SLS-9d2 - Cultivating Teacher Leadership

Teaching leadership is hard. It cannot be defined quantitatively.  It cannot even be defined precisely qualitatively.  It is reasonably easy to recognise poor leadership, but considerably harder to recognise good ones.  One of the reasons is that the impact of good leadership may manifest itself after a lengthy period of time.  There are many different models and theories of leadership.  Leadership also manifest itself in different forms in different contexts.  

If teaching students leadership is hard, it is arguably harder to cultivate leadership among the teachers.  For the purpose of this discussion, “teachers” include everyone who are involved in the teaching of service-learning: teaching assistants, administrators, project assistants, community partners, etc.  While students are generally young, eager to learn and experience, whose characters are still developing, teachers are generally adults, satisfied that they have learned enough, whose characters are probably well set.  They may also be quite sensitive to being manipulated.  

While teachers have a significant amount of control over the content and the learning environment of the students, the environment under which the teacher operates is much harder to change, even if we know what changes are needed to cultivate leadership for service-learning.  Here at OSL/SLLO we strive to offer an open, honest, and supportive environment to the teachers.  We strive to offer as much assistance as possibles and are eager to hear about their needs and desires.  We are honest in communicating with the teachers what are, and are not within our control. For needs that are beyond our control we make the best effort to communicate the need to those who are in control.  The following are a number of measures taken.   

1. An environment must be created through which teachers can be trained, or otherwise prepared to teach service-learning.  At the least, they should be given the opportunity, the time and other resources needed to be trained elsewhere.  At PolyU we have strived to provide workshops, teacher development courses, and the equivalent of “internship” opportunities with established service-learning courses, for aspiring teachers.  PolyU had also provided significant amount of funding for piloting projects, for innovative means of preparation for teaching.  
2. At PolyU, a SL subject proposal, the subject teacher and the intended community partner is approved as a package.  This is to ensure that the teacher has the appropriate background and is well prepared and that there is a good prospect of a strong community partner.  The project, the community, and the partner may change, in time as appropriate.  But we do our best to ensure that the course has a good start.  PolyU does insist that any new teacher be approved by the vetting committee, in recognition of the important of the subject teacher.  
3. A community of practice for SL teachers was formed from very early on at PolyU, to provide support for the teachers who are scattered across many academic departments.  There are many opportunities for the community to work together on workshops, conferences, teaching development projects, research, etc.  With the inclusion of socially responsible global citizenship in the Mission Statement in the university’s Strategic Plan, the contribution of the teachers of service-learning can be considered to be recognized.  However, in a research university, there is always tension between recognition of good teaching and performance in research, and many continue to perceive it as an uphill battle. We continue to do what we can to research on the role of the teacher in service-learning, promote innovative scholarship of service-learning, and encourage due recognition of the contribution of the teachers.   

We have worked hard to train new teachers, help them to secure funding, collaborate with teachers to find new opportunities, new partners, new communities and new issues to address. Over the years, we have seen novice teachers becoming experienced, small teams growing into bigger teams, teachers expanding into new areas and using new methods.  We have seen teachers winning awards on their SL teaching.  Some are helping to train other teachers.  We have witnessed teachers becoming active in research on SL.  One issue which is generally out of our control is due recognition of their contributions and achievements towards their career development, not for the lack of trying.