Leadership and Management Development in Education (Education ...

THE CURRICULUM FOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT: CONTENT AND PROCESS47ities play a significant part in many development programmes. While this maysometimes be an opportunity for an essentially didactic approach, delivering a‘body of knowledge’, there are several other group learning strategies that maybe employed to promote participants’ learning. The most important of these arediscussed below.Action learningAn enhanced focus on action learning arises, in part, because of an increasedrecognition that leadership and management are practical activities. Whileknowledge and understanding serve to underpin managerial performance, theyprovide an inadequate guide to action. Hallinger and Bridges (2007: 7) statethat ‘education in the professions should emphasise the application of knowledge’and add that professional development should aim at ‘preparingmanagers for action’ (p. 2).Action learning is one example of this more practical approach. McGill andBeaty (1995) show that it provides for continuous learning and reflection by a‘set’ of people, using an ‘experiential learning cycle’. These authors show howaction learning can contribute to management development through the developmentof the individual manager and the organisation as a whole (p. 209).Smith (2001) focuses on the use of action learning in leadership development.Writing from a Canadian perspective, he states that action learning‘embodies an approach based on comrades in adversity learning from eachother through discriminating questioning, fresh experience and reflectiveinsight. It is a form of learning through experience … based on the premise thatwe can only learn about work at work’ (p. 35).Action learning is a key dimension of NCSL’s New Visions programme, fornew first-time heads. Bush and Glover (2005: 232) note that ‘this approach isperceived to be highly effective’. They cite the very positive views of oneparticipant:The action learning sets are challenging: you have to explain your problemsto others, they listen and discuss and finally feedback suggestions toalleviate your area of difficulty. (Ibid.)Action learning is also an important part of the ‘delivery architecture’ in Singapore’s‘Leaders in Education’ programme. Chong et al. (2003: 169) explain therole of action learning:Participants know what they are taught, but they do not know what theywill learn. They have to create their own knowledge through team learning,and this takes place in … syndicates, a group of about six people meetingweekly and facilitated by a university professor. They know what knowledgethey have created only when they come to the end of the programme.