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Leadership education using case-in-point teaching.

Article Excerpt
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 in "teaching leadership." A certain book (Parks, 2005) followed by a Harvard workshop had introduced him to "case-in-point" 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 adaptive 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 adaptive reflection and more development in 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 in 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 in fact what develops in 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 "technical problems" and "adaptive challenges" (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 adaptive challenge is very different. It calls for changing the values, beliefs, and habits of people. An example of an adaptive challenge in higher education could be figuring out how best to respond to a declining enrollment. The distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges is often not clear cut. They frequently...

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