Leadership is the Key to Effective Management of an Organization

Leadership is the key to effective management of an organization for it is the product of interpersonal relations and has a function or role within a specified social structure.  Leadership can’t be considered a separated function but rather it is well integrated in its management functions. Without a leader, the organization cannot function effectively and successfully for he leads in achieving the goals and objectives of the company.

In order for a leader to become effective in managing the organization, he should possess the following core or essential competencies: communications, teamwork, creative problem solving, interpersonal skills, manage client  relationship, self direction, flexibility, build appropriate relationships, professionalism and financial which are the personal skills required at all levels of leadership.  These essential competencies provide the foundation that a person needs to become a leader.  Without a strong foundation, the organizational structure will soon fall and crumble.

On the other hand, there are some leadership special competencies needed to drive the organization onto the cutting edge of new technologies like leadership abilities, visioning process, create and lead teams, assess situations quickly and accurately, foster conflict resolution (win-win), project management, implement employee involvement strategies, coach and train peers and subordinates. Leadership competencies form the basic structure that separates leaders from bosses. These skills create strengths and opportunities in the attainment of the goals and objectives of the company.

Teaching and Learning

In this essay, British education theorist Peter Newsam describes two contrasting approaches to education. The traditional approach assumes there is a predetermined body of knowledge that the teacher should pass on to the student. This approach uses testing and competition to evaluate and motivate students. In the progressive approach, the child, rather than a set body of knowledge, is the frame of reference. The teacher’s role is to be conscious of the development stage and the capacity of each child. The progressive method stresses cooperation rather than competition. Newsam suggests that an effective teaching system can incorporate elements of each approach.

Teaching and Learning

By Peter Newsam

The relationship between teaching and learning, what and how teachers teach, and how and what learners learn has long been a subject of controversy. The two, sometimes extreme, positions adopted by those who engage in it can be loosely described as, on the one hand, “traditional” and, on the other, “progressive.”

The traditional position starts from the assumption, taken to be so obvious as not to be open to question, that the purpose of teaching is to ensure that those taught acquire a prescribed body of knowledge and set of values. Both knowledge and values are taken to reflect a society’s selection of what it most wants to transmit to its future citizens and requires its future workforce to be able to do.

An important characteristic of this traditional view is that it seeks to convey what is already known and, at some level, approved. The relationship between teacher and learner is determined thereby. The learner is seen as the person who does not yet have the required knowledge or values and the teacher as the person who has both and whose function it is to convey them to the learner.

From the nature of this relationship, a number of things follow: the systematic transmission of knowledge and values from teacher to learner needs to proceed smoothly. That requires well-behaved learners and a disciplined environment, if necessary externally imposed with sanctions for failures in compliance. Teaching and learning also benefit from carefully designed syllabuses and prescribed curriculum content. Furthermore, as what has to be learned can be set out in full, stage by stage, from the start of the educational process to its conclusion, it follows that what is taught can be regularly tested and that each stage of teaching and learning can best be seen as a preparation for the next. It also follows that, as individual learners learn at different speeds and are capable of reaching different levels of achievement, it seems sensible to arrange learners in groups of similar abilities, either at different schools or in graduated classes within schools. Finally, so far as human motivation is concerned, competition is seen to be the predominant way to encourage learners or institutions to strive to improve their performance in relation to that of others.

The opposed view, broadly described as “progressive” or “child-centered,” starts from the learner rather than from any predetermined body of knowledge. On this view, the function of the teacher, from parent in the earliest years right through the years of school attendance, is to be aware of each child’s capacity and stage of development. The primary importance of children’s learning, which in turn is taken to depend on that stage of development, requires each of those stages to be seen as important in its own right rather than as a preparation for some later stage. An eight-year-old child, for example, is seen as an eight year old to be developed to his or her full potential as an eight year old, rather than as a future nine or fifteen year old. The curriculum itself tends to be seen, in the words of the Report of the Consultative Committee on the Primary School as open-ended and inquiry-based: “the curriculum is to be thought of in terms of activity and experience rather than of knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored.”

