Educational Leadership is a vital feature that builds an apparition of academic success for all students in the education system by endeavoring and stabilizing a safe and receptive educational environment. “A Leadership can make or break any organisation”, thus a leader must be proficient and devoted experts to perform excellently and hold quality leadership abilities to meet the standards of a school system across the country. Quality educational leaders are very essential for any organisation as they play a dynamic role in guiding and influencing other educators, pupils and parents in an administrative setting in a present school to ensure improved learning and attainment of common educational aims.Hence this essay will elaborate about concerns relating to authoritative style of leadership qualities in the education systems in Fiji, its impacts to other correlated members and the strategies that can be used to shape leadership excellence in an education system.
Area of concern: Authoritative leadership in Educational school systems
Educational leaders are the foundations of a school system which enables the learning communities to function and grow successfully to achieve academic goals. However there are certain factors that still limits the educational leaders to be effective, the major areas of concern which I have encountered thorough my teaching profession is an authoritative leadership qualities which is still practised till date in certain schools. It is a key issue then and is of now regarding the quality of teaching and learning within individual classrooms in a school system. As described by Goleman, authoritative leaders are expert in their field of work, and individual that are able to clearly articulate a vision and the path to success. An authoritative leader uses commanding and demanding tones which leads to a mal functioning of an institution as it creates differences and fear among the team or workforce which hinders the progress. Authoritative leaders ‘give a lot and expect a lot’ (Dinham, 2005: 348– 351). An authoritative leader strive to develop competent, emphatic, self-regulated staff and students by placing a strong emphasis on professional learning.
Impacts of Authoritative leadership to other subordinates of Education systems.
“Autocratic style effects also known as authoritative leadership, Milgron [11] said autocratic style clearly defines the division between leaders and workers.” This kind of leadership is very inflexible and can cause de-motivation of staffs which can lower group achievements, as an authoritative leader adopts to a one-way communication and do not consult or give them a chance to provide their opinions, and takes the full credit for the work accomplished.The prime impacts of this authoritative leadership styles in an education system is that leaders fails to recognise the skills and abilities within other people and rarely lets them make decisions which actually un skills a workforce leading to poor productivity. This type of educational leaders feels they are most qualified and experienced and considers only their views to be more valid and distrust their subordinate’s ability, and closely supervise and control people under them. An Authoritative leadership negatively affects employee’s efficiency and gratification. It also diminishes a workers self-esteem and condenses their enthusiasm to comply with a leader’s direction or support his initiatives.
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Strategies that can be implemented improve this areas of concern
Educational leadership in schools needs a lot of consultations and involvement from various stakeholders in the school systems to achieve academic excellence. Educational leaders should involve good interpersonal skills, since teachers have a prime engagement in all the activities carried out in the classrooms, thus their partaking should be the greatest and they should be widely involved in the decision making processes rather than leaders only making decisions, imposing on others and executing without queries. “Appropriate approaches for effective educational leadership in Jamaica in the 21st century, Paradigm RePaDo means that principals (and of course other leaders in the education system) to recognize that the efforts and contributions of staff and the commitment to the job which makes those contributions possible.” Educational leaders should empower professional learning by encouraging and entrusting staffs to provide more supportive innovations and motivation which can boosts and strengthen their relationships in a work force leading personnel’s to work fearlessly.‘The more leaders focus their professional relationships, their work and their learning on the core business of teaching and learning, the greater the influence on student outcomes.’ (Robinson, 2007, p12). Educational leaders need to be fair and should demonstrate equality among all the employees in the same way. “Equitable educational systems are fair and inclusive and support their students to reach their learning potential without either formally or informally pre-setting barriers or lowering expectations, (Field, Kuczera and Pont, 2007).
Obstacles
Some obstacles that may be encountered during implementation of this strategies may include is that this leadership style would not generally desire or comprise and expect their individual control over all decisions to taken away from them. As the interference of other subordinates in decision making will minimize their choices which are based on their ideas and judgments to be rarely accepted or followed by the staffs. So an authoritative leader would like to retain all their power, authority and control, and reserves the right to make all decisions. Some authoritative leaders tend to make decisions based on ego rather than sound management principles, and punish employees who dare to disagree with such decisions.
Conclusion
The quality of educational leadership matters in education. When it is properly focused it has a positive impact on student achievement. When it is productively distributed, it is a principal factor in school improvement. In order for the educational leaders to be effective they need to be well equipped with the skills, perform collaboratively with their staff members to ensure the smooth rolling out in school system. An educational leader needs to build capability and collective capacity in evaluation for sustained improvement and build relational trust and effective participation and collaboration of stakeholders at every level of the schools educational system. Since teachers are usually at the receiving end of the instructions from the top, they should have a major role to play in the decision making and this would ensure that positive changes brought in which are effective so that the students’ progress is kept at the utmost in the schools.
Bibliography
- Tannenbaum, R. & Schmidt, W. How to Choose a leadership Pattern. Harvard Business Review, May-June 1973, No. 73311
- Vecchio, Robert, P. (1998). Leadership: Understanding the Dynamics of Power and Influence in Organizations. University of Notre Dame Press
- Newstrom, John W. & Davis, Keith (1993). Organizational Behavior: Human Behavior at Work. New York: McGraw-Hill.
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