Faculty of Humanities and Education (Postgraduate) - The University ...

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POSTGRADUATE REGULATIONS & SYLLABUSES 2012 - 2013
THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES & EDUCATION
No longer will administrators in our educational system operate
from a position of limited knowledge, skills, and competencies
derived from a perspective of passive observers of the system.
Deliberate and continuous efforts at developing state-of-the-art
practice, strategies, and personal theories must be a prerequisite
for increasing efficiency and effectiveness both at the macro
and micro levels of the system. It is therefore envisaged that
participants in this course will develop these competencies
in a learning environment of active engagement/interaction,
simulations, and role-play, while immersed in relevant and
current literature in the field of organization and administration
theories and reflective practice.
OBJECTIVES
Students will:
1. demonstrate a new understanding of the role of all
stakeholders in education in general but Trinidad and
Tobago in particular;
2. survey guiding sets of values, ideologies, and philosophies
that will undergird the practice of the new administrator;
3. diagnose and analyse the global environment in more
creative ways to ensure greater adaptability and relevance
of the educational enterprise;
4. capture and contextualise essential elements/principles
embedded in traditional and contemporary organisational
and administration theories;
5. reconceptualise traditional organisational designs to meet
the needs of a transformed educational experience;
6. provide the critical mass necessary for redefining the
instructional technologies of the teacher and student of
the future;
7. constructively engage colleagues in devising new and
meaningful menus of motivational and technological
strategies for all levels of the educational system.
CONTENT
This course is divided into five modules. Each module provides
student-administrators with different but complementary
experiences, combined in specific ways to allow for creativity,
collaboration, and individuation. The content of each module
will be analyzed and reinterpreted to address the special
circumstances and imperatives of school improvement and
empowerment of administrators, teachers, and other school
personnel. The modules are described in the following section.
Module 1 - The Prismatic Construct - emphasis on surfacing
key antecedent factors that will provide the critical mass in
determining administrators’ideological and philosophical bases
key to the restructuring process; educational ethics dimensions
of ethics, the nature of values, moral dilemmas, multiculturalism,
bases of ethics (e.g., revelation, utilitarianism, existentialism,
naturalism). Moral responsibility of administrators.
Module 2 - The emergence of organizational and administration
thought classical/traditional, human relations, behavioural,
systems, socio-technical, contingency theories; Organizational
designs the basic elements or dimensions of organizational
design including classical, systems, contingency and
other contemporary approaches to organizational design;
Organizational structures in schools formal and informal
structures.
Module 3 - Job design historical development of job design
strategies; job specialization, enlargement, rotation, enrichment,
redesign of the job characteristics, with special application
to education; The relationship between job design and
organization design in the context of school administration; Key
administrative functions.
Module 4 - Socialization and professional development
strategies, orientation programmes, organizational and
individual needs assessment strategies, staff development
approaches (on-the-job or off-the-job); Climate and culture
of schools, levels of culture (shared norms, shared values, tacit
assumptions); School climate healthy and unhealthy, custodial,
humanist, open, close engaged, disengaged implication for
school improvement; Culture-changing strategies.
Module 5 - Organizational conflict nature of conflict, sources
of conflict, effects of organizational conflicts, the dynamic of
organizational conflict, different views of conflict (contingency,
process, structural, open systems), diagnosing conflict resolution
strategies; Organizational self-renewal and development use of
force field analysis, OSN Model; Motivation the extrinsic-intrinsic
debate, content, process, and reinforcement theories.
Methods of Delivery
The delivery of this course will focus on creating a cadre of
administrators who will view schools as learning organizations,
characterized by dynamism and continuous search for meaning,
relevance, and excellence. A wide range of instructional
methodologies will be employed lectures, group discussions, oral
presentations, individual projects, case studies, and simulations
with the specific intent of allowing for intense interaction as
well as opportunities for individual scholarship.
ASSESSMENT
Students will be assessed on the basis of written papers. All
papers will test students’ understandings of, and abilities to
apply, organizational and administration theories and concepts
to the realities of the educational system in general, and their
schools in particular.
Each module will be tested by the production of a paper of
2,500 words, which will become due no later than two weeks
after the end of the particular module. The four best marks will
be selected to constitute 40% of the final mark.
The final assignment will assess each student’s understandings
of organizational and administration theories and concepts
in an effort to remediate/resolve an organizational problem/
issue in his/her school. The final assignment of 5,000 words will
constitute 60% of the final mark.