Abstract
This chapter reports designing, implementing, and evaluating a Leadership and Management in ELT course based on an andragogical approach for adult learners in the teacher education department of a state university in Turkey. Participants were seven adult learners aged 28-35 undertaking the course, which lasted 14 weeks with 3 hours of weekly teaching. The course was delivered online, and the course content included leadership and management theories and approaches using videos, books, and a collection of articles. Data were collected using qualitative data collection tools; participants were requested to produce reflective writings, keep a leadership portfolio, and respond to end-of-the-course evaluation. Content analysis of the data revealed that adopting an andragogical approach to teaching leadership and management in ELT has been highly useful in preparing the participants for the leadership and management working environment they were either concurrently involved in and/or had aspirations to be in their professional lives.
TopBackground
What constitutes the background to the present research is my interest in bringing the topic of leadership and management into the field of English Language Teaching (ELT). Since 2014, I have been delivering a course entitled Leadership and Management in ELT at the ELT Department of a state university in Turkey at the postgraduate level to doctorate students. Over the years, I have realized the need to update the course content. This section presents an overview of the evaluation process of the course covering the years 2014-2020 by collecting information from the graduates in order to increase the quality of the course. It briefly mentions needs analysis with the participants of the current course, and finally, it introduces innovations that were incorporated into the revised course content because of this process.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Management: Management refers to “maintaining efficiently and effectively current organizational arrangements” ( Bush, 2008 ). The overall function of management is to maintain rather than bring about change, as in the case of leadership.
Online Learning Community: Online learning community is a virtual space that connects people with shared interests and educational goals. It is intended to facilitate collaboration, discussion, knowledge sharing, and support each other’s learning. Members of an online learning community may be students or teachers, generally to undertake a course or a program in a particular subject. All interactions take place via the Internet, through lectures, videoconferencing, and so forth.
Leadership: Leadership involves a process of exerting intentional social influence by one person over other people or groups in order to organize the activities and relationships in an organization (Yukl, 2002 AU36: The in-text citation "Yukl, 2002" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. ). Leaders have various roles such as unifying people around key values ( Wasserberg, 2000 ), and communicating “clear sets of personal and educational values which represent their moral purposes for the school” ( Day et al., 2001 , p. 53).
Andragogy: The term Andragogy, first introduced by Malcolm Knowles, the American Educator, is a theory of learning that specifically refers to the strategies used to facilitate adult learners during the learning process. Andragogy proposes six assumptions or principles, which are adults’ self-concept, learning experiences, readiness to learn, motivation, need to know, and problem-centered learning. Andragogy is a theory of learning focusing on assisting adult learners to learn (Knowles, 2005 AU35: The in-text citation "Knowles, 2005" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. ).