So far as values are concerned, the progressive approach tends to see attempts to teach or improve these directly as less effective than creating schools which exemplify values of greatest relevance to the young. Hence the importance placed on the way individuals, adults and learners alike, are encouraged to behave towards each other. A disciplined environment, rather than being externally imposed, is a direct consequence of that process. Social values, cooperation rather than competition and equal value given to the efforts of the least as well as the most able, are emphasized. Finally, as a point of principle, it is assumed all can succeed at some level in some aspects of learning. As one 19th-century educator insisted: “All can walk part of the way with genius.” Sharply differentiated forms of education, with children attending schools or classes confined to those with particular levels of aptitude, however assessed, are thought to conflict with this principle. By inducing a sense of failure in children allocated to what are seen, by others and themselves, as schools or classes with lower standards than others, general levels of achievement are thought to be depressed and an unmotivated and under-achieving group of children unnecessarily created.

The opposed concepts implicit in “traditional” and “progressive” attitudes to teaching and learning reflect approaches regarded by those holding one or other of them as self-evident: that it must be right to start from what needs to be taught or, conversely, that it must be right to start from the learner whose success in learning it is the purpose of teaching to ensure.

The virtual impossibility of reconciling these two diverse approaches, at least in their extreme forms, has led to each being caricatured, often in metaphorical terms. Traditional education’s perception of children, in an extreme form, was described by Charles Dickens in Hard Times as seeing them as: “little vessels arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.” In short, like a kettle that has to be filled from a tap, the traditional learner is taken to be a passive recipient of whatever is being taught. Further, because the traditional approach to education requires a degree of memorization, the ability to recall with precision what has been taught in the terms in which it has to be reproduced by the learner, this feature is disparagingly described as “learning by rote.” The implication is that the learner’s mind has not been required to be engaged in the process. Finally, the assumption that, to the traditionalist, knowledge is something that already exists, causes this approach to be seen as backward-looking at a time when new knowledge is being created and reshaped at a bewildering rate.

Criticisms of progressive education, particularly in its extreme forms, have concentrated on the folly, as this is perceived, of allowing children to decide when and how they are to learn anything. Lack of externally imposed discipline has led to some schools where, as one inspector of schools described it, “it is like a wet play-time all day.” The emphasis on growth and development, with analogies to the way plants move naturally through their lives without constantly being told what to become, has been particularly criticized. The simple notion of growth carries with it no implication as to the direction that growth is taking. Growth, progressives are thought to ignore, may as easily be in an unwholesome direction as a healthy one. This leads to values being seen to be relative, with no one set of values inherently to be preferred to any others. Yet what ought to be, values of any kind, cannot be derived from what is; and it is a naturalistic fallacy to suppose otherwise. Finally, because the teacher is not seen as at the center of the educational process, he or she is reduced to becoming a “facilitator” of children’s learning; in extreme cases unprepared even to answer simple questions or directly to teach anything at all, on the assumption that the only things a learner really learns are those things which he or she has “discovered for himself.”

Between the two extreme positions, reconciliation has proved difficult. Historically, the traditional approach has been dominant and continues to be held particularly firmly by those who themselves were able, well-motivated learners and as such required little more of their teachers than specific instruction. Progressive approaches have tended to be favored by teachers or theoreticians whose concern has been with the education of all children, including the able and the well-motivated but with particular attention to the needs of those with little interest in or apparent aptitude for learning and little confidence in its relevance to their own lives.

In practice, neither of the two extreme approaches to teaching and learning has proved generally satisfactory. In its starkest form, traditional education has often served able pupils well but has been less successful with others. On the other hand, progressive education has tended to work well enough in the early years of schooling, in the hands of able and committed teachers, but has had less success when attempted in other circumstances.

