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Guidelines # 1: Processes and procedures for creating a profile
(everyone follow these)
Background information: This assignment is an example of documenting one person’s effective leadership styles and her/his practical application of management roles. It is a ‘snapshot’ from another person’s professional life and perspectives. The readings associated with the EDEC324-Topic Notes will assist you with completing this profile and you are encouraged to go beyond the Topics. You are a researcher as you undertake this task (Read: Smales, 2002). It is assumed that this leader is the person you are completing your professional experience (PE) with. Your task is to create a profile of a leader in the early childhood field. This is a professional story about a person; it is not a standard essay.
1. Select a director, coordinator of an early childhood service or scheme or an early childhood manager within a relevant organisation; discuss the process for creating this profile with the person, share the idea of ‘service learning’ (Butin, 2003; & see Topic 1) and gain consent for this profile process and your professional experience. Does this person have a three-year University or old CAE Bachelor qualification in early childhood (not TAFE diploma or advanced diploma)? What about your related PE arrangements and paperwork? Ethics: the names of the person and place are not to be used unless you have consent – so, please clarify confidentialitywith your leader from the out-set. Be sure to let the leader know what part of the profile – context/background – will be shared online… ethics.
2. Read about being a leader/manager including leadership styles and management roles; this will help you: 1) identify, define and analyse the leader’s workplace position/roles/manner of interacting (styles); and, 2) support specific in-practice examples/evidence about the leader with literature. Broadly consider: what does this leader do (manager, management roles & tasks) and how does s/he work with others or what is her/his interactive manner (being a leader & leadership styles)?
3. Arrange at least one visit with the leader; here are your first tasks:
observe the leader (later you will shadow her/him during your PE days); focus on the leader’s interactions with adults, including: her/his personal/professional manner, forms of communication, relationships and contribution to emotional atmosphere = part of climate/culture of the setting for ‘organisation’ below; but, others contribute to climate/culture as do various environmental features. And, read Geoghegan, et al (2003) and/or other relevant literature to assist here.
and
talk informally about the whole site’s organisation and structure and the adults’ ways of relating, interacting, sharing ideas = more setting climate/culture too. Some relevant questions might be: What is the management and organisational structure of this service? How are administrative/management decisions made and who is involved? With this centre viewed as an organisation, what metaphor-word might best reflect the interpersonal climate/culture of this centre [refer to Grady in Section 2 of profile template below]? The contextual organisational structure will include all staff and committee/owner/council/etc. Again, because of the public sharing of part of this profile online, please inform your leader of this and do consider professional issues of ethics and confidentiality.
Secondly, interview the leader about her/his professional self; be sure to fully document the leader’s various leadership styles and management roles. You may find it useful to take a reading that outlines various styles of leadership, as this will help you and the leader clarify and identify her/his key leadership style and a couple of lesser ones. Interviewing involves the practise being a leader of conversation (example: Healy, Ehrich, Hansford & Stewart, 2001; the full reference appears at the end of EDEC324 Topics). Remember to treat this interview as totally confidential. It is the leader’s opinions, perceptions and behaviours [all potential evidence examples] that are important here, not specific names. Do keep notes during your interview, as these should be detailed so that you can reconstruct the interview later; they form an ‘evidence’ appendix. The questions below could be starters for beginning your interview; you decide about questions that flesh-out relevant issues and ideas for completing this profile:
1) What is your position title and your job description? [management roles; collect copy of position description; links with L-POM (McCrea & Ehrich, 1999; Topic 8) and/or competencies (Culkin, 1997; Topics 1 & 3)]
2) How would you describe ‘being a leader’? And, please outline your preferred/key leadership style? Any other styles (1 or 2 only) that are relevant for you? [Note: we acknowledge that there are main styles & situations; combining similar styles and authors’ ideas may assist.]
3) How does your personal/professional philosophy of ECE link to your being a leader and your styles/manner of interacting particularly with adults? What about being an advocate for the whole field of early childhood education?
4) What are the most rewarding aspects of being an early childhood leader and manager (maybe administrator) and why? [Refer to Geoghegan et al (2003) or other literature]
4. Begin creating and writing a profile of this leader [write in flowing paragraph-style; see profile template below after # 6 for layout of headings/subheadings & various content of sections and sub-sections]. Be sure to compile this ‘working’ draft well before you begin your first day of professional experience. Note: write this with sensitivity knowing that later you will be taking this to your leader at the professional experience site for reconsideration by you and the leader over your PE days. When you reach this point, the profile is a near-final working-draft.
5. Now, take profile to your leader. As you begin your PE days [refer to details in Professional Experience Handbook], take a copy of the leader’s profile to the professional experience site and refine it with your leader over the PE block-days. This stage is when and where you will shadow the leader [to shadow, be a shadow or create a shadow, means following close on the heels of another person and nearly stepping into her shoes; consider reading Rosenberg and Cohen (1983)]. You will also work side-by-side, attached-at-the-hip with your leader in a helping ‘assistant director’ role. And, this is the time for creating a more authentic and reality-based profile of this leader by expanding the ‘styles’ section and if needed adjusting any profile ‘correctness’. So, add breadth and depth evidence to the ‘My leader’s leadership and her styles’ section; these are to be specific examples of evidence about: how does the leader display (her/his manner/relating) a style? and, how does her/his style actually happen? Evidence examples are to be explicitly referenced to sources in appendices.
My leader’s profile
(create a title relevant to your leader)
Section 1 Introduction
Introduce the whole profile. If requested ensure that you provide a fictitious name for leader and site (this will ensure confidentiality/anonymity of individual and organisation); and, remember to note ‘changed names’ or ‘real names’ at the beginning of your profile by creating a footnote on page 1. [write: a paragraph; Consider: What is an ‘introduction’?]
