Leadership Challenge #7

Module 13 ldc Steps 1, 2 and 3 on provocative question #7

Provocative Question #7 (LdC)

What does the literature suggest we should do to make our conversations about research meaningful to use as change agents/action researchers? Include Wenger and one other author.

The research suggests that in order to make research meaningful, we need to do a couple of things. First, we need to be working in collaborations and groups (such as communities of practice) in order to gain insight about an issue and be able to ask the right questions. When I think of traditional research, I would identify this as a needs assessment. The other thing that that research suggests is that we remove our previously held biases from the creation and analysis of our research. Another thing that I found quotes about was about legitimacy. Researchers needs to have a level of legitimacy among those they are researching. I think back to when I was in the Peace Corps. I had to meet the village elders and other leaders and have their approval before being able to do anything, including moving in.

Step 1. Prepare for an on-line Conversation

Quote/ideas from the book; applications/instances from your workplace setting	Page number
We don't usually think of the experience of meaning as a duality because the interplay of participation and reification remains largely unproblematic....It is this tightening of reification and participation that makes conversations such a powerful form of communication.	62
Competence may drive experience...Experience may drive competence.	138
...by taking advantage of partiality enabled by mutual engagement and not requiring everyone to share in the understanding of everything; if the worksheet was transparent to only one person to whom others could have access, that was good enough for all.	139
Peripherablity  and legitimacy are achievements that involve both a community and its newcomers and that do no presuppose a generational encounter free of conflicts...this perspective integrates the generational encounter into the processes of negotiation by which a practice evolves.	101
The job of brokering is complex. It involves processes of translation, coordination, and alignment between perspectives.	109
The notion of ownership does not imply that there is a single meaning attached to an event, action, or artifact...implies the plurality of perspectives that are involved in the negotiation of meaning.	201
Since I am beginning my cycle 0 interviews this week, seeking to identify meaningful research is definitely on my mind. I discussed with one person (associate dean, her interview is later this week) about how to ask appropriate questions that will fill a gap or the need for student retention.	Workplace
Since the election this week, I have heard and been a part of many conversations to talk about the future of public health, health sciences, nutrition, and other health related fields. My co-workers are fearful of losing grant monies and opportunities due to lack of funding with the upcoming administration. The talk turned to how to make the most of the funding and thus the research.	Workplace

Step 2. Hold an on-line Conversation

After participating/viewing the “fishbowl” conversation record notes here (below) about your responses to your peers or new thoughts based on their postings.  Be certain your notes here are comprehensive, as were your responses to peers. (If you participate as a “fish,” in the fishbowl your notes, which should be entered below, can be much more succinct.) (This space expands to accommodate your writing.)

William - Focus on communication piece. page 269, if an institutional setting of learning does not offer new forms of ID that is meaningful forms of membership and ownership, it will reinforce outside meanings and ownership. Fullan and Scott, Turnaround, ownership like learning is best created through two way communication, inviting people who will be impacted with focus on results. All members need to claim ownership and engage participation.

Randy - building a team in a student services environment, ensure we are pulling in varying experiences. One would do well to be suspicious of any training scheme that is purely extractive in nature. By this I mean schemes that extract requirements, descriptions, artifacts, and other elements out of practice, transform them out of institutional artifacts such as course, manuals, procedures and the like and then redeploy them...ignores effect on learning. Being thoughtful and intentional with our young people, look at everyone's experiences and look at the research in the context in which we will be doing research. People partially construct their own realities, filter experiences through existing constructs. People come with background biases.

Toya - page 220, What makes information knowledge, what makes it empowering is the way in which it can be integrated within an identity of participation. When information does not build up to an identity of participation, it remains alien, literal, unnegotiable. Her PoP is regarding building teachers' identities and building those up. What is suggests regarding our conversations about research, keep an open mind about it, it becomes more valuable like buy in. Outside quote - Hammond page 171, If universities are to continue to contribute to the education of teachers they need to pursue ideals of practice and truth building, honoring practice with conjunction of research and experience, reach beyond their personal boundaries. Need to be active with our research.