The need to develop systems which incorporate the best of traditional and progressive approaches to teaching and learning has long been evident. Fortunately, what good schools and good teachers actually do has suggested ways forward. Increasingly, the approach adopted places the teacher in authority, as traditionally has been the position, but the absolute necessity of engaging learners in their own learning, as progressive educators have argued, is seen as equally important. Teaching, on this view, requires skillful questioning of pupils by the teacher, rather than undue reliance on direct instruction. The purpose of that questioning is to encourage the minds of the learners to understand, to arrange, and to act on the material with which they are required to engage. In this sense, learning is active; indeed it is interactive, with the teacher responsible for ensuring the direction that this learning takes but with the learner consistently being challenged to shape it to his or her needs. Education of this kind has increasingly become a feature of effective schools and school systems worldwide. In the process, the long-standing conflict between traditional and progressive approaches to teaching and learning, with the time-consuming controversies to which this gives rise, has a real prospect of being resolved.

About the author: Sir Peter Newsam is an educationalist and former director of the Institute of Education, University of London.

The Role of Education in Resolving the Issue on Language and Culture in Philippine Education

Philippines is said to have diverse culture.  Language and culture are sometimes barriers to educational development.  What then should be the role of education in resolving the issue on language and culture in Philippine Education?

The role of education in resolving the issue on language and culture in Philippine Education is to serve as a guiding light in giving the relevance or significant value of language and culture.  As Samovar, Porter, & Jain (1981) emphasize that culture and communication are inseparable because culture not only dictates who talks to whom, about what, and how the communication proceeds, it also helps to determine how people encode messages, the meanings they have for messages, and the conditions and circumstances under which various messages may or may not be sent, noticed, or interpreted... Culture...is the foundation of communication.

The role of education serves as an instrument of change. Educated persons should understand their positions as members of both a local community and the world community and they must believe that their lives can make a difference especially when they give due  importance to their diverse culture.

Education is also fundamental not only to the transmission of culture but to preparing the ground for its continuous renewal. Learning is more than the assimilation of knowledge. It is knowing how to create new knowledge ... and the true purposes of doing so. Skinner was right when he said that "Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten". It is in this sense that education represents empowerment. By promoting creativity and humane values, education becomes the ally of cultural responsiveness, which is itself the key to positive relations between cultures. UNESCO is committed to preserving and protecting what its Constitution calls "the fruitful diversity of cultures". One reason for doing so is that cultural and linguistic diversity represents a vital resource, a source of human enrichment. Each culture or language system constitutes a unique mode of interpreting or relating to a world so complex that the only hope of knowing it or dealing with it is to approach it from as many perspectives as possible. At the same time, culture is essential to human identity and therefore to human dignity. At the heart of so many of our educational and social problems is the loss of cultural identity that gives special value and meaning to life. As Carlos Fuentes so aptly put it : "culture is a sea-shell in which we hear voices of what we are, what we were, what we forgot and what we can be". Without the sea-shell, young people have great difficulty in finding themselves and finding their way. If we wish to build positive intercommunity relations, we must start by protecting and promoting cultural identity.

The concept "culture" as cited in R. A. 7356, which has been translated in Filipino by the Committee on Language and Translation, has five characteristics that constitute its principles: 

(1) Culture is a right; 

(2) Culture expresses the national identity; 

(3) Culture is independent, dynamic, progressive and pro-people; 

(4) Culture is of the people and therefore the national cultural policies and programs to be formulated are pluralistic, democratic, free and liberative; and 

(5) That culture is for the people. 

Section 7 of R. A. 7356 makes the Filipino citizen, responsible for the preservation of the national historical and cultural heritage and its indigenous traditions.

The concept "culture" then as characterized in R. A. 7356, using the Bierstedt model (The Social Order, R. Bierstedt, 1970) has three main elements: 

(1) The ideas, beliefs, attitudes of the people as national community, which include their scientific knowledge and beliefs; their religious beliefs; their myth, legends, folk literature, superstitions, riddles, proverbs and sayings, literature, philosophy and such others;   

(2) Their norms or ways of doing, which include those as described by the Constitution; laws, rules and regulations, credo, customs, habits, rituals, ceremonies, and modes; 

(3) The material, or natural resources they have, which include natural resources, flora and fauna, material wealth, infrastractures, technology, artifacts, works of art, and the like. 

