During the study of the subject ETL504: Teacher librarian as leader, I have examined many different concepts related to leadership in general as well as specific leadership opportunities for the teacher librarian.
In my response to Topic 1 forum (Magdolen, 2014a) I have expressed my initial understanding of the leadership as the ability to successfully lead an organisation to achieve its goals. While this is a correct idea, I have not, at that point, considered the notion of leader to be different from that of a manager and identified the leadership in terms of the school management.
Since then I have learned about different types of leadership, concentrating the most on the transformational leadership, that provides people with vision, rather than with rewards and punishments. I have expressed my own intention to become a transformational leader with strong aspects of servant leadership (Magdolen, 2014b), as it positions the leader into the centre, not the top of the organisation, where he/she helps others instead of controlling them.
I have learned about different qualities the leaders need to display, keeping in mind that that leadership is ‘the potential outcome of interactions between groups of people, rather than specific traits or skills of a single person’ (Robinson, Hohepa, & Lloyd in Townsend, 2011, p.98).
An idea that I consider significant within a school environment is expressed by Swaffield & MacBeath (2008, p. 37), who stress that leaders should always maintain a focus on learning and ‘attend to the conditions that favour learning’. Learning is therefore a prime concern of the leadership. I also believe that it is very important that this concern then translates into the actions of the school leaders (principals) that lead to shielding teachers from distractions to their focus on pupil’s learning, which in today’s schools are numerous.
One of the major learning steps in my understanding of the leadership has been during the work I have done on the assignment 1. Creating a concept map has been an excellent exercise in many ways. The format itself was new to me and so I acquired new skills just creating the map, but more importantly, I felt more than ever that analytical and deep thinking skills had to be utilised here in order to create a unique product. It was exactly the kind of project that the teachers should be giving their students to achieve deeper and longer lasting learning.
S.T.E.E.P. scan proved to be a very useful exercise too, particularly for assessing the current state of the library and in order to stimulate thoughts about the vision for future and subsequent strategic planning to achieve the vision.
I have learned that teacher librarians hold a unique position in a school, as they work with and have the opportunity to influence all teachers and students. This allows them to lead from the middle. However, in order to establish the leadership position, many conditions need to be satisfied. Firstly, the TL needs to take a proactive role and be ready to apply their expertise in the fields of pedagogy, librarianship, information-seeking, literacy and leadership. Apart from the technical skills, the TL needs to demonstrate sound inter-personal skills: being able to establish trusting relationships, communicate clearly and effectively and work collaboratively with others.
The vital component of leadership is a vision that blends what happens in the library with the whole school learning. Vision needs to be clear, well formulated and simple enough to be shared and remembered. Finally, a pre-condition to establishing the leadership position of the TL is “a mandate to implement or produce change” (Green, 2011, p. 22). The trust of the principal, his support and vision for the role of the TL is the gateway that can open up many leadership opportunities for the TL. Helping the principal understand the benefits of TL involvement in school decision-making groups is, according to Dohnam (2005, p. 301), “the first step toward exerting influence and leading from the middle”.
As a library administrator, I have previously considered myself to be a leader. In my initial thinking, the leadership was linked to management and the differences between the two were fairly vague. I now view leadership as an ability to influence others and I understand there are many different ways one can exhibit leadership qualities.
The complexity of the role of the TL allows certain flexibility in the way they work, which is why we often find that every TL has their own special focus/vision for the library. It is this vision that reveals their potential to become leaders.
References:
Donham, J. (2005). Leadership. In Enhancing teaching and learning : a leadership guide for school library media specialists (2nd ed.) (pp. 295-305).
Green, G. (2011). Learning leadership through the school library. Access, Vol. 25, (pp. 22-26). Retrieved from CSU database.
Magdolen, M. (2014a, July 17). Topic 1 Forum Post. Retrieved from http://interact.csu.edu.au/portal/site/ETL504_201460_W_D/
Magdolen, M. (2014b, July 19). Topic 1 Forum Post. Retrieved from http://interact.csu.edu.au/portal/site/ETL504_201460_W_D/
Marzano, R. J., Waters, T., & McNulty, B. A. (2005). Some theories and theorists on leadership. School leadership that works: From research to results (pp. 13-27).
School Library Association of South Australia (2008): SLASA Teacher Librarian Role Statement. Retrieved from http://www.slasa.asn.au/Advocacy/rolestatement.html
Swaffield, S. & MacBeath, J. (2009). Leadership for learning. Connecting leadership and learning: Principles for practice (pp. 32-52).
Townsend, T. (2011). School leadership in the twenty-first century: Different approaches to common problems? School Leadership and Management, 31(2), 93-103.