Exploring Leadership Educator Journeys Through Narratives

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Short Description

How have we, as leadership educators, experienced our journeys in developing our professional identities? These identities influence our philosophy and approach to leadership education and impact our experience in our professional roles. Through interactive exercises, participants will engage in reflection, meaning-making, and storytelling to construct and share their identity narrative.

Detailed Abstract

Over the past several years we have conducted informal focus groups around professional development and training of leadership educators. While we discovered that there is certainly a need to help educators learn how to do leadership education (e.g., content knowledge, teaching & learning, curriculum & program design, assessment & evaluation), we also found that to feel supported and grow as professionals, leadership educators needed communities of practice, mentors, and opportunities to share and celebrate diverse stories of their experiences. These are not simply strategies for best practice; they are shapers of professional identity. To explore this further, we must ask: How do we become leadership educators? What factors shape our leadership educator identity development?

The literature points to narrative approaches as a useful way to not only organize and describe our experience, but make meaning individually and collectively. Narratives provide an approach to reflection and inquiry in storied form, and involve processes that allow the practitioner to describe and make meaning of life experience. For example, narrative approaches (e.g., storytelling of experience, use of metaphors, biographies, and life histories) have been used to illustrate teacher discourses and knowledge (Nespor & Barylske, 1991), teaching experience (Patchen & Crawford, 2011), learning to teach (Schultz & Ravich, 2013), experience in formal teacher preparation programs (Moss, 2004), training educational leaders through storytelling of our own experience (Ackerman & Maslin-Ostrowski, 1995), and crafting leadership stories of experienced administrators (Danzig, 1997; 1999). Viewing identity through a narrative lens gives a language and form to make meaning of who I was, who I am, and who I might become. In this session, we will apply several narrative approaches to facilitate reflective practice and enhance professional identity development: Storytelling, symbolic interactionism, and anticipatory reflection.

Stories are ways of communicating about our experience; through stories we interpret the world, make sense of experience, claim identities, and reveal connections between the self and social structures (Riessman, 2005). Each of us has a story of our leadership educator journey that informs our philosophy and approach. Authentic leadership development bridges professional identity with self-concept of a leadership educator, starting with understanding one’s own story. Shamir and Eilam (2005) propose that life stories are the system through which leaders make meaning; they are authentic to the extent they act and justify actions based on the meanings provided by life stories (p. 396). Albert and Vanda (2009) described an experience of teaching authentic leadership development through a narrative, and challenged leadership educators to explore the nexus of leadership and storytelling. Life story provides the context for experiences, and inspires us to impact the world (George, Sims, McLean, & Mayer et al., 2007).

Symbolic interactionism involves deriving meaning through the process of social interaction (Blumer, 1969). Thus, one’s basis of understanding of the world is shaped by the social process of learning and transmission of information from others (Blumer, 1969). Social interaction affects not only interpretations of objects, but also of self and personal identity. Using the symbolic interactionist approach is one way to make meaning of the leadership educator identity journey. This would involve deconstructing one’s subjective meaning as to what makes an effective leadership educator and how that perception influences one’s identity.

While we often equate reflection with looking back, Conway (2001) suggests that reflection can also be anticipatory (prospective). Anticipatory reflection can be used in understanding one’s leadership educator identity journey in that it involves imagining the self in future contexts, creating new constructions of the self as a professional in practice (Conway, 2001). It is thinking about what will happen; more specifically drawing on prior knowledge relevant to future experience. Similar to the discovery and dream stages of Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider, Whitney, & Stavros, 2008), anticipatory reflection draws on memories that then play a role in opening the door to imagine an ideal future practice. While the stories and projects are unique to each individual, these insights “can assist in portraying a phenomenology of learning to teach” (Conway, 2001, p. 93); in the case of leadership education, perhaps adding clarity to larger narrative discourses that shape the field.

Learning Outcomes:
The goals of this workshop are for participants to:
a) engage in reflection and meaning-making of their leadership educator identity through three different narrative approaches, and
b) apply pedagogical techniques of narrative they can use in their own teaching of leadership.

Session Overview (90 minute total):
1. Introduction (10 minutes). Introduce concept of professional identity development and provide brief background of narrative approaches for leadership learning and development.
2. Story Circles (20 minutes). Reflective strategy to share stories of professional practice, specifically critical incidents in our leadership educator journeys.
Identify case-stories of critical incidents/moments that matter; individual storytelling in small groups; group debrief; identifying themes across stories (What have been the influences or incidents that have most shaped your leadership educator identity journey?) .
3. Symbolic interactionism (20 minutes): Reflection on how our perceptions of a leadership educator impacts our behavior and experience.
Select an image and describe how it represents who a leadership educator is/what a leadership educator does; share in small groups. Deconstruct meaning (How did you come this belief? How has your professional experience reinforced or challenged that meaning? How does this belief or meaning influence your own practice? Do you embody this belief in practice?)
4. Anticipatory reflection (20 minutes): Reflection exercise to consider change for future actions in pursuit of growth as a leadership educator.
Identify an example of something you designed/facilitated/taught in the past that you wish you had a chance to do over again; re-write it (What do you envision being different this time?); reflect on barriers (What might you encounter and what help do you need?); small group sharing.
5. Large group debrief & discussion (20 minutes): Debrief the overall meaning-making on professional identity (What might these processes have illuminated for you in regard to your leadership educator identity?), and the implications of and uses for narratives in leadership education (How can I/we use this approach in our own lives and work?)

Sub Unit

• Leadership Education

Presenters

• Kerry L. Priest, Kansas State University

• Corey Seemiller, Wright State University