Teacher Leadership and Education for Sustainable Development
In every good school, there are teachers whose vision extends beyond their own classrooms — even beyond their own departments. Such teachers recognize that students’ school experiences depend not only on interaction with individual teachers, but also on the complex systems in place throughout the school and district. This awareness prompts these teachers to want to influence change. They experience professional restlessness — what some have called the “leadership itch.” Sometimes on their own initiative and sometimes within a more formal structure, these professionals find a variety of ways to exercise teacher leadership[1].
When dealing with education for sustainable development (ESD), a teacher is supposed to transform the noble sustainable visions to all school students not only his/hers. This requires tackling various leadership approaches integrated simultaneously in all the teacher’s practices: Authentic, Transformative, and Democratic leadership. These approaches were tuned by effective emotional intelligence, which is the capacity to reason about emotions, and of emotions to enhance thinking[2].
Authentic leadership is a metaphor for professionally effective, morally sound, and deliberately reflective practices in educational administration. This leadership implies a sincere type of leadership and a hopeful, open, visionary and creative response to social situations. The prerequisites for such authentic leadership in educators are self-knowledge, a capacity for moral reasoning, and sensitivity to others’ intentions[3].
Transformational leadership is a style of leadership that involves a change. Through the strength of their vision and personality, transformational leaders are able to inspire followers to change expectations, perceptions and motivations to work towards common goals[4]. Transformational leadership has four components which are; idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration[5] . Idealized influence and inspirational motivation are connected with the leader’s ability to formulate and articulate a shared vision. The idealized influence of transformational leader serves as a role model for followers and because followers trust and respect the leader, they emulate this individual and internalize his or her ideas. Intellectual stimulation of transformational leadership is exhibited through recognition of followers’ stimulation, creativity and innovation while under individual consideration, the leader provide a supportive climate in which they listen carefully to the individual needs of the followers.
Democratic leadership favors the leader’s sharing of managerial power with the group members. The most remarkable characteristic of this leadership style is that the leader consults the members’ opinions when setting goals, plans, and policies[6]. As democratic leadership is an ethical entity, it ensures individuals’ right to participate, respect for all members, and fulfillment of expectations, as a result of which democracy spreads through structures and network of educational institutions.[7]
Through all these approaches moderated by the teacher’s emotional intelligence, the vision of ESD is implemented through: 1) targeting the goals, 2) planning, modeling, and reflecting, 3) enjoying the journey positively enough by believing that Karma exists and the energy spent will never be destroyed, it will be transferred through generations.
References:
[1] Danielson C, 2007. The Many faces of Leadership. Educational Leadership: 65 (1), 14–19.
[2] Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P. & Caruso, D. R. (2004). Emotional intelligence: theory, findings, and implications. Psychological Inquiry, 15(3), 197–215
[3] Begley, P. T. , 2006. Self-knowledge, capacity and sensitivity: Prerequisites to authentic leadership by school principals. Journal of Educational Administration, 44(6), 570–589. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09578230610704792
[4] Money O V, 2017. Effectiveness of Transformational Leadership Style in Secondary Schools in Nigeria. Journal of Education and Practice. 8(9), 135–140.
[5] Bass, B.M. (1985). Leadership and Performance beyond Expectations. New York NY: Free Press.
[6] Terzi R A & Derin R 2016. Relation between Democratic Leadership and Organizational Cynicism. Journal of Education and Learning. 5(3), 193–204.
[7] Woods, P. A. (2004). Democratic leadership: Drawing distinctions with distributed leadership. International Journal of Leadership In Education, 7(1), 3–26. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi /pdf/10.1080/ 1360312032000154522
