Personal Vision of Instructional Leadership

E-Portfolio Entry

Activity Name & Description: Personal Vision of Instructional Leadership

In the Fall Quarter 2013, I will develop a personal Vision of Instructional Leadership, I will apply what I’ve learned in coursework and apply my vision to a Student Affairs Position that I am interested in.

Date/Semester

December 2013 (Fall Semester)

Learning Domains Addressed (Labels)

X Leadership

X Social Justice & Advocacy

X Education

X Personal Development

Learning Outcomes

 SWiBAT develop personal vision of instructional leadership.

SWiBAT  apply knowledge from various coursework to develop an essay.

Assessment Rubric

Rubric: Instructional Leader Role

	SLO #1 – Role as an Instructional Leader
Advanced	I will be able to identify 5 examples of what it means to be an instructional leader.
Competent	I will be able to identify 3 examples of what it means to be an instructional leader.
Basic	I will be able to identify 2 examples of what it means to be an instructional leader.
Poor	I will not identify any examples of what it means to be an instructional leader.

Evidence (Shown in Essay)

Personal Vision of Instructional Leadership

Deejay Brown

EDAD 505

California State University, Fullerton

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to describe my philosophy as an instructional and educational leader in Higher Education.  Utilizing this vision I will develop, articulate and design a program as instructional leader in an imagined position.  This paper will articulate how my vision of an instructional leader can be utilized in developing programming as a Director of a Multicultural Resource Center.  Based on this position, I will provide recommendations and goals that seek to create student learning and development for all students. 

There are many different responsibilities that student affairs practitioners must take on as instructional and educational leaders.  The valuable leadership they bring to the institution of Higher Education informs these roles.  Like their counterparts in academic affairs; student affairs professionals are also centered in student learning and development.  “Student Affairs must model what we wish for our students: an ever increasing capacity for learning and self-reflection” (American College Personnel Association, 1994).  Student affairs practitioners must be educational leaders that continually develop their own philosophies and must be initially concerned with our own learning and development, apart of this work is to define our own philosophies of educational and instructional leaderships so that we can better serve our students.  This portion of this essay will describe my philosophy and vision as an instructional leader. 

Initially, we are called to be co-facilitators with members of faculty to initiate holistic learning that is rooted in scholarship.  We must be intentional and hold ourselves accountable by developing learning outcomes in our program and service areas.  We must program with purpose, design in such a way that creates learning opportunities for the myriad of the students that we serve.

In curriculum development and design, we must work with our partners in academic affairs to situate learning experiences wherever our students are present from the formal classroom setting to where we provide programming and services, these are all spaces that provide opportunities for students to grow.  Authors Woolf & Hughes describe curriculum as “a coherent program of study that is responsive to the needs and circumstances of the pedagogical context and is carefully designed to develop student’s knowledge, abilities, and skills through multiple integrated and progressively challenging course learning experiences.” (Woolf & Hughes, 2007, p.7).   As an instructional leader, I want to work with other instructional leaders to develop programming that creates student-centered learning experiences at its core.

I also believe as a student affairs practitioner, that we are educators because our programing is focused on student learning and development.  Reflective Scholar Practitioners are academics informed by scholarship and theory.  Our work is not arbitrary; it is tied to our formal education and our experiences as practitioners.  Our programming like academic coursework is centered on student learning outcomes.  These learning outcomes are one way that we can measure that learning does occur in our programming.  Many of us are also members of academic affairs.  Many instructional leaders bridge between academic affairs and student affairs.  My philosophy of leadership focuses on intentionality, using what I have learned both in my work as a scholar and as a practitioner.  I want to act as a change agent, aligning my work with my character and values.  I want my work as instructional leader to be meaningful, engaging and I want to compliment what students learn in the classroom. 

Context and Application

            Initially, I would like to imagine myself as a Director of a newly created Multicultural Resource Center.  I chose this position because it is a position that I am currently interested in becoming in my future as a practitioner.  I have learned that much of its work is grounded in holistic identity development that is centered on raising cultural awareness for the larger campus community. 

My plan as a reflective scholar practitioner is to bridge the gap in academic affairs to work from a interdisciplinary perspective; where what is modeled in the classroom can be bridged in identity development.  As I imagine myself as an instructional leader in a Multicultural Center, I hope to work with faculty from a wide variety of disciplines.  I feel there are natural partnerships that reflect many missions of Multicultural Affairs and Programs, initially I would like to reach out to the college of humanities and various academic departments such as: sociology, race and ethnic studies departments, American studies, women and queer studies departments.  I believe an interdisciplinary approach would create stronger bonds not only between student affairs and academic affairs, but I believe they would strengthen the scholarship in programming that would attract a wide variety of students that typically may not think about their own identities.

Multicultural Student Programs and Services offer a variety of roles on college campuses, the Council of Academic Standards in Higher Education (CAS) asserts that “Strong MSPS are essential to the academic and social integration and, thus retention and graduation rates of students as well the multicultural education of the campus” (CAS, 2012, p.361).  It is my hope as an instructional leader that I am able to use this service area as means to promote success for all students.  It is my charge to use this space to advocate for the many different needs students bring with them when they arrive to college.  I want to create a space to validate all of these needs; but I am especially concerned with those that are often underrepresented in most institutions of Higher Education.   