Philippine Culture is a humanizing culture, a culture of generally being for others such as indicated in terms like "Kapwa Tao" (fellow human being), "Tao po;" (introducing one's self at anothers house), "Tao ko" (my human being, husband, as the wife calls him), or  in the saying, "Madaling maging tao, mahirap magpakatao:"It is easy to become a person, it is difficult to become a human being."

The various ethnolinguistic communities, numbering more than 76, through their folklores, riddles, proverbs, sayings, legends and myths, are enriching and enriched as the national language propagates them.

The three main elements of culture--ideas, norm and resources--are also to be found in the 11 basic needs--food, water, shelter, clothing, livelihood, education, health, power, mobility, recreation and leisure, and ecological balance. These basic needs are articulated, acquired, sustained by processes of communication through languages.

Republic Act 7356 calls for helping develop Philippine culture and the Arts in an atmosphere of unbridled creativity and artistic freedom. Language and culture - inseparable - are considered processes for national development.

The relation of Language and Culture assumes cogency as Filipinos continue to celebrate the Centennial of Philippine Independence and try to better their lives, their economic, political and social culture. This cogency is underscored by present moves to improve the education delivery system. As a national community, we are enriched by the overlays of western and other cultures in the fabric of our historical heritage, but because we indigenize these overlays, it might take some time before the basic characteristics of Filipino culture concept are studied.

Language - the national language, Filipino, in particular - when culturally enriched by regional and sub-regional languages of various Filipino ethnolinguistic communities through its intellectualization, preserves national identity, even redeeming this from its inchoate political, economic and social environments. This national identity is strengthened by the national language as it continues to be developed and enriched by usage even as the Philippines aspires to have an active part in the process of globalization of the economies of the world. 

In the study and use or application of regional languages, including minor and major languages, culture is promoted and developed.

Because both written and oral language(s) and culture do not develop in a vacuum. By a continuing process of acculturation through, among others, language planning, usage and through translations, the national community of artists are also strengthened as they learn from others through English and other languages.

The potential enrichment of language, in this case, Filipino, begins, therefore, from an understanding of the concept culture in its various elements and manifestations. This is especially true in the context of Philippine historical and cultural heritage. Many more substantiation, confirmation and affirmation can be done by research, academic and otherwise - through the media of dissemination and communication and by social interaction

Developing Filipino language and culture, when planned and implemented as a national program for inculcating a sense of national purpose and unity, can be a challenging project for strengthening the national identity. It can also make the advocacy for an understanding of the relationship of language to culture and vice-versa, a most relevant program – not  barriers to educational development.

Implications on the Importance of the Multi-intelligences of Learner and its Importance to Teachers

The educational implication of the multi-intelligences of learner is that development in each learning capacity relies on some preferred learning styles.  Thus, every individual learner has the opportunity to learn and the responsibility to himself/herself to become educated. We have no control over how information is presented to us, but we can control how we adapt the information. Rose (1992) indicates that we remember 20 percent of what we read, 30 percent of what we hear, 40 percent of what we see, 50 percent of what we say, 60 percent of what we do, and 90 percent of what we see, hear, say and do. (5). Therefore, if I, the learner, want to remember more of what I study, I need to engage more of my senses in the learning process. Here are some education implications needed by the learner on how to study more effectively using preferred learning styles:

·             Visual study techniques 

1.          Prepare learning maps using key words, primarily nouns,

2.          color highlight new ideas,

3.          write down what is heard, and

4.          prepare graphs and diagrams.

·             Auditory study techniques

1.          Ask a lot of questions,

2.          read aloud dramatically— perhaps even with an accent, and use audiocassettes to record and listen to lectures or to record and listen to notes you read.