Ruby - making research meaningful, focus and pull what we need, need to share research, try to get them to understand what it means to them. Page 250, with respect to newcomers, it may be better to interspace moments of information sharing with moments of peripheral engagement and practice, download all the constant training and call that learning. How to influence people from intrapersonal to interpersonal dialogues. Giving small tidbits of information

Brennan - page 275, in order to combine engagement, imagination, and alignment, learning communities cannot be isolated. They must use the world around them as a learning resource and be a resource for the world. Our contexts, local and larger, research links these together.
 

Step 3. Determine your Leadership Challenge/new leadership challenge

Based on your own quotes/ideas from Wenger, your workplace experiences, and new insights you developed as you reflected on your peers’ work, what behavior do you want to experiment with/try out for your leadership challenge in the next few days? (Write one sentence.)

 I would like to bring up at the next faculty town hall meeting (lead by my manager for our school, Monday November 14 afternoon) the way in which we can expect our funding may be impacted by the changing of the presidential administration and how we can engage our research.

Step 4. Implement and Reflect

I have brought up my thoughts at the town hall meeting. Quite frankly, it turned into a forum to vent fears, frustrations, and other opinions. I do not know if it necessarily accomplished and went in the direction I was hoping, but I see that it was useful. I think people needed a place to be heard and it formed a lot of bonds between us. We formed more of a community and relationship with each other (building identity and investment). This can be used in the future for other explorations, and even revisiting this topic later on.

Leadership Challenge #6

Module 11 ldc Steps 1, 2 and 3 on provocative question #6

Provocative Question #6 (LdC)

Note: You will use the "Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action" video from TEL 703 Readings in your leadership challenge activities for this Module (in addition to Wenger).

As your identity changes, what can you do to foster continued connections and even grow your engagement in COPs that can influence your ability to innovate?

I think that I would be wanting to embrace more communication with my COPs in order to keep developing my identity. I feel that as my identity changes, I still have the opportunity to push my development and enrich my experiences. There is only one way to do this: being an active participant. By doing this, I will help to promote activities and discussions with my colleagues so that we can learn to ask questions and seek out exposures to other viewpoints. I see that building upon an identity may push me out of some COPs; however, for the most part, I see it as an enrichment process.

Step 1. Prepare for an on-line Conversation

Quote/ideas from the book; applications/instances from your workplace setting	Page number
A defining characteristic of participation of the possibility of developing an "identity of participation", that is, an identity constituted through relations of participation	56
The experience of identity in practice is a way of being in the world. It is not the equivalent to a self-image; it is not, in its essence, discursive or reflective.	151
Identity as a relation between the local and the global. We define who we are by negotiating local ways of belonging to broader constellations and of manifesting broader styles and discourses.	149
We are always simultaneously dealing with specific situations, participating in the histories of certain practices and involved in becoming certain persons.	155
I recently got a new role that will start in January being the program degree coordinator. I will still be teaching (three classes), but taking on this administrative role. I am not sure how this will change my identity as my relationships and identity changes.	Workplace
I talked with some of my students about a mentoring program (bouncing intervention ideas off of them) and they were saying how helpful it would be to have a guiding hand with a lot of what they are going through. It seems like part of their nervousness with approaching school and grad school and to do with where they saw themselves fitting in.	Workplace
re: Alignment... It gives up some of its ability to combine institutional reification with local participation, to engage the designed with the emergent, to connect the global with the local, and to inspire identification with negotiability.	261
Indeed, the kind of personal investment and social energy required for creative work are not a matter of institutionalized compliance or abstract affiliation; they are a matter of engaging the identities of participants.	253

 

Step 2. Hold an on-line Conversation

After participating/viewing the “fishbowl” conversation record notes here (below) about your responses to your peers or new thoughts based on their postings.  Be certain your notes here are comprehensive, as were your responses to peers. (If you participate as a “fish,” in the fishbowl your notes, which should be entered below, can be much more succinct.) (This space expands to accommodate your writing.)

