Week Nine

This quarter we've been asked to think differently about leadership. More correctly we've been asked to think about ourselves and how we think about leadership. How does one assess change when the person doing the changing is also self assessing? Could I fool myself into thinking I/m different? How does one imagine a paradigm shift, as a series of milestones or one large leap forward?

And yet the same is true for constructivist leadership. Lambert, et al. (2002, p.7) quoting Fosnot (1992, p. 167) points out that constructivism is at once a theory of 'knowing' and a theory of 'coming to know.' Fosnot's statement is true for the leader and the members of the group.

As such, a constructivist leader is facilitating a meeting to increase member discourse so as to promote the reciprocal process of learning, among and between the participants which allows the members to deepen understanding, provide clarity, and reframe thinking (p. 89). And we are back to assessing paradigm shifts.

Doing my own reflecting on Joan Wink's "Critical Pedagogy" I felt some comfort when I read the following on page 11:

I must continually challenge my long-held assumptions.
I must let practice inform my theory.
I must continually build theory that informs my practice.
I must find new answers for new questions.
I must grapple with multiple ways on knowing.
I must listen, learn, reflect, and act.

And if I follow Wink's advice, won't that lead to internal change? I know, I know, how would I assess the change . . . .

Kirk


And if you could assess the change, role