immediately. There are a lot of approaches an effective educational leader might use in order to overcome change resistance. For example, he/she might offer the educators to participate in change-introducing process. In accordance with one of the studies conducted recently, the degree to which employees are engaged in change-implementing process significantly impacts the rate of change resistance. The results showed that those employees, who actually were provided with the opportunity to suggest the changes introduced, offer no resistance later. Thereafter, those others are simply ordered to perform their work activities in a different way dropped by two thirds by the end of the first month after the changes were introduced. Therefore, in order to minimize the risks of change resistance, one can simply involve the personnel into the process of decision-making in terms of introducing the changes. Expected Outcomes In conclusion, all of the skills, behaviors, attitudes, and management styles that have been mentioned above create a comprehensive strategy. The latter is to be followed in order to develop strong educational leadership. It represents the puzzle where every element is important in finishing the masterpiece. Thus, the communication serves many purposes from explaining the reasons and the benefits of the changes to the discoveries of the underlying thoughts and considerations regarding the ideas collected from the students. The ability to organize team and make it cohesive and strong will be important for the productive and fruitful cooperation of everyone in reaching their common goal. The unique management style that provides the engagement of the employees, the strategies for change resistance and conflict resolutions would help to eliminate possible flaws or barriers to defective operations. The vision would serve as the uniting reason for everyone to make his or her best achievin g the set goals and improving the learning processes for all the students.

Deductive and Inductive Reasoning in Sociology

Deductive and Inductive Reasoning in Sociology Deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning are two different approaches to conducting scientific research. Using deductive reasoning, a researcher tests a theory by collecting and examining empirical evidence to see if the theory is true. Using inductive reasoning, a researcher first gathers and analyzes data, then constructs a theory to explain her findings. Within the field of sociology, researchers use both approaches. Often the two are used in conjunction when conducting research and when drawing conclusions from results. Deductive Reasoning Many scientists consider deductive reasoning the gold standard for scientific research. Using this method, one begins with a theory or hypothesis, then conducts research in order to test whether that theory or hypothesis is supported by specific evidence. This form of research begins at a general, abstract level and then works its way down to a more specific and concrete level. If something is found to be true for a category of things, then it is considered to be true for all things in that category in general. An  example of how deductive reasoning is applied within sociology can be found in a 2014 study of whether biases of race or gender shape access to graduate-level education. A team of researchers used deductive reasoning to hypothesize that, due to the prevalence of racism in society, race would play a role in shaping how university professors respond to prospective graduate students who express interest in their research. By tracking professor responses (and lack of responses) to imposter students, coded for race and gender by name, the researchers were able to prove their hypothesis true. They concluded, based on their research, that racial and gender biases are barriers that prevent equal access to graduate-level education across the U.S. Inductive Reasoning Unlike deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning begins with specific observations or real examples of events, trends, or social processes. Using this data, researchers then progress analytically to broader generalizations and theories that help explain the observed cases. This is sometimes called a bottom-up approach because it starts with specific cases on the ground and works its way up to the abstract level of theory. Once a researcher has identified patterns and trends amongst a set of data, he or she can then formulate a hypothesis to test, and eventually develop some general conclusions or theories. A classic example of inductive reasoning in sociology is  Ãƒâ€°mile Durkheims study of suicide. Considered one of the first works of social science research, the  famous and widely taught book, Suicide, details how Durkheim created a sociological theory of suicide- as opposed to a psychological one- based on his scientific study of suicide rates among Catholics and Protestants. Durkheim found that suicide was more common among Protestants than Catholics, and he drew on his training in social theory to create some typologies of suicide and a general theory of how suicide rates fluctuate according to significant changes in social structures and norms. While inductive reasoning is commonly used in scientific research, it is not without its weaknesses. For example, it is not always logically valid to assume that a general principle is correct simply because it is supported by a limited number of cases. Critics have suggested that Durkheims theory is not universally true because the trends he observed could possibly be explained by other phenomena particular to the region from which his data came. By nature, inductive reasoning is more open-ended and exploratory, especially during the early stages. Deductive reasoning is more narrow and is generally used to test or confirm hypotheses. Most social research, however, involves both inductive and deductive reasoning throughout the research process. The scientific norm of logical reasoning provides a two-way bridge between theory and research. In practice, this typically involves alternating between deduction and induction.