Quote/Application #1 - Identification is not merely a subjective experience, it is socially organized. p. 192. - Her ID as a lecturer (Criminal Justice Department) has been developed as a result of the relationships she's forming. Originally, in person only, now fully online. Develop online templates, ID forming through this online teaching and development and now through action research and this program.

Quote/Application #2 - People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe. - Simon Sinek, Ted Talk

Leading my example, walking the walk and talking the talk. Her research is about technology and how to integrate it into their practice, show by demonstration, become a subject area expert in order to better communicate the technology. Show the technology value in the classroom, have ownership

Quote/Application #3 - All the great and inspiring leaders and organizations of the world think, act, and communicate in the exact same way and it is the complete opposite to everyone else. - Simon Sinek, Ted Talk

Making sure to communicate the "why" behind the innovation and what people are doing. More important than the what, or how. Opposite of what people traditionally think about. Why is part of the belief system, encourages people to feel passionate about, invest in it. “Why” is what their purpose is, their cause, their belief… why they exist. Why should anyone care? Inspired leaders/organizations thinking, act, and communicate from the inside out.

Quote/Application #4 - From this perspective [paradigmatic trajectories] a community of practice is a field of possible trajectories and thus the proposal of an identity. p.156

This quote seemed to me to be very applicable to our provocative question, because it references the possibility of the development of either a new or ongoing identity.  Identity, then, can be proposed and negotiated among members of a community of practice.  This is a moment in which history, or possible pasts, and the possible futures converge in the present time to create a space for mutual engagement.  These paradigmatic trajectories embody the history of the community through the very participation and identities of the practitioners. Maintaining an open dialogue with these members can help to grow engagement in our community of practice and motivate our members to innovate.  

Quote/Application #5 - An identity, then, is a layering of events of participation and reification by which our experience and its social interpretation inform each other.  As we encounter our effects on the world and develop our relations with others, these layers build upon each other to produce our identity as a very complex interweaving of participative experience and reificative projections. p.151
Through a regional group, we have developed a community of practice related to the completion agenda and closing the achievement gaps.  This started as a local participation, but as we all started to expand our learnings and interpretations among various colleges and programs, we have broadened our scope, understandings, and contextualized differences, but the combination of the various expertise and the complexity of the context has deepened our identities and relations with each other related to this community. Challenge of changing habits and roles. Routine, shy away from such changes

Quote/Application #6 - People don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it. - Simon Sinek

Quite often people tend to base one’s value solely on that of their accomplishments.  But there is more to it than just that. When thinking about COP and identifies as a member it will will lead to the solidification of membership. Need active participation, not about who you are but what you do to add value and why you do it. In other words, what is your purpose that drives your personal practice and how can others learn, be moved, or buy-in to that of what you do?   

Step 3. Determine your Leadership Challenge/new leadership challenge

Based on your own quotes/ideas from Wenger, your workplace experiences, and new insights you developed as you reflected on your peers’ work, what behavior do you want to experiment with/try out for your leadership challenge in the next few days? (Write one sentence.)

I would want to actually meet with one of my co-workers to talk about my new role and place within the department and school. He used to be a lecturer and then moved into the new role as I will be but for a different department.

 

Step 4. Implement and Reflect

November 8 - I am still awaiting time to meet with my co-worker. He has yet to get back to me about meeting with me formally. We have briefly talked about the added responsibilities of the position, in particular the additional committees and meetings to attend. As far as identity, this still remains a mystery.
November 13 - So this leadership challenge was a bit of a bust. We were never able to catch up together. We will be in the same meeting at the end of next week, so perhaps then I can corner him for a few minutes.