Page 25 - Leadership Basics Educative Leadership

Enable staff to seek critical feedback from others,
for example supervisors, colleagues or peers.

Teachers cannot reflect in isolation. They need to be able to seek feedback from others on what they
are doing and thinking about in their work. Educative leaders have a major role to play in enabling
teachers to build reflective partnerships.
The role of critical colleagues, or reflective friends or study buddies, is essential. It is virtually
impossible to accurately and honestly analyse in isolation the implications of your own actions.
Everyone needs feedback from others to learn the meaning of what they have done.
Educative leaders can encourage teachers to work in reflective partnerships by:

 Forming teachers into pairs of critical friends at the start of each year;
 Allowing teachers time during the school day to work in pairs;

 Insisting that teachers develop their teaching programs in pairs;
 Insisting that before a teacher presents his or her programs to you they are first checked by their
critical friend;
 Requesting that all teachers day books or lesson plans be discussed with their critical friend;
 Demonstrating the value of critical friends by working with others.

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