leadership styles – Jennifer's reflections 'through the looking glass'

What an exciting (and somewhat overwhelming) time we are teaching in! The proliferation of digital platforms, content and resources along with the rise of social media has resulted in an abundance of information to process and engage with daily in our personal and professional lives. Even with the uncertainty, stereotyping and perceived redundancy hanging over the role of the library and information professional (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions [IFLA], 2023), the evolving global developments and demographics commands the requirement for information and digital competencies in education agendas now more than ever (IFLA, 2019, p. 10). The teacher librarian is perfectly positioned to impact this education shift as middle leaders of a school, correlating their teaching qualifications and experience with their expert knowledge of information, systems and transliteracy fluencies.

This subject has been an educating balance of building impactful knowledge and understanding of leadership and change management, with practical tasks for future implementation. The focus on leadership styles and identifying those in our own school contexts has been beneficial in gaining insight into how schools operate and the people within the roles. The initial creation of visual diagrams depicting our school hierarchy which I uploaded to the blog post ‘Example Hierarchical Diagram’ (Holland, 2024-a), allowed me to understand the leadership styles in a practical manner. The first assessment built on this concept, delving deeper into realising our potential influence as middle leaders of a school.

Additionally, the learning provided a chance to reflect on our own styles and how we see our position as teacher librarians within the school. This has been a particular focus as I am in a professional transition period after returning from maternity leave to a role much different to when I left. It is clear in my discussion responses reflecting on our school contexts (Holland, 2024-d) that I became a little disillusioned; unclear of my standing and feeling undervalued. What was highlighted from these discussions was the impact of external influences and the need for advocacy – for our libraries and for ourselves. This theme has been a significant part of my journey back into the school library this term. This subject has prompted me to act; to begin my transformation into a middle leader. I reflected on my pedagogical aims and started to implement a few goals in my post ‘Leading from the middle’ (Holland, 2024-b). Thus far at school this year I have:

Designed and shared a promotional presentation for executive based on the value of teacher librarians supported by literature and research. This was well received, and the result was some timetabling changes to include class collaboration time, library management time and an extension reading group.
Created and facilitated a whole school professional learning presentation on information literacy in the 21^st century. Staff provided me with positive feedback, promoting my role in the school.
Collaborated with the school principal to apply for an ACT Education Teacher Librarian funded position for 2025.

Holland, J. (2024). Information literacy for 21st century learners [Screenshot]

Holland, J. (2024). The case for teacher librarians [Screenshot]

The leading from the middle blog above demonstrates my introduction to leadership styles; an area I have developed my knowledge significantly in during the subject. Listening to 5 traits of a leader (Ezard, 2015), I recognised that I am a transactional and situational leader – always placing emphasis on consideration, empowerment, support and promoting those around me.

Finally, the second assessment has been extremely practical for my school context. It was interesting to read back over my blog posts from ETL504 and note that in ‘Using the AITSL standards to support the TL as a Leader’ (Holland, 2024-c), the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) standard I chose to develop was Focus Area 3.3: Work with colleagues to review, modify and expand their repertoire of teaching strategies to enable students to use knowledge, skills, problem solving and critical and creative thinking (AITSL, 2017). Serendipitously, this outcome was part of my plan focus and strategies for assessment two. This assessment has resulted in me discussing with our principal my future role at the school. I am pleased to report that it looks positive for next year! If we are successful with a TL funded position, I will be enacting our learning from this degree – a role as a middle leader, collaborating daily with class teachers for effectual change and preparing our students for 21^st century, lifelong learning.

References

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. (2017). Australian professional standards for teachers. AITSL. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/teach/standards

Ezard, T. [BastowInstitute]. (2015, July 27). Building trust and collaboration – Tracey Ezard [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/kUkseAdKyek

Holland, J. [Jennifer.Holland] (2024, March 26-a). Example hierarchical diagram. Jennifer’s reflections ‘through the looking glass’. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/jennifersjournal/2024/03/26/example-hierarchical-diagram/

Holland, J. [Jennifer.Holland] (2024, March 26-b). Leading from the middle. Jennifer’s reflections ‘through the looking glass’. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/jennifersjournal/2024/03/26/leading-from-the-middle/

Holland, J. [Jennifer.Holland] (2024, April 30-c). Using the AITSL standards to support the TL as a leader. Jennifer’s reflections ‘through the looking glass’. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/jennifersjournal/2024/04/30/using-the-aitsl-standards-to-support-the-tl-as-a-leader/

Holland, J. [jennifer.holland] (2024, March 19-d). Module 2.1, 2.2 & 2.3 – Primary sector [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://bit.ly/43FzLVa

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. (2023). IFLA trend report: Realising libraries’ potential as partners for development (Update 2023). https://trends.ifla.org/update-2023

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. (2019). Riding the waves or caught in the tide? Navigating the evolving information environment. https://trends.ifla.org/insights-document

Fewings, N. [jannerboy62]. (January 17, 2022). *Team Lead Succeed.* [Photograph]. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/scrabbled-scrabble-tiles-with-words-on-them-EkyuhD7uwSM

This is just me having a practise at a leadership structure concept map before Assessment 1 is due.

The depicted diagram (see bottom of post) begins by grouping the education setting’s teams. Leadership styles were shown using the coloured arrows reflecting the style key/legend at the bottom of the diagram.

* The executive team – in my assignment I will individualise these roles, but I was aware of only showing a handful of components here for this example. Their majority of leadership is instructional to build and lead from the front. I indicated that executive use a distributed style to the administration team. I also included situational leadership for the students and community as their leadership styles are dependent on the dealings and outcomes desired.
* The teaching teams – after reading module 2 I debated the teaching staff’s leadership style as a whole and purpose. I would like to believe overall that teachers are transformational leaders for our students and colleagues.
* The specialist team – our school has these specialist roles. We used to have our own “team” and would meet but now are more spread to be in the “junior” or “senior” teams for meetings. Transformational leadership was chosen as these staff members are integral in inspiring and supporting other staff, teaching teams and students.
* The administration team – extremely important in the day to day running of the school and assisting all staff members, and thus I generally showed them in a reciprocal transactional role with teaching staff, transactional leadership with the school community and servant leadership with the students.

I also included:

* The school community (parents, caregivers, suburb neighbours, ex-students etc.). Our school community is very involved and positive overall. I showed this group having a servant leadership role with the students.
* The students – are why we are in the teaching profession! All teams link to the students and display differing leadership styles that influence and support their learning outcomes.

What I believe I need to think about is the external and internal factors, how to show the leadership styles more clearly and how to depict roles that have multiple leadership styles depending on the staff member or objective, as well as breaking up the teams to be able to be more specific on the types of leadership.

Tag: leadership styles

ETL504: Leadership and Strategic Planning Reflection

Example Hierarchical Diagram