The assessment of the needs that the teachers in the target educational institution have at the current stage revealed their poor familiarity with the innovative approaches to curriculum development as well as lesson planning. Specifically, measuring the students’ academic achievements remains the focus of their lessons. Such a perspective, meanwhile, increases the pressure, under which the school attenders find themselves; this can affect not solely their studies, but their health as well (Pascoe et al., 2019). Therefore, the advancement of the learning process, which should lie in improving its practicality along with reducing the psychoemotional load on the students, is critical.
Education, notably, has to comprise a variety of elements to be future-oriented and prepare school attenders successfully for integration into a community. According to Christy et al. (2020), the key components are behaviorist, constructivist, social-emotional, esthetic, and ecological. Teaching techniques that consider each of those enable students to develop their talents and compensate for their weaknesses in the context of the values the modern society has. This falls under the definition of transformational leadership, whose basics the teachers, therefore, are to master (Cherry, 2020). Explaining those to the participants to provide them with more effective curriculum design tools is the main purpose of the training.
Considering the above, the expected learning outcomes are as follows.
- The trainees are familiar with the theory of transformational leadership and able to explain it.
- The trainees understand how to compose curricula and plan lessons in accordance with the ideas of transformational leadership and how those can be applicable to organizing classroom activities.
- Each participant can plan a lesson in the subject he or she teaches in a way that provides all of the students with room for self-actualization and self-improvement without limiting these to better grades.
The essential criterion to measure the effectiveness of education is the practical usefulness of the knowledge and skills it provides. Meanwhile, regarding excellent academic performance as the main, if not the only, goal of studies formalizes those, shifting the focus from action and creativity to following instructions. As a result, the latter becomes the strongest competence that school leavers have, which can make them disciplined and diligent workers but suppress their talents as well as potential.
The above determines the need for teachers to behave as transformational leaders, inspiring and supporting their students to encourage those to change for the better. Specifically, it is essential for school attenders to learn how to meet challenges to be prepared to interaction with reality (Mills University, 2019). So that they do not feel lost or shocked in unfamiliar situations, teachers should organize and guide them; dictatorship is unacceptable, however, as it can awaken or aggravate such feelings.
Therefore, the trainees need to both become acquainted with the theory of transformational leadership and practice planning curricula and lessons in accordance with it. The training quite apparently has to adhere to those principles as well, so that it serves as the most available, visually clear, and reliable example to follow. Notably, the ability to comment on the key points is essential because understanding them provides a framework for activity, but it should not be the only parameter to assess. Since the skill the trainees expect to acquire is innovative lesson planning, the quality of that, which they will demonstrate throughout the course, is a more important criterion.
Apparently, it will be more reasonable to collect the materials from free resources because the need for competent staff determines that for considerable investments in their wages, which makes any extra spending hardly relevant. As the primary point to communicate to the trainees is the theory of transformational leadership, manuals on it should be the reference point of practical activities. In addition, several real-life examples may be relevant since they can add to the visual clarity of the presentation, specifying the directions to follow for the participant teachers.
In other words, it would be helpful for the latter to become acquainted with the situations where their colleagues apply the principles of transformational leadership to lesson planning. Ideally, they should identify the possible techniques and approaches from the case studies unassisted, relying on the acquired theoretical knowledge. This is a suitable way to monitor the effectiveness of the training without focusing on grades as an absolute measurement.
At the closing stage of the project, the participants are to be able to utilize the above principles in their own lesson planning, which skill is possible to acquire exclusively through practice. Its format will depend on that of learning; the latter, in turn, was among the needs to assess before designing the program. Teamwork, however, is compulsory in any case because the essence of transformational leadership lies in finding and adopting shared values, so that each of the involved is responsible for growth and development (Jiang & Chen, 2021). Considering this, the scope of learning content should involve materials to organize work in pairs and groups, such as role modeling guides, brainstorms, quizzes, and other.
The contribution of each trainee to the success of such activities can serve as another determinant of the effectiveness of the training, showing how well it can motivate and organize. In addition, the participants’ readiness to interact with the other and form teams also is an important parameter to assess; it enables anticipating the ways they will utilize their new competences in their further work.