·             Physical study techniques

1.          Practice a skill as soon as it is learned—hands-on experience,

2.          walk around while reading,

3.          listen to tapes while exercising,

4.          take notes on post-it notes and arrange the ideas on a large surface,

5.          take notes on postcards and then arrange the topics so that they make better sense to you or make new relationships,

6.          make notes by paraphrasing the material instead of just taking notes on what the author or teacher is saying,

7.          let the information sink in while you take a walk or go do something else, and

8.          use a buddy to help you study.

The student’s job is to take the subject material and do something extra that helps him/her to learn it using multiple senses. We have separate memories for what we see, what we hear, and what we do. If we activate all three memories simultaneously, our ability to remember the information and act on it goes up several hundred percentage points (Rose, 1992).

Give its importance to the Teachers

One of the most remarkable features of the theory of multiple intelligences is how it provides eight different potential pathways to learning. If a teacher is having difficulty reaching a student in the more traditional linguistic or logical ways of instruction, the theory of multiple intelligences suggests several other ways in which the material might be presented to facilitate effective learning. Whether you are a kindergarten teacher, a graduate school instructor, or an adult learner seeking better ways of pursuing self-study on any subject of interest, the same basic guidelines apply. Whatever you are teaching or learning, see how you might connect it with:

·         words (linguistic intelligence)

·         numbers or logic (logical-mathematical intelligence)

·         pictures (spatial intelligence)

·         music (musical intelligence)

·         self-reflection (intrapersonal intelligence)

·         a physical experience (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence)

·         a social experience (interpersonal intelligence), and/or

·         an experience in the natural world. (naturalist intelligence)

For example, if you’re teaching or learning about the law of supply and demand in economics, you might read about it (linguistic), study mathematical formulas that express it (logical-mathematical), examine a graphic chart that illustrates the principle (spatial), observe the law in the natural world (naturalist) or in the human world of commerce (interpersonal); examine the law in terms of your own body [e.g. when you supply your body with lots of food, the hunger demand goes down; when there's very little supply, your stomach's demand for food goes way up and you get hungry] (bodily-kinesthetic and intrapersonal); and/or write a song (or find an existing song) that demonstrates the law (perhaps Dylan's "Too Much of Nothing?"). 

You don’t have to teach or learn something in all eight ways, just see what the possibilities are, and then decide which particular pathways interest you the most, or seem to be the most effective teaching or learning tools. The theory of multiple intelligences is so intriguing because it expands our horizon of available teaching/learning tools beyond the conventional linguistic and logical methods used in most schools (e.g. lecture, textbooks, writing assignments, formulas, etc.). To get started, put the topic of whatever you’re interested in teaching or learning about in the center of a blank sheet of paper, and draw eight straight lines or "spokes" radiating out from this topic. Label each line with a different intelligence. Then start brainstorming ideas for teaching or learning that topic and write down ideas next to each intelligence (this is a spatial-linguistic approach of brainstorming; you might want to do this in other ways as well, using a tape-recorder, having a group brainstorming session, etc.). Have fun!  

All too often, teachers teach in their preferred learning method without taking into consideration how a student learns. Based on the statistics then, if a teacher’s preferred learning style is auditory and lecturing is the only instructional method used, he/she has missed 75 percent of the students. This mismatch of the teachers’ learning/teaching style and the student’s learning style is one of the biggest reasons for academic underachievement and frustration (Tracy, 1992). With a knowledge of multiple intelligence and learning style theory, educators can integrate various learning strategies so that students bombard their minds in many different ways with new ideas and remain engaged in the educational process. Howard Gardner says that using multiple intelligences simply provides students with the experience he calls "many windows looking into one room" (Gutloff, 1996:10).

