With the progress of information technology, the importance of learning to develop and maintain individual competence is growing significantly.
A teacher learning organization is a unit of association of teachers the main purpose of which is to deve...
With the progress of information technology, the importance of learning to develop and maintain individual competence is growing significantly.
A teacher learning organization is a unit of association of teachers the main purpose of which is to develop their professional capabilities. In such an organization, the members grow intellectually with each individual learner playing the role of supplier of knowledge and at the same time, the producer thereof. These kinds of formal/informal organizations are making incessant efforts to develop themselves to become professional learning communities.
In the school scene, learning organizations are constantly being organized and developed with the teachers at the center. With the progress being made in information technology and the education information policy being promoted by the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development, the sphere of teacher learning organizations is expanding from the off-line space of face-to-face learning into the on-line space.
The learning activities in on-line space play the role of supplementing the group education conducted in the form of face-to-face learning of the past; and in the on-line space, the teacher himself/herself becomes a supplier and a user of knowledge at the same time, shares the knowledge he/she is interested in with colleagues, and utilizes it. If the value of a teacher learning community is placed on the center of the thinking of their members, it can be regarded as a true learning community.
In any organization, leadership is a process where the individual leader exercises influence on its members to achieve their common goals.
A leader's ability to give life to a learning organization lies in understanding the qualities of its members, their desire for and expectation on learning. To utilize and maximize the individual abilities of its members in a teacher learning organization, the individual efforts of each teacher and the leader's role of forming a community are essential.
An on-line learning space has a different learning culture from that of off-line learning space, and considering the horizontal interactions between participants in an on-line space, the elements of leadership that encourages the spontaneous activities of its members can be recognized to become more important in on-line space.
The aim of this research is to analyze the leadership elements that are recognized for each teacher learning organization according to the leadership type and learning space, which are basic requirements for a teacher learning organization. This research intends to identify the type of leadership recognized for each teacher learning organizations that is being developed while showing different characteristics and still supplementing each other.
The results of the research on the recognized elements of leadership according to the characteristics of a teacher learning organization are as follows:
While off-line teacher learning organizations and on-line teacher learning organizations were similar in their purposes and contents of activities, in the case of on-line organizations, the members perceived the expansion of on-line conversation and interactions as essential elements compared to those of off-line organizations. That is, transformational leadership activates a learning organization more than transactional leadership and can be regarded as the leadership type that is recognized in members of a teacher learning organization.
The results of analyzing the leadership recognized for off-line and on-line teacher learning organizations are as follows:
As a result of analyzing the leadership elements recognized in each type of learning organization, on-line teacher learning organizations are found more related to the subordinate elements of transformational leadership. But as to the charismatic element, one of the important elements of transformational leadership, no significant difference was found between the two groups.
In other words, teacher-learning organizations, as the learning organizations in corporations, require transformational leadership. As found in the results of the preceding research, on-line learning organizations, the sphere of which is expanded and developed into the cyber space from the old and limited face-to-face form teacher learning organizations, are more closely related to the elements of transformational leadership.
In the case of on-line teachers' organizations, it can be said that interaction is maximized since interactive and simultaneous/non-simultaneous communication is possible. In addition, there is a possibility that the authority of the leader can be dispersed to all the participants. The reason that difference was found in leadership elements according to the form of teachers' study society seems to result from the difference in learning space between off-line teacher learning organizations and on-line teacher learning organizations. Therefore, the leader of an on-line teacher learning organization is recognized to help activate group learning considering the characteristics of the on-line environment, to develop new ideas and to nurture abilities of transformational leadership, which emphasizes the inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration. The learning space of on-line teacher organization is on-line; therefore, to discuss the leader of the cyber space, in other words, to discuss the learning activities and leadership that facilitate thereof in cyber space, we need to understand the characteristics of an on-line space.
Taking more comprehensive approaches including the trust between the leader and members, construction of a relationship network, formation of community as preconditions of learning as well as technological elements including information, network, communication, etc. is necessary. Leadership in an on-line space also needs to be reorganized in this perspective.