Page 22 - Leadership Basics Educative Leadership

4. Reflection on Practice

Becoming an educative leader involves learning how to promote among teachers reflection on practice.

An essential skill for educative leaders is to be able to engage your staff in reflective practices.
There are many definitions of reflection, which date at least as far back as 1933. The underlying theme
running through most definitions is that reflection is an intra-personal process through which personal
and professional knowing can occur. Reflection is seen as a process for informing practice with reason.
It involves action and is a vehicle for promoting changed behaviours and practices (Calderhead & Gates
1993, p.83).
The basic assumptions underlying reflective inquiry are (1) reflection cannot be done in isolation (i.e.
by oneself) and (2) it is necessary for all teachers to be involved in professional reflection in order to be
effective teachers. The role of the educative leader is therefore to facilitate this reflection and to
encourage and promote teachers’ involvement in the reflective practice.

Perhaps one of the most important ways that educative leaders can do this is by promoting the formal
professional development mechanism of action learning. Action learning is a management strategy
designed to improve the abilities, competencies and self-understanding of the individual supervisor,
manager or leader. Action learning describes a way in which people, as individuals or group learners,
work on projects based on real issues of concern in their workplace in order to make significant
improvements and enhance their own skills at the same time.
However, even without the implementation of this formal process, it is important for supervisors to
develop reflective practices among staff.

The key elements of this are that educative leaders should (1) encourage questioning and (2) enable
staff to seek critical feedback from others, for example supervisors, colleagues or peers.

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