Instructional Video for Leadership
Instructional Video
for Leadership
For anyone with even the tiniest awareness of Educational
Leadership, the reality of schools is almost entirely predicated on time.
Specifically, for leadership and leaders, the most impactful and crucial time
is that devoted to meetings. Indeed, I have argued before that the quality of
leadership is almost entirely dependant on two factors: the quality of conversations
and the quality of meetings. With a subset of meeting quality, being the amount
of voices genuinely given priority and a chance to influence the decision-making
process. Yet, at the same time, meetings as a whole are one of the things
within schools that are perhaps the most robustly resistant to change. A
meeting now would be recognisable to anyone from almost any point in previous
history.
You might argue perhaps that the use of PowerPoint is an innovation
that allows for more succinct communication (or the complete opposite, the
leading cause of death in meetings), perhaps OneNote, Microsoft Teams, or similar
tools allow a revolution within these processes? Perhaps the use of web
conferencing software like Zoom, Skype or Adobe Connect allowing more
participants in the process regardless of their physical location has changed
the form of meetings slightly? Yet despite these incremental innovations, there
seems no real way to improve upon a leadership meeting, a staff meeting or perhaps
a Professional Learning Community?
A concept I have been exploring and experimenting with is
the idea of Instructional Video and Flipped Learning, ideas most often applied
to students and pedagogy being shifted and applied to teacher colleagues and
andragogy. This means that staff may read something, or watch a short video
before attending a meeting, thus allowing far more time for genuine discussion
and engagement as colleagues rather than merely covering agenda items and reading
key documents.
It could easily be suggested that this method does not solve
the dilemma of time within schools, though it does provide a way of
re-shuffling the time that is available to allow for greater engagement within
those most core times, in this case meeting time.
Extending this idea out, the use of instructional video can
also be used to deliver essential communications to staff. For example, perhaps
the school is adopting a new system for communication, email, or accountability
within a Learning Management System (LMS). The content that most needs to be
covered is usually best explained visually, with voice and a tutorial, rather
than merely a series of screenshots and text descriptions.
Again, this use of technology may seem simplistic and a
small improvement upon previous methods, but in a setting where time truly is of
the essence and wherever possible, teachers and leaders aim to spend their time
committed to ‘core business’, any slight innovation that allows this to occur
is worthy of exploration.
If you accept these proposed ideas, the next question is:
How may we innovate the use of meeting time? I personally would use this time
to allow a full coverage of opinions from within the group. The same expectations
that teachers and educators have for their classes are far too often overlooked
when delivering Professional Learning and running meetings. All members of the
team should be engaged, contributing and discussing with their colleagues.
Indeed, many leading scholars comment on Professional Learning
within teaching as the greatest wasted expenses in the history of education.
This could also be applied to the vast majority of meetings, a sentiment that
many teachers would be able to echo.
Perhaps, we now have the technology, the access and the
ideas to push these concepts further and engage collaboratively at last?
Running Word Count: 21,845
Originally Published: https://nationaleducationsummit.com.au/new-blog/instructional-video-for-leadership
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