There are many different visions that Multicultural Centers and offices can embody on college campuses, CAS defines one such mission of this student service area where it seeks to “promote academic and personal growth of traditionally underserved students, work with the entire campus to create and institutional and community climate of justice, promote access and equity in higher education, and offer programs that educate the campus about diversity.” (CAS, p.363, 2012).   I believe as an instructional leader that I must create spaces across many different service areas to reflect the mission of the multicultural center.  This work reflects my own values of instructional leadership, it seeks to create student centered learning, where they are able to grow personally and academically. 

As an instructional leader it is important to work with faculty to create opportunities for students to learn.  To reach our shared goal we must work collaboratively with faculty members to create relationships that reinforce both the themes in their academic coursework and those that also reflect vision of the centers and offices in student affairs.  It is my assertion that building this bridge will increase student success for all students because what they are learning is reinforced in and out of the classroom.   

Pascarella and Terenzini (2005) concluded, “student contact with faculty members outside the classroom appears consistently to promote student persistence, educational aspirations, and degree completion” (Pascarella & Terenzini, p.  417,2005).  Using the Multicultural Center as an out of the classroom space, students can bridge relationships with educators and can be a space to form bonds.  Using Multicultural Center programming as an intervention for promoting student-faculty involvement I believe we are creating spaces for students to feel that they matter and are taken care of.      

Yosso and Benavides Lopez (2010) assert, “to foster student achievement, culture centers draw upon various disciplines, from the humanities and social sciences to math, science, and engineering” (Yosso & Benavides Lopez, 2010, p.  98).  This aligns with my instructional philosophy of leadership and my imagined position of a Multicultural Center Director.  It is valuable to draw upon multiple educational perspectives and disciplines to attract the breadth of students who are involved in a variety of disciplines.  Yosso and Benavides Lopez (2010) continue to assert that these relationships can occur with departments or individual faculty members.  Working with faculty members in culture centers can have a wide variety of results, among them Yosso and Benivades Lopez (2010) assert that “these structured opportunities to apply knowledge outside the classroom and to engage in projects where students see themselves in history link the academy with the community” (Yosso & Benavides Lopez, 2010, pp.98-99).

As an instructional leader it is important to work with faculty to create opportunities for students to learn.  Both faculty and practitioners “share a critical common goal- advancing student intellectual and personal development” (Arecelus, p.71, 2007).To reach our shared goal we must work collaboratively with faculty members to create relationships that reinforce both the themes in their academic coursework and those that also reflect vision of the centers and offices in student affairs.  It is my assertion that building this bridge will increase student success for all students because what they are learning is reinforced in and out of the classroom.   

Long and Short Term goals

Student Affairs practitioners McClellan & Stringer (2009) describe that there is an eroding boundary between academic affairs and student affairs as both share the common goal of creating spaces for students to learn.  McClellan & Stringer assert that these boundaries are eroding because these areas have a “shared emphasis on student learning, assessment, and accountability”(McCllelan & Stringer, p.631, 2009).   As a student affairs practitioner and an instructional leader, I believe that on-going assessment of the programs is necessary for improving student achievement.   In reflecting on the imagined position, I believe this assessment can happen in a number of ways that are both short and long term. 

In terms of short term planning, I would like to create an action committee that would visit other campuses and review other Multicultural Resource Centers and offices and research and gather feedback for best practices.  I believe this action committee must be comprised of a variety of stakeholders including students, administration, faculty; as well as stakeholders from the larger campus community.   I would like to initiate multiple meetings throughout the academic year, where we would bring in faculty and other stakeholders to discuss how the learning domains of the Multicultural Center would integrate with their present curriculum.  I believe it is important to also gather responses from students that are currently experiencing learning both in the classroom and the resource center environment.

To be accountable that our programming is student centered, I believe that we must create focus groups that meet at the end of each academic term.  I believe that we must take student input as cherished information to assess that our programming is student centered and is responsive to where students are in their own development.  Based on these quarterly assessments, the action committee can respond to the student voice in coursework and programming in the next academic year.  I believe this would be useful in furthering the program’s mission.

In terms of long term planning, it is my hope during these action committee meetings that we could begin to develop a strategic plan in which we could develop a united vision that would best serve our students, based on the core learning domains that reflect the co-curricular vision of student success, we could begin to create learning outcomes that reflect this vision.

Reference:

Arcelus, V.   J.   (2007).   If student affairs-academic affairs collaboration is such a good idea,

why are the so few examples of these partnerships in american higher education.   In P.   Magolda & M.   Baxter Magolda (Eds.), Contested issues in student affairs: Diverse perspectives and respectful dialogue.Sterling, VA: Stylus.

American College Personnel Association.  (1994).  The student learning imperative: Implications for student affairs.  Washington, DC: Author.

Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education.  (2012).  CAS professional standards for higher education (7th ed.).  Washington, DC: CAS 2012.

McClellan, G.S.  & Stringer, J.  and Associates (2009).  The Handbook of Student Affairs

Administration (5th Ed.).  New Jersey: Jossey Bass.

Wolf, P.   & Hughes, J.   C.    (Eds.).   (2007).   Educational curriculum development in higher

education :  Faculty driven processes and procedures.   (112).    San Francisco, CA : Wiley.     

Yosso, T., & Benavides Lopez, C.  (2010).  Counterspaces in hostile space.  In L.  Patton

(Ed.), Culture centers in higher education perspectives on identity:Theory and practice (pp.  98-99).  Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Reflection

            My role as an instructional leader offers something more than the stereotypical student affairs practitioner. It is about utilizing scholarship and developing learning outcomes that provide educational and developmental opportunities that benefit all students’ learning and development. I hope that I was able to articulate my experience as an educational and instructional leader.