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Stop the Burnout: Enhancing Support Practices for Principals
Get PDFPrincipals are essential for ensuring student success. Effective principals have a significant positive impact on student achievement, teacher effectiveness, a positive school culture and inclusive school climate. Increased demands of the role which include mounting managerial tasks and a lack of systems and centralized support for principals, is decreasing the focus on effective school improvement. Current research reveals an alarming trend regarding the absence of positive principal well-being and support structures. The River District School Board (RDSB; a pseudonym) requires a detailed change process and plan to improve this issue. This Problem of Practice (PoP) and Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) seek to improve centralized supports for principals in order to improve the overall wellness of principals, reduce burnout and mitigate work intensification. A new Principal Well-being Model is proposed that frames the PoP with precision and will act as an overarching theoretical lens. Solutions to this issue are explored utilizing distributive and ethical leadership approaches. The Organizational Congruence Model of Nadler and Tushman (1989) is used to evaluate the change process in order to collaboratively guide principals, central office staff and senior administration in this change for improved principal support practices
Addressing the Lack of Digital Literacy Learning at a Kuwaiti Higher Education Institution
Get PDFThis Organizational Improvement Plan is an effort to address the lack of digital literacy learning at a Kuwaiti higher education institution. Digital literacy, and by extension, digital citizenship are critical skills to have in today’s world. Global College of Kuwait (GCK, anonymized) is a relatively new college in the region that is struggling to retain students, particularly after COVID highlighted the college’s lack of experience/preparedness with digital literacy. To tackle the problem, a reform committee was formed and tasked with finding a feasible solution to improve digital literacy learning in the college’s Foundation Program. A Foundation Program is a preparatory program typically found in most private GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) colleges and universities. It focuses on language and math literacy skills for new students and is a Pass/Fail program that is mandatory prior to entering a degree program. The OIP analyzes the best ways to implement digital literacy learning as part of the Foundations Program, ensuring all students engage in digital literacy knowledge and practice, and gain transferable academic skills of critical thinking for life. Using John Kotter’s (1996) eight steps for change, the analysis finds that there are best practices for digital literacy learning tailored to Foundation Programs and suggests GCK opt to implement the same. Following best practices at Khalifa University, GCK should imbed digital literacy tasks as part of the English language literacy portions of the Foundations Program
Removing Barriers and Increasing Access to Advanced Placement
Get PDFAdvanced Placement allows students to demonstrate college readiness while in high school and potentially earn credit or placement toward higher education degrees. However, barriers can prevent students from accessing this advanced coursework and impede student learning, limit university options, and impact career prospects. Shifting teacher mindsets to an access-centered approach offers a viable solution to removing barriers. Leading faculty to change practices in the AP program at Birchwood (a pseudonym) requires reculturing an established culture of curriculum. Three leadership approaches serve this plan: the ethical highlights these problems of access, the authentic serves to build relations with school leaders, department heads, curriculum chairs, and AP faculty, and the instructional guides teachers’ curriculum planning, instruction, and assessment. Social Cognitive Theory underpins this change process with its two concepts: triadic reciprocal causation and self-efficacy beliefs. Reculturing requires changing teachers’ behaviours and their internal competencies, which change the environment in this reciprocal relationship. Changing self-efficacy beliefs in teachers is achieved through verbal persuasion, vicarious experience, personal mastery, and emotional state. This three-year implementation plan follows a recursive process through the Change Path Model’s awakening, mobilization, acceleration, and institutionalization phases including developing the collective efficacy of an AP leadership team in year one, building AP teacher capacity for change in year two, and changing teacher practices in year three. Monitoring and evaluation frameworks track progress and judge effectiveness. Next steps close out this plan with future considerations including a focus on social justice and equitable access
We Are More than Baskets, Beads, and Bannock: Expanding Teachers’ Knowledge Through Indigenous Professional Development and In-Service Training
Get PDFThis Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) explores Megwe\u27g School Board\u27s (MSB, pseudonym) ongoing challenge to integrate Indigenous education into classrooms. The underlying cause is the need for Indigenous professional development and in-service learning opportunities for teachers to teach Indigenous education. Indigenous cultural teachings are embedded within the province\u27s curriculum but are seldom taught as directed by the provincial curriculum guide. Three proposed solutions to the Problem of Practice will be examined. The Appreciative Inquiry change model was utilized as the framework for leading change for the selected proposed solution. Critical Indigenous Theory (CIT) was chosen for the Organizational Improvement Plan. CIT prioritizes the voices and lived experiences of Indigenous Peoples and places particular emphasis on their worldviews. The frameworks that align with CIT are Indigenous and authentic leadership methods. These leadership approaches will guide the proposed change plan in an Indigenous perspective. The Ontario Centre of Excellence’s Knowledge Mobilization Plan framework was implemented to communicate the need for change within the organization. The monitoring and evaluation tool used to measure, track and evaluate proposed change is the Plan-Do-Study-Act- model
Creating Equity Education for First Nation, Métis and Inuit Students in Ontario Provincial Classrooms
No full textThere is an education gap in the achievement of Indigenous students today linked to the colonial domination era. Due to inequities in provincial education systems, Indigenous students have not been performing and succeeding academically like non-Indigenous students. Since 2015, strategies and solutions have emerged to correct this ongoing Canadian issue. 94 Calls to Action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) were posted to help repair the harm caused by residential schools and move forward with reconciliation. This Organizational Plan (OIP) will focus on École secondaire catholique Entourage (ESCEntourage) (a pseudonym) to improve instruction for Indigenous students\u27 academic, social, and emotional achievement. This plan aims to help FNMI students succeed academically like their dominant counterparts, graduate, and be able to move on to post-secondary studies to contribute fully to society as active citizens. This OIP offers teaching practices aimed at helping instruction become more culturally relevant and inclusive and to create challenges for students as part of equity-driven work. Given its roots in assisting underprivileged and oppressed communities towards more equitable solutions, a critical social justice lens is used as the underpinning framework. I draw on transformational and culturally relevant leadership (CRL) approaches to persuade and inspire early adopter teachers to recognize and grasp the significance of integrating Indigenous viewpoints and adopting cultural practices in their classrooms