Section 2 My leader’s setting
Organisational setting
Provide an organisational description of the workplace, including all staff and others; is the staffing and whole centre/service management structure typical or not? Why, why not? Also incorporate a brief but whole overview of centre ‘size/numbers’. All this is background/context. [write: about two paragraphs plus a chart or table of adults’ layers of responsibility; at least one reference]
Interpersonal climate with metaphor
Create an overview description of the interpersonal climate or emotional culture of the setting (peoples’ interactions & relationships, communication formats inform the ‘feel’ of the place); then, decide on a metaphor (just written word here, not a picture) and briefly present it. Finally, discuss the metaphor in terms of why and how you selected it for the human-climate of this setting; clearly explain the relationship between this setting and the metaphor. Be sure to double-check the metaphor description for your intended meanings and implications; are there any mixed messages? (Check Topic 2; read Grady, 1993 in the Readings and/or locate other metaphor literature). [write: about two paragraphs; at least two references]
[Hint: Section 2 above sets the scene; it will be about 2 pages. Note, you may decide to refine this section after online discussions and comments from others before embedding it in final whole profile.]
Section 3 My leader’s story
Introduction
Begin by introducing your leader’s professional story here – broadly, who is s/he and what is included in this profile of her/him? [write: a paragraph/half page]
[Then, this story will have two major parts; in each part use a critical approach for presenting and then investigating and interrogating ideas, events and concepts to create an overall cameo narrative of your leader. For these two parts, think about management roles as usually the ‘what’ or our ‘doing’ – the ‘things’ a person does; whereas, leadership styles are more ‘how’ and one’s ‘manner’ of interacting when doing roles – a person’s ways of interacting and relating with others.]
My leader’s management roles
Here, generally outline her/his title and position [a paragraph/half page; include position/job description as appendix and cross-reference from here to it as appropriate within this sub-section]. Next define in a table or chart a sampling of her major or key management roles by gathering them together into either P O M clusters of L-POM model (McCrea & Ehrich in Topic 8; the L=leading aspect is reflected in next sub-section of profile) or Culkin’s competencies (do combine some competencies so there are fewer; Culkin, 1997 in Topics 1 & 3). [[2011+ don’t do this: Then, critically discuss this leader’s management by reflectively interrogating groupings of her/his management roles – each cluster/or/competency – and add support literature. Here, go beyond just repeating items from job description in appendix.]] Finally, within the role-clusters note if each is typical or not. [write: This sub-section of the leader’s story will be about 2-3 pages total with at least two references.]
My leader’s leadership and her/his styles
Next, write a working-draft-story [and later refine during/after professional experience days] about your person generally ‘being a leader’ and then introduce her/his focal leadership styles [an introductory paragraph to ½ page with at least two references; see content ideas below]. This is a profile of a real person, not an essay, with practice examples; so s/he is ‘upfront’ in all your writing for this part. Your portrayal will offer the reader an impression of this leader’s key or major styles-in-action.
I suggest that you and the leader identify her/his preferred style and at least one other (up to total of three styles) that you can explore and clearly document showing your leader’s interpersonal manner and her/his related persona. Then, document these styles one-by-one (each is a sub-heading/sub-section); but, begin with the leader’s preferred, predominate, strongest or main style [2- 2 ½ pages] and then move to one or two lesser-used styles [about 1 ½ pages each; there will be fewer snippets for documenting lesser style/s]. Analyse at least her/his preferred style of leading other staff and some working with families before your professional experience days begin and, of course critique all styles further at the end of your professional experience. For writing a sub-section for each ‘style’:
1) create a sentence or two that generally defines/describes the style;
2) briefly overview your leader in terms of this style [note if style is typical or not of early childhood field and is it focal or occasional for this leader];
3) explore and critique her style via explicit/specific everyday evidence examples and happenings that represent this leader’s style-in-action; and,
4) follow-up with support from relevant research and professional literature.
These examples are like ‘mini-stories’ that need to be complete enough for a reader to clearly understand without referring to an appendix; however, do clearly cross-reference to particular interview questions or observations or shadows or side-by-side working events (evidence) in appendices. Later, add more specific evidence-examples [during professional experience days] to preferred leadership style and possibly others as you shadow and work attached-at-the-hip. [write: This is the major part of the whole profile; it will be about 1000-1200 words, about 5/6 pages, with sub-headings and several references – minimum six.]
Section 4 My leader’s essence
End this profile with a critical synthesis about your leader’s typicalness and advocacy. Do this by briefly exploring if s/he is a typical early childhood education leader/manager or not. If s/he is, write a critical analysis and explanation of how/why this leader is typical. If s/he is not, write a critical analysis and explanation of how/why this leader differs. Plus, incorporate a little about how and why your leader is/might be an advocate for the field of ece. Link a couple of support references that help you reflect a genuine essence of your leader as typical or non-typical. [write: two paragraphs, with at least two references)
Section 5 References
Prepare a standard listing of references; use a minimum of 10 professional and research sources, primarily journal articles. Place all references used for online posting #1 here as well for final whole profile e-submission. A note about references: There are times and places where older sources are deemed to be classics or seminal pieces of writing; and so, they have a valid place in our thinking and writing. The use of classic resources often shows the origins of ideas and depth of consideration over time, particularly alongside newer references. Using older and newer references together can reflect a progression of change in research and professional ideas and beliefs. Consider such literature as you prepare your written work for this unit.
Section 6 Appendices
Attach a separate appendix for each: 1) raw data from interview/questions; 2) a sample of initial observing notes; and, 3) job description. You may include a sample of relevant leader shadowing notes or working side-by-side notes from professional experience days (not your goals or workplan). These are your field evidence sources, so please date all documents.
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