The challenge for the teacher is threefold:

A.     To help students ascertain which of their intelligences are predominant and which learning style is preferred.

B.     To incorporate a cornucopia of teaching strategies to address differing intelligences and learning styles, and

C.     To teach students how to study to capitalize on their intellectual strengths and learning style. 

A Case Study on Educational Technology

Title:  A Case Study on Educational Technology

Objectives: 

1.      To determine whether or not  Educational Technology is acceptable  in the present society/curriculum  and developed countries;

2.      To  know the different benefits/advantages of educational technology; and

3.      To  identify different criticisms/disadvantages of educational technology.

Areas of Considerations:

Based on its definition, educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources."^[1] The term educational technology is often associated with, and encompasses, instructional theory and learning theory.  Also, educational technology includes other systems used in the process of developing human capability. Educational technology includes, but is not limited to, software, hardware, as well as Internet applications, such as wiki's and blogs, and activities.

In the article, it also emphasized that Educational Technology is an influential factor in education.  It is being used in developed countries both to complement established education practices and develop new ways of learning such as online education like computer s and mobile phones.  This technology also brings  about students’ opportunity the option to choose what they are interested in learning.  Its presence increases programming and blogging.  A powerful learning tools that demand new skills and understanding of students thru multimedia and provides new ways to engage students in virtual learning environments. 

Benefits/Disadvantages of Educational Technology

Educational technology is intended to improve education over what it would be without technology. Some of the claimed benefits are listed below:

1.       Easy-to-access course materials. Instructors can post the course material or important information on a course website, which means students can study at a time and location they prefer and can obtain the study material very quickly^[2]

2.       Student motivation. Computer-based instruction can give instant feedback to students and explain correct answers. Moreover, a computer is patient and non-judgmental, which can give the student motivation to continue learning.^[3]

3.       Wide participation. Learning material can be used for long distance learning and are accessible to a wider audience^[4]

4.       Improved student writing. It is convenient for students to edit their written work on word processors, which can, in turn, improve the quality of their writing. According to some studies, the students are better at critiquing and editing written work that is exchanged over a computer network with students they know^[2]

5.       Subjects made easier to learn. Many different types of educational software are designed and developed to help children or teenagers to learn specific subjects. Examples include pre-school software, computer simulators, and graphics software^[3]

      

    6.   A structure that is more amenable to measurement and improvement of outcomes. With proper structuring it can become easier to monitor and maintain student work while also quickly gauging modifications to the instruction necessary to enhance student learning.

      7. Differentiated Instruction. Educational technology provides the means to focus on active student participation and to present differentiated questioning strategies. It broadens individualized instruction and promotes the development of personalized learning plans. Students are encouraged to use multimedia components and to incorporate the knowledge they gained in creative ways.^[4]

Disadvantages/Criticisms of Educational Technology

Although technology in the classroom does have many benefits, there are clear drawbacks  as well which include the following:

1.      Similar to learning a new task or trade, special training is vital to ensuring the effective integration of classroom technology. Since technology is not the end goal of education, but rather a means by which it can be accomplished, educators must have a good grasp of the technology being used and its advantages over more traditional methods. If there is a lack in either of these areas, technology will be seen as a hindrance and not a benefit to the goals of teaching.

2.      Another difficulty is introduced when access to a sufficient quantity of a resource is limited. This is often seen when the quantity of computers or digital cameras for classroom use is not enough to meet the needs of an entire classroom. It also occurs in less noticed forms such as limited access for technology exploration because of the high cost of technology and the fear of damages.

3.      Technology implementation can also be time consuming. There may be an initial setup or training time cost inherent in the use of certain technologies. Even with these tasks accomplished, technology failure may occur during the activity and as a result teachers must have an alternative lesson ready

RECOMMENDATIONS/CONCLUSIONS

The diverse benefits/advantages that can be derived in the use of Educational Technology are humungous compared to the drawbacks it carries.  Therefore,  I highly recommend and conclude that educational technology is pretty well acceptable  in the present society/curriculum and developed countries as well. 

References

1.      ^Richey, R.C. (2008). Reflections on the 2008 AECT Definitions of the Field. TechTrends. 52(1) 24-25

2.      ^ Professor Seymour Papert

3.      ^ ^{a b} Technology Impact on Learning

4.      ^ http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet21/mitra.html

5.      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_technology