Leadeship Education Using Case-in-Point Teaching

Abstract This article was written as background information for the author's doctoral students to prepare them for a new approach to leadership education - to turn the classroom dynamics into a case study. The author explained to his students that he had undergone a personal transformation A certain book (Parks, 2005) followed by a Harvard workshop had introduced him to teaching. He had now radically changed his approach by doing leadership rather than teaching about leadership. Introduction Educational leadership programs across the county are experimenting with new instructional strategies to prepare future leaders effectively to do the work of their changing organizations. The search is on for ways to design more powerful, dynamic, and authentic means of preparing leaders and to close the gap between theory and practice. Over the years, programs have experimented with simulations, action research, problem-based learning, cohort groups, and case studies (Acker-Hocevar, Pisapia, & Coukos-Semmel, 2002; Amey, 2005; Barnett, 2004; Jackson, 2001; Orr, 2006). While case studies are portrayals of reality, they are not true reality. They tend to over-generalize from studying only one case, plus students may not see relevance to their own situation (Acker-Hocevar, Pisapia, & Coukos-Semmel, 2002). Avolio and Luthans (2006) contend we should be doing more building reflection and more development context. We should be capturing the moments that matter that eventually leaders create when they become cognizant of how important they are. Case-in-point teaching has the potential to enrich professional development in the moment. The role of the leadership educator is to try to bring issues relating to leadership more alive the classroom so the learning and experience can be more real, more integrated cognitively and emotionally. Classroom systems replicate and function like work systems and the role of the educator is to use these interactions to illustrate to students the way they, individually and collectively, respond to and attempt to influence these processes. Case-in-point brings a degree of reality and aliveness into the classroom so students have material to work with. The curriculum is fact what develops the classroom through the interactions and exchange among students and faculty (Johnstone & Fern, 2004). Before delving into what exactly case-in-point teaching is, some basic concepts need to be presented. We need to draw a distinction between and adaptive (Heifetz & Linsky, 2002). A technical problem can be solved by an expert with a routine solution. For example, a student with an advising problem goes to an expert, the advisor, for a technical solution. An challenge is very different. It calls for changing the values, beliefs, and habits of people. An example of an challenge higher education could be figuring out how best to respond to a declining enrollment. The distinction between technical problems and challenges is often not clear cut. They frequently come bundled together and we have to separate. The advising problem could call for both a technical solution and an challenge of getting students to take more responsibility for their own academic progress. The single most common source of leadership failure is that people leadership positions treat challenges like technical problems (Heifetz & Linsky, 2002, p. 14). For example, a new marketing campaign might be the strategic response to a declining enrollment when the real underlying challenge is for institutional personnel to face reality and examine how they interact with students and prospective students. Helping people face reality and challenges is what real leadership is all about. Leadership is an activity of mobilizing people to do work (Heifetz & Linsky, 2002). …