Week 11 Agile and Servant Leadership/ Lean education

Agility means the capability of rapidly and efficiently adapting to changes.
Agile leadership It is the art of being flexible under the influence of rapidly changing external conditions. It means being flexible, responsive to change, and willing to learn and adopt new ways, leading to effectively survive and succeed in the complex modern competitive business environment."It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change." - Charles Darwin.
Agile Leadership Style

Agile leadership is situational, adaptive, empowering and inspirational. The most important leadership theory applied to agile is that of servant leadership (Highsmith, 2009).“For the Agile Leader, servanthood is the strategy. Situational actions are the tactic” (Filho, 2011).The key characteristics of the servant leader include awareness, listening, persuasion, empathy, healing, and coaching. Situational leadership means that the servant leader may act as a democratic leader, a laissez-faire leader, or an autocratic leader in different situations (Koganti, 2014).
Servant Leadership

The originator of the servant leadership concept (though inspired by a Herman Hesse story) was Robert Greenleaf. “The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?” (Greenleaf, 1970
Teachers as Servant Leaders

Servant leadership has been applied by a number of authors to teaching. “The teacher as servant leader functions as a trailblazer for those served by removing obstacles that stand in their path. Part of unleashing another’s talents is helping individuals discover latent, unformed interests. Art, music, and science teachers are prime examples of educators whose genius lies in leading students to discover unarticulated interests.” (Bowman, 2005),

Agile methods

The Agile movement proposes alternatives to traditional project management. Agile approaches, such as Scrum and eXtreme programming were designed for the software development to help businesses respond to unpredictability. Aspects of Lean production (from the Toyota Production System) are also increasingly utilised by agile practitioners, for example Kanban boards, where limiting the number of current work items elegant workflow. Kanban's 'pull' model makes the flow of work visible across the team. In software development, 'Scrumban' is a populate fusion of Scrum and Kanban.
Nowadays Agile and lean practices are used in industries outside of manufacturing and software development. Agile is recognized more generally now as simply a great way of getting things done in rapidly changing and highly unpredictable situations.

Agile and Lean Ideas in Learning

In this week's classes we ponder what Agile and Lean methods can offer to the education sector. Even though Agile was developed within the software industry, the bridge is that it is fundamentally about learning, people, and change - three things we struggle with in education. Many are amazed at how easily Agile and lean ideas translate into education, and how perfectly-suited they are, for example, to running schools.

Week 5 - Leadership Growth Mindset

Reflection:Reflect on how you think a growth mindset could affect the change initiative you investigate in your LEADERSHIP 1 assessment.
I would love to use growth mindset more in my classroom. It has always been something that I have been interested in implementing in the classroom but have never had the time before. I also didnt relise how important this was to install in the children as they perservere.

This will be an important part of my assignment as this is something that I would like to plan in the future

especially in my senio classroom where children need to keep perservering through the big change in workload.

Notes:MindsetsMindsets are beliefs; how you think about yourself, your intelligence and talents, what it is you can and cannot do. Ultimately, this affects how you perceive other people and their abilities, talents and capabilities, what they are and are not capable of.
In class we will begin by completing a quiz to explore your own mindset

IntelligenceIn the session we will address the question of whether Intelligence is innate and, therefore, cannot be developed beyond what you are born with. Claxton (2008) notes that "intelligence [has] become defined as the kind of mind that responds most readily to the peculiar demands of school."

Dweck's Theory of intelligence
Dweck (2006) descried two different views of intelligence. The previous view is that there is a fixed intelligence that can be measured using an IQ Test. No matter how much you learn, or how hard you work, your intelligence stays the same. Her view of intelligence is that the brain is malleable: it is like a muscle that can get stronger and work better as you learn and stretch yourself. Over time, you can get smarter. This leads to two contrasting views of mindset, fixed and growth:

Fixed MindsetPeople with a Fixed Mindset believe that the abilities and capabilities they have are fixed traits. Their intelligence is set, they are talented at certain things and not others. They believe that it is whether or not someone is talented at something is what allows them to be successful at something or not. Intelligence is fixed and can be measured.

Growth Mindset
People with a Growth Mindset believe that their intelligence, and abilities can be developed and grow. Through hard work, dedication and time, people can learn new talents, learn new things and become more intelligent. Teaching a growth mindset encourages learning, develops relationships and self efficacy. The brain is malleable, it can grow, stretch and expand. The harder you work, the more you can learn.

Ways to Develop a Growth Mindset
By changing the language we use. The power of 'not yet' in the classroom. "I have not learnt this yet" shows a growth mindset, rather than saying "I can't do this", or "I failed" which shows a fixed mindset. Changing the way we talk in the classroom, 'What we are learning' rather than 'Here is the work to do'. What is it that we value? Do we value the end product or the learning process? (Dweck, 2006)

Week 5 - Digital Collaboration Computational Thinking

Reflection:Reflect how and why would you use Computational Thinking in your classroom?
Computational thinking is all about solving problems and would be excellent when teaching coding. Students need to think about how computers actually work and why things work like they do. This fits into geometry extremely well as alot of the computational thinking aligns with direction and position. I would include computational thinking as part of my problem solving in maths.

Notes:
Computational Thinking
Computational Thinking is a problem solving process. It is a fundamental skill for everyone, and involves solving problems, designing solutions and systems to solve open ended problems based on multiple variables. We illustrate the concept in this week's session with the following quotes:

“Everyone should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think.” (Steve Jobs, cited in Sen, 1995)

"Computational thinking is a way humans solve problems; it is not trying to get humans to think like computers." (Wing, 2006)

“The impact of computing extends far beyond science, however, affecting all aspects of our lives. To flourish in today's world, everyone needs computational thinking.” (Carnegie Mellon University, n.d.)

Computational Thinking Means... Solving problems
Applying abstraction and decomposition
Thinking algorithmically - what’s the process?
Thinking conceptually - what’s the model?
Understanding how things repeat and scale
Dealing with errors
...among other things (depends who you read)

Pair Programming
Pair programming is a common technique in agile software development. One member of the pair is the ‘driver’ (does the typing, and focuses on tactics) while the other is the ‘navigator’ (can review and suggest, and focuses on strategy). When pair programming you should change your roles within the pair on a regular basis, and also change your partner on a regular basis.