102098 Contemporary Teacher Leadership Assessment 2: Reflection

Assessment 2: Part A- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XrYVyVP2qk

Assessment 2: Part B- Individual Critical Reflection

The unit Contemporary Teacher Leadership in particular assessment 2 highlighted just how

important it is to develop effective communication and leadership amongst the group

members. Communication is a crucial component between all members regardless of each

person’s role in the completion of the assessment (Luthra and Dahiya, 2015). Effective

communication ensures the success of the assessment. In the following critical reflection, I

will examine the strengths and weakness of our team and discuss changes that could be made

to aid in future collaboration and increase effective communication; in order to improve the

end product.

The groups primary goal throughout the teamwork tasks was to produce a well thought

through assessment and more importantly to develop effective teacher leaders fit to cater

for the 21 century needs. Teamwork tasks included weekly zoom meetings with Denise where

we as a team had to present out understanding of that week’s content. To achieve good

results, we as a team decided to meet on the Sunday night and discuss our findings before.

However, we as a team we struggled with meet up before the zoom meetings as we all had

prior commitments. After we all voiced our concerns, we decided that we needed to put our

energy on this team and find a way to achieve together. As a team, we delved deep into the

notion of teacher efficacy, through the implementation of the Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR).

This notion assisted us in the designing strategies to achieve our project, in line with the

experiential strand of meaningful learning.

Name: Eman Chami

Student Number: 17972853
102098 Contemporary Teacher Leadership Assessment 2: Reflection

An important aspect to note, is that effective collaboration did not occur immediately,

according to James MacGregor Burns our collaboration was considered as transactional

leadership (Kuhnert & Lewis, 1987). In other words, the distribution of leadership amongst

the team members relied on one strong voice, rather than an equal partnership between the

team members. This meant that, in this hierarchical approach certain team members required

compliance, instead of being a working participant within the group. Being a working

participant involves changing up the roles and taking the initiative to begin certain

conversations. However, the lack of effective collaboration made it impossible to share ideas

fluently. Nevertheless, once the team took the path noted in the theory of Lee, Hallinger and

Walker (2012), we distributed the leadership equally amongst the team in a collaborative

sense. Our communication, collaboration and ideas improved overall. By creating a

supportive culture of sharing, critiquing and reflecting on different ideas, we harnessed our

individual strengths and expertise. We were each then able to bring our experiences, to shape

the overall purpose of creating our project to increase meaningful learning for all students.

Collaboration is a key element of many contemporary theories on teacher leaderships. One

being Fullan (2001) which argues that a component of teacher leadership is to work

collaborative to enact change within the school or system. Another a study by Rasberry and

Mahajan (2008) highlighted that well-supported and effective teachers promote a coherent

system which cultivates leaderships to inspire results amongst the school, policy and practice.

As a team, we found the best way to utilise our strengths to produce the end product was to

divide the sections amongst us. I was given the data collection and protocol section; this was

due to my strong science background in data collection and statistics. However, to ensure

that everyone on the team is in loop with the progression of the research, we created a

Name: Eman Chami

Student Number: 17972853
102098 Contemporary Teacher Leadership Assessment 2: Reflection

GoogleDoc. This not only gave insight into the progress, but it made everyone accountable

for their section. Using the GoogleDoc along with our zoom meetings was crucial and

therefore, we were able to increase our communications which ensured we produce an end

product, with a high level of understanding amongst all the team members. A change that

could be made to aid in future collaboration could include, not only relying on technology as

a form of communication, if we had a couple face-to-face meetings, we would have been

exposed to larger discussions times allowing for more thoughts, ideas and opinions to flow,

allowing us to focus on the smaller details; therefore, improving our overall project.

As a team we found that the experiential strand of meaningful learning was important at

highlighting effective teacher leadership. One of the group members went to Kingswood High

School who mentioned that the school began to emphasise the importance of implementing

the QTR. We then as a group decided that, that’s a path we should take and explore further.

As a group we found that it was important to understand the terms meaningful learning

before we could develop a project that would produce results. Through discussions we as a

group defined meaningful learning, as learning that involves students grasping concepts

through real-world connections. In a study by Michael (2001) our definition was further

elaborated as it suggests that “meaningful learning, involves the acquisition of knowledge in

a way that allows you to do something with it, resulting in knowledge that is stored in a way

that allows it to be accessed from many different starting points.” (para. 18). The group

interpreted that definition as giving the students the opportunity to gain an understanding

through multiple means of representations, and thus connecting concepts in many ways than

one. Therefore, after research we as a team concluded that if we create a project that

Name: Eman Chami

Student Number: 17972853
102098 Contemporary Teacher Leadership Assessment 2: Reflection

improves teachers’ implementation of content than we create an environment that will

achieve meaningful learning.

One way to improve teachers’ implementation of content, is through the QTR model, the QTR

model “has been shown to make a positive difference to the quality of teaching, teacher

morale and school culture” (Gore, 2018, p. 39). This was important to note as this quote

guided our project, we wanted to better the learning of the students, and in order to achieve

that we must focus on the development our teachers. Furthermore, the QTR places the

emphasises on the quality of teaching, rather than the quality of teachers, which is

significantly important when discussing ways to improve meaningful learning. We need

teachers for the 21st century who are focusing on improving pedagogy, recognising what

matters and focusing on teacher student interactions.

In conclusion, our project will give recognition to the importance of the QTR and give teachers

the skills required to implement the QTR model correctly, to have the most impact. We are

therefore, showing the teachers of its great power in relation to extending their own

professional knowledge and their capacity to refine their own teaching practice, to ultimately

improve meaningful learning for all students.

Name: Eman Chami

Student Number: 17972853
102098 Contemporary Teacher Leadership Assessment 2: Reflection

Reference List
Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Gore, J. (2018). Making a difference through Quality Teacher Rounds: Evidence from a
sustained program of research. Paper presented at the annual Research Conference
of the Australian Council for Educational Research Conference, Sydney, Australia

Kuhnert, K. W. J., & Lewis, P. (1987). Transactional and transformational leadership: A

constructive/developmental analysis. Academy of Management Review, 12(4), 648-
657.

Lee, M., Hallinger, P., & Walker, A. (2012). A Distributed Perspective on Instructional
Leadership in International Baccalaureate (IB) Schools. Educational Administration
Quarterly, 48(4), 664-698. doi: 10.1177/0013161X11436271

Luthra, A., & Dahiya, R. (2015). Effective leadership is all about communicating
effectively: Connecting leadership and communication. International Journal of
Management & Business studies, 5(3), 43-48.

Michael, J. (2001). In pursuit of meaningful learning. Advances in Physiology Education, 25(3),

145-158. doi: https://doi.org/10.1152/advances.2001.25.3.145

Rasberry, M. A., & Mahajan, G. (2008). From isolation to collaboration. Promoting teacher
leadership through PLCs. Retrieved from
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED503637.pdf

Name: Eman Chami

Student Number: 17972853