![Are educational leadership faculty seen as ‘leaders’ by the leaders that they serve?]()
by Scott McLeod | May 19, 2009 | Higher Education, Leadership and Vision, Pre-Service Preparation |
Here’s a recent Twitter conversation that I had, followed by some additional thoughts…
Okay, Russ, I’ll bite. How should it be?
Well, of course, in an ideal world educational leadership faculty should be seen as "leaders of leaders." If we’re preparing educators for formal leadership positions such as principal, superintendent, or special education director, we should be seen as credible authorities and thought-leaders. And we educational leadership faculty are sometimes seen as "leaders," I believe, in specialized arenas like research and (maybe) policy circles.
I'm not sure, however, that educational leadership faculty often are seen as "leaders" by administrators in the field. Sure, we're usually seen as good people who often provide a decent (or at least not horrible) credentialing experience. But that's not the same as being looked to for leadership.
I think this situation occurs because educational leadership faculty typically are not deeply engaged with schools and/or the people who lead them. Other job demands and institutional reward structures both work against tenure-track faculty spending a lot of time in the field. To be honest, many higher education faculty also aren't that interested in being too involved with K-12 practitioners. A great number of us are pretty introverted (as Sir Ken Robinson notes, we faculty 'live in our heads'), a trait which is okay in academe but typically isn't associated with great success in K-12 school administration.
If success in academia is a four-legged stool – research, teaching, service/outreach, and grants/external funding – service/outreach is definitely the short leg of the stool. When we do define "service" in academe, it's primarily seen as disciplinary service such as serving on editorial or advisory boards, as journal editors, as officers in academic organizations, as proposal reviewers for conferences, and so on. The idea of service as "active engagement with and assistance of K-12 educational practitioners" is not very high on most faculty members' agendas. Often we see our teaching and credentialing (and an occasional meeting of a statewide committee or task force) as fulfilling that role of service to the field. When educational leadership faculty ARE involved with schools (i.e., we actually leave the university and go inside school buildings), it's often simply for a research project that may or may not have much tangible benefit to the participating school organization. We also like to have our 'clinical faculty' (i.e., non-tenure-track and thus, at many universities, "lesser" faculty) be the ones that primarily go out and work with schools, not us tenure-track folks.
We can point to isolated examples where what I've said here is inapplicable, and I'm sure that some of my academic peers across the country would take great exception to this post, but I believe that I've accurately described the general trend for most educational leadership faculty at most universities (particularly our most prestigious research universities), whether we want to admit it or not.
As those of you who regularly read or interact with me know, I'm a bit of an anomaly within my academic peer group. I see university education faculty as being in a service profession, one which should be serving the needs of K-12 (or higher education) practitioners. That's why I struggle with our definition of "service" as internally-focused service to ourselves rather than externally-focused service to others. That's why I struggle with academic publication hierarchies that value an article in a "prestigious" academic journal that no practitioner ever reads over an article in a still-selective practitioner journal that's read by tens of thousands of school administrators. That's why I struggle with a system that, for myself, can't (or won't) figure out how to value things like
- trying to serve as a thought leader that hopefully can mobilize an entire state's (and maybe down the road an entire country's) K-12 leadership community to move their schools into the digital, global era;
- providing professional development and technical assistance to tens of thousands of administrators and teachers on issues that are really important; or
- blogging, podcasting, and providing other online resources that reach hundreds of thousands of educators all over the world.
Will my "roll up my sleeves and get into schools / write in places where others can find me / actually try to be helpful" path be successful in the long run in academe? Will my current university figure out how to place a value on the things that I do? Should other educational leadership faculty view writing and/or service/outreach more like I do? Only time will answer these questions. In the meantime, however, don't hold your breath waiting for much help or thought leadership or, in fact, any kind of "leadership" for K-12 administrators from educational leadership faculty. The system that currently exists places value on other activities and it's not changing any time soon.
by Scott McLeod | May 10, 2009 | Higher Education, Learning and Teaching, Our Changing World, Pre-Service Preparation, Research and Evaluation, Tech Integration, Tech Tools, Videos |
Here are two presentations by Dr. Richard Miller, Chair of the English Department at Rutgers University, that are well worth any university instructor's time to watch.
The Future Is Now: Presentation to the RU Board of Governors
This Is How We Dream, Part 1 and Part 2
![Are educational leadership faculty seen as ‘leaders’ by the leaders that they serve?]()
by Scott McLeod | Apr 15, 2009 | 21st Century Skills, Higher Education, Our Changing World, Research and Evaluation |
A pilot study at Ohio State University has found that Facebook users in college have lower grades and spend less time studying. I pieced together the following chart from the news release:
Aryn Karpinski, a co-author of the study and doctoral student in education at Ohio State University, said that:
There may be other factors involved, such as personality traits, that link Facebook use and lower grades. It may be that if it wasn’t for Facebook, some students would still find other ways to avoid studying, and would still get lower grades. But perhaps the lower GPAs could actually be because students are spending too much time socializing online.
The news release noted that:
Typically, Facebook users in the study had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5, while non-users had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0. In addition, users said they averaged one to five hours a week studying, while non-users studied 11 to 15 hours per week.
Karpinski said it was significant that the link between lower grades and Facebook use was found even in graduate students. She said that graduate students generally have GPAs above 3.5, so the fact that even they had lower grades when they used Facebook — and spent less time studying – was an amazing finding.
My reaction when I started reading the news release was “They found some undergrads who aren’t using Facebook?” Then, sure enough, I found when I calculated the numbers that there were a mere 15 undergraduate non-Facebook users in the study.
I confess that I’m a little wary of some of Karpinski’s generalizations. Although she noted that other factors may be involved besides Facebook use or non-use, the ones that she hypothesized have to do with personality traits and/or predilection for online socialization.
Right now I’m not totally convinced that these findings don’t just represent the fact that about 80% of her non-Facebook users were graduate students. I think it’s safe to say that grad students generally spend more time studying than undergrads. Also, as she noted, grad students’ GPAs typically are higher.
In my mind, the overall generalizations from the study don’t seem to adequately recognize the extremely heavy skew in the non-Facebook group toward graduate students. If I saw that the data (to which she alluded) show that the lower grade trend for grad students was of equivalent size to the undergrad group, then I’d have more confidence in the overall generalizations that are being made in the news release.
Maybe Karpinski will find this post and share some more about her study. Clearly it’s a provocative topic and, if replicated at a larger scale, might provide some really useful information. While her data likely won’t curb Facebook use among college students, they might at least help us understand the potential impact of social networking on postsecondary academic achievement.
One final note: We all should look at – and think carefully about – any research findings that get reported out like this. We need to ask questions like Does this make gut-level sense? and Are the generalizations limited to the data or overbroad? and What more do I need to know to be confident in these findings?. Being informed consumers of research is critical if we are to make research- and/or data-driven decisions to benefit our students.
by Scott McLeod | Apr 14, 2009 | Higher Education |
by Scott McLeod | Apr 14, 2009 | Higher Education, Social Media |
by Scott McLeod | Apr 13, 2009 | Higher Education, News and Events, Tech Integration |
Tomorrow is Iowa State University’s first-ever symposium for the new ComETS group here on campus. Modeled after a similar group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, ComETS is an attempt to bring together all of the folks at the university who care about technology integration into one place. George Siemens from the University of Manitoba is our headliner; he’s doing a morning workshop and an afternoon keynote for us. Other events on the schedule include affinity group meetings and ‘lightning strike’ sessions on interesting technologies.
To conclude the symposium, I’m moderating a panel of students that will be discussing how they think about technology in their personal and academic lives. I’ve set up a wiki page where we’re generating questions for the students. If you’d like to add a question, please do!
I’ll probably be live-blogging George’s keynote and/or workshop tomorrow. Stay tuned at my Twitter feed for more details…
by Scott McLeod | Apr 7, 2009 | CASTLE, Higher Education, News and Events, Tech Tools |
Recently I was interviewed for The Chronicle of Higher Education’s article on academics who Twitter. Here’s my portion of the story:
8. Scott McLeod, an associate professor at Iowa State University and director of the university's Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education. Tweet: "College students are online more AND reading more? http://snipurl.com/eko4k"
http://twitter.com/mcleod
Followers: 1,307. Posts: 1,190.
Mr. McLeod argues that professors have been too slow to adopt Twitter. Academic discussions online often take place on closed e-mail lists, he says, when they should be happening in public forums like Twitter, so that a diverse group of outsiders can join in. "I think academics are actually missing a lot by not being involved in more of these social tools," he told me. "There are a lot of academics who think, 'If it's not coming from some other academic it's not worth a damn,' and that's not right."
He admits that some of the messages on Twitter are banal, such as people describing what they had for lunch that day, but he said such notes are part of what makes Twitter such a powerful way to feel connected to far-flung colleagues. "It's like those daily interactions you have with your neighbor — sometimes they're highbrow and sometimes they're lowbrow, but after a while you really get to know the person."
I don’t know if academics have been too slow to adopt Twitter specifically, but I definitely believe that academics have been too slow to adopt social media generally.
Check out the article if you’re interested. What do you think are some good ways that professors could be using Twitter?
by Scott McLeod | Mar 10, 2009 | CASTLE, Higher Education, Leadership and Vision, News and Events, Podcasts, Pre-Service Preparation |
Yesterday was Episode 2 of 4 Guys Talking, the new ‘talk radio’ podcast series from CASTLE. Like last time, our conversation ranged widely. Among other things, we discussed whether or not university educational administration programs should bear some blame for the poor leadership that exists in many schools, the fact that most school district technology leaders have had little to no leadership training, the unfortunate and continuing marginalization of technology to its own ‘silo’ within school organizations, and efforts within our respective states to train school administrators to be better technology leaders.
You can download the podcast or listen to a Web-streamed version here:
You also can subscribe to the 4 Guys Talking feed using iTunes or a RSS reader.
Thanks to those of you who joined us live yesterday, either by calling in or listening over the Web. Future dates/times are as follows (all times Central):
- April 1, 12pm to 1pm
- April 20, 2pm to 3pm
- May 11, 9am to 10am
- May 26, 1pm to 2pm
I'm still reworking CASTLE Conversations, the old CASTLE podcast channel, which will include all previous and podcasts (including 4 Guys Talking). I'll post about it when it's ready.
Happy listening!
by Scott McLeod | Jan 14, 2009 | Higher Education |
If you haven’t seen them yet, here are two ads currently being aired by Kaplan University. They come out pretty strongly against the traditional postsecondary paradigm. What do you think?
by Scott McLeod | Nov 30, 2008 | Higher Education |
Britt
Watwood had a great post a few weeks back on student use of laptops in
university classrooms. I just found it and left
him a comment (as you can see, I was my usual restrained self!):
The whole issue is just goofy.
First of all, who in their right mind expects students to sit and listen to
them for 50 minutes (or longer) without EVER wandering off mentally? It’s
unreasonable and goes against how we know the brain works. You can’t fight
nature!
Second, as Seth Godin notes, if your target audience isn’t listening, it’s
not their fault but yours. Just like we tell K-12 teachers: classroom management
(i.e., student attention) stems from good instruction.
Finally, these digital devices – particularly in conjunction with the
Internet – are the most empowering things we humans have yet created. Why don’t
we start figuring out how to use them productively in class rather than banning
them?
Our K-12 and higher ed students think we’re totally clueless and they’re
right.
Be sure to check
out Britt’s post. I thought his scenarios were excellent.
