Least Common Multiple of Teacher Leadership Styles: Implication on Classroom
Least Common Multiple (LCM) refers to minimum requirement to accommodate all factors contributing in a particular situation. Building on the same notion, this paper identifies a combination of factors required for effective teacher leadership in a classroom situation.
Leadership and teaching are sufficiently different from each other, but in teacher leadership both of them act together inevitably. In schools, teacher as a leader interacts directly with the students to develop their cognition for a desired outcome. At the same time, she/he also forms a caring relationship with them not only to guide them academically but also socially and spiritually. Also students' have some self motives for their own learning. These motives could be influenced by the teacher's role in the classroom or by an external factor, eg, home and society. Hence, three interests can be highlighted for the effectiveness in classroom:
- Interest of teacher for the learning outcomes in terms of students' result
- Interest of the teacher for the human factor (students) in terms of students'
- care Interest of the students for their own learning, that is, students' motivation.
Combinations of above interests were sought and presented in three dimensional models. For this purpose, L, C and M were taken along X-axis, Y-axis and Z-axis respectively to generate visuals for these models. Eight different combinations (models) emerged by considering extreme existence (+) or extinction (-) of the L, C and M in order to specify a particular leadership style for teacher leadership.
In order to explore the implication of these different styles in a classroom, a list of eight most important aspects of a classroom were identified through literature and later on validated by experts and practitioners. These eight aspects include: teacher-student relationship, teacher's behaviour with the students, teachers attitude towards students, students attitude towards knowledge, students understanding about the acquired knowledge, students' personality development, nature of learning activities, and overall environment of the class. The influence of the above three factors on these eight aspects were opined from experienced teachers and head teachers. Data was collected through questionnaire from the teachers/principals of various schools at Karachi. Before administering the questionnaire, an orientation was given to them in order to understand the purpose of the study, implications associated with the name of each leadership style and above-mentioned eight factors of the classroom. Most of the teachers and headteachers opined that the presence of all the three variables is essential for an effective classroom. Hence the combination (L+, M+, C+) stands out as a minimum requirement for effective teacher leadership for almost every factor of a classroom. The respondents picked up the title "mediator" for this style.