Leadership Styles

Article Summary

After reading the article from Journal of Contemporary Education Theory and Research related to “Leadership styles in special Education” – which it is pretty recent considering it is coetaneous to Covid-19 crisis – two different leadership approaches stood out:

 1)    Transformational leadership, and

 2)  Democratic leadership.

The article relates to qualitative research whose subjects to study were school principals and teachers in Greece, with the objective of examine their degree of job satisfaction depending on the leadership stated for their schools. There were questionnaires with close-ended questions filled out by 69 teachers in special schools and the results were stunning: they all preferred to work in an environment with a principal that promoted autonomy among the staff, being perceived as motivational and as an inspiration to do their job. This was related to the transformational approach, but also the same effect occurred when the principal followed a democratic approach, in which teachers showed an increased job satisfaction.

Transformational leadership

 The style in leadership appeared to be extremely relevant for enhancing job satisfaction and, in contrast, also the source of further conflicts and concerns that required close attention to solve when negative approaches were followed by the direction of the school.

 It is interesting how it highlights what it means to develop as a teacher in a traditional education system and how different it is in special education which tends to follow its own rules regarding leadership and strongly including concepts such as inclusion to achieve the school objectives towards the students – which differ a bit from traditional schools.

Democratic leadership

 Therefore, people leading special schools constantly need to improve the quality of their personal development and build strong relationships. It is quite challenging because of the vast ocean of diversity. The worse scenario in these cases is to follow an autocratic leadership, stagnating the ability of the team to adapt in front of diversity, which opposite to the democratic approach in which the leader enhances the decision-making process of the team members and promoting open feedback.

Autocratic leadership

 Additionally, the transformational approach seeks to maximize the independence of teachers to work, being free enough to inspire students, and to “do more than an effort” while trying for more. But at the same time, principals need to set clear objectives and specific goals to team members in order for them to succeed, to maintain them motivated, and within a “collective sense of mission”.

Personally...

This article reminded me about past experiences through elementary & high school, and further university studies. It is amazing how unconsciously teachers, our leaders back then, influenced our preferred – or hated – courses and furthermore, how they motivated us to follow or not a certain path in life by choosing which career to pursuit. They used more than words, they used their example and permeated us inspiring or demotivating.

At the same time, if we are lucky enough to remember how the educational establishment was directed (under certain leadership style), how the whole environment and policies could change according to the leading head.
How important is to build awareness about how ourselves become leaders at different moments in life and how we can mark people – and children – without even noticing it. It could be at work, among friends, within a family... it could be anywhere, anytime, with anyone.

It is a butterfly effect; be aware of your own wings.

Trichas, P. (2020, May 30). Leadership styles in special education. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3748623#