It is noteworthy that the training should consider the ethnic and cultural diversity of the modern society to be maximally correspondent to reality. At first sight, this does not seem to be critical, as, according to Schaeffer (2021), students prefer the institutions where at least 50% of the peers share their ethnicity (para. 2). The overall national demographic shift, however, is doubtless; not only school attenders, but also teachers are becoming more diverse, albeit gradually (Gumber & Beckhusen, 2022). Inclusive approaches are necessary, therefore, because the values as well as the understanding of leadership may differ substantially from culture to culture.
Notably, the training should involve foreign materials on both the theory and the practice of transformational leadership, primarily in education, such as articles, reports, or case studies. Both translated pieces and those composed in English by the authors of non-American origin are acceptable. In addition, when modeling lessons or completing similar practical tasks, the participants should assume the presence of English learners in the classroom to choose the most appropriate formats and styles of communication.
As apparent from the above, the project is multidimensional, notwithstanding its design for quite specific tasks. The focus of the program lies at the intersection of several areas, notably, education, leadership studies, and sociocultural studies. The topical issues from these spheres need integrating into a coherent, relatively short, and practically applicable curriculum, which calls for professional knowledge. This need, in turn, determines that for partnership and assistance to maximize the quality of the training as well as, probably, make it adoptable for other educational institutions in the future.
Primarily, the principal of the target school could collect the relevant feedback from his or her colleagues who tried implementing the ideas of transformational leadership. Their experience would serve as a practical illustration, from which it would be more apparent what obstacles teachers may face on their way of professional development and how to overcome those. In addition, they could share the materials they used in the trainings; that would not only simplify the search, but also highlight the existing gaps in the knowledge on the issue. The latter would provide a clearer view of the limitations the program currently has as well as set directions for further research to improve the quality of education at least at the local level.
In addition, it would be helpful to collaborate with at least one organization that gives leadership training to firms. A possible example is Leadership USA (n.d.), which, as its official website tells, “provides companies with access to high-quality, low-cost leadership development” (para. 3). First, it could offer competent lecturers or coaches, depending on the preferred format of the training. Second, as this organization performs globally, its representatives most probably could help formulate the above multicultural component of the training with a reference to their experience in interacting with members of various societies. Therefore, the project supervisor should interview several candidates to assess the relevance of their knowledge and skills to the project. An issue of concern, however, is their desirable wages; in case they are substantially above average, it will be reasonable to look for more affordable variants.
Finally, the decision to make the training adaptable to other educational institutions calls for a cooperation with the local school district. Its personnel could provide useful information on the other schools in the neighborhood, such as the demographics of the teachers, the feedback from the attenders as well as their parents, and the existing needs. The awareness of those points would simplify the future partnership by helping the schools align their values and goals; this, in turn, would add to the quality of their performance. In case of holding the training exclusively in the target institution, however, the school district may be helpful as well. In particular, its staff may have a broader perspective on the needs of the potential participants, which would provide a more detailed theoretical base for designing the program.
It is worth specifying that none of the above bear the lead responsibility for the success of the project. Other schools, a professional leadership organization, and the school district are possible partners but not the heads. The central role will belong to the project supervisor, who will follow his or her normal full-time schedule. In particular, the duties will involve hiring lecturers and monitoring their performance, establishing and adjusting new objectives, the sufficient provision of learning materials, and staying within the budget (“What does a project supervisor do?”, 2020). Each of these aspects can influence the result of the project, due to which they lie within the supervisor’s mission area.
References
Cherry, K. (2020). Transformational leadership: A closer look at the effects of transformational leadership. Very Well Mind. Web.
Gumber, C., & Beckhusen, J. (2022). Review of two Texas counties shows gap in teacher/student diversity. Census. Web.
Jiang, D., & Chen, Zh. (2021). Innovative enterprises development and employees’ knowledge sharing behavior in China: The role of leadership style. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, article 747873. Web.
Leadership USA. (n.d.). About us. Web.
Mills University. (2019). How to be a transformational leader in education. Web.
What does a project supervisor do? (2020). Digital School of Marketing. Web.
Pascoe, M. C., Hetrick, S. E., & Parker, A. G. (2019). The impact of stress on students in secondary school and higher education. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 25(1), 104-112. Web.
Schaeffer, K. (2021). U.S. public school students often go to schools where at least half of their peers are the same race or ethnicity. Pew Research Center. Web.