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Dwarfs on the Shoulders of Giants (translated with DeeplPro)
by Bernhard von Chartres around 1120
Why has the approach of Agile Educational Leadership (AEL) been developed just now and why is it needed right now? The first chapter provides a brief answer to this question and also discusses the objectives and structure of the book, as well as the special development process.
Licence: Kerstin Mayrberger. (2021). AEL-Buch-Cover [Online Bildmaterial], Lizenz CC BY 4.0 erstellt von Vectorium –de.freepik.com https://de.freepik.com/psd/mockup. (2021). AEL-Buch-Cover [Online Bildmaterial], Lizenz CC BY 4.0 erstellt von Vectorium –de.freepik.com https://de.freepik.com/psd/mockup.))
[Note: If the media file is not displayed correctly in your browser, all podcast chapters of the AEL book version 1.0 can also be listened to directly here.(german version)]
Invitation
With Agile Educational Leadership, I would like to invite you to take a step-by-step approach to the future of education together with me – because this future begins today! Each and every one of us helps to shape this future – by acting or waiting.
A call to Courage!
The interdisciplinary approach of Agile Educational Leadership is an offer and at the same time an invitation to get started together, step by step. A way of doing things in which a future-oriented normality can lie in a sovereign ‘as well as’ of the familiar and the new.
Conceptual and empirical findings and experiences from development projects and observations have shown that, in addition to stable and solid cornerstones that are justifiable and comprehensible, the education sector lacks flexibility and openness to truly new ideas. The Corona-crisis impressively reveals that alternative paths have long been needed in the education system in order to be able to act in an uncertain future. It takes courage to do things differently and hopefully better in all areas of (higher) education.
Because all we need is already here.
The statements in the AEL book, as I call it for short here, are therefore shaped on the one hand by my conviction that things can work better in (higher) education than they do at the moment. And on the other hand, they are based on my professional certainty, which is grounded in many years of research, development and expertise in the fields of education, didactics and digitization. After all, many practical trials have already taken place in projects and research, and solution-oriented ideas, concepts and theoretical knowledge are available – including in fields other than educational science – to tackle the topic differently than before and to find out what can be improved and adopted on a broad scale.
Thinking outside the box
Critical situations are particularly indicative of weak points in the system, of areas that have not yet been developed in a sufficiently stable manner. They make it clear what limits arise, i.e. where the obstacles lie, in order to remain capable of acting well in a crisis and, in the best case, to be capable of development. It is currently becoming clear that the digital transformation in education is still arriving and that it is being overrun by sudden technological modernization rather than being able to contribute to didactic or pedagogical innovation, and even less so to making a name for itself in its own field. The current public (higher) education system has reached its limits in its current structure, with its responsibilities and with the existing solutions. It can hardly keep up with the required momentum. To overcome these limitations or break through restrictions, it can help to look beyond one’s own professional horizons and to follow the classic model of learning and ask:
How are others dealing with similar challenges in the process of digital transformation
? And to what extent could this be transferred to the field of education? What fits and what needs to be adapted? How can it be implemented quickly and reasonably?
Urgency
The fact that this text is being written in early 2021 at a time characterized by the pandemic may be a special situation. However, agile educational leadership should not be understood as something that is only relevant during a crisis. After all, in view of the developments in the field of (higher) education in the course of the digital transformation, I have felt an increasing sense of urgency in recent years that things could be done differently.
Walk the talk
This is where my motivation grew to combine interdisciplinary perspectives and the connection between content in the fields of education, agility and leadership in the course of the digital transformation of the (higher) education sector with its consequences into an interdisciplinary approach called Agile Educational Leadership and to develop a framework from it. Strictly speaking, the current corona pandemic has now become an accelerator for this project. It encouