Leadership
It is important for leadership in the schools to establish and maintain PLCs. Successful PLCs will require a shift in the traditional leadership role from leader-centered (top-down) to shared leadership. Often, a top down leader will create the vision statement and then staff members will be encouraged to adhere to the goals outlined in the statement. Thompson, Gregg and Niska (2004) point out how many educators often feel that "new ideas that came from someone else without teacher input" is a waste of time and does not qualify as true leadership or support. Principals need to lead from the center rather than the top. The view of the principal as the instructional leader is changing to one that reflects the principal’s role within a community of learners and leaders. "The practice of shared vision involves the skills of unearthing shared ‘pictures of the future’ that foster genuine commitment and enrolment rather than compliance. In mastering this discipline, leaders learn the counter-productiveness of trying to dictate a vision, no matter how heartfelt"
Through this commitment and creation of a shared vision the team becomes empowered to work together and achieve goals. As teachers’ capacity increases and they develop a feeling of success, they will better understand that when they ally their strengths and skills they are able to reach goals they could not reach on their own.
Read more about this topic: Professional Learning Community
Famous quotes containing the word leadership:
“The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency—indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman—but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“A woman who occupies the same realm of thought with man, who can explore with him the depths of science, comprehend the steps of progress through the long past and prophesy those of the momentous future, must ever be surprised and aggravated with his assumptions of leadership and superiority, a superiority she never concedes, an authority she utterly repudiates.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“During the first World War women in the United States had a chance to try their capacities in wider fields of executive leadership in industry. Must we always wait for war to give us opportunity? And must the pendulum always swing back in the busy world of work and workers during times of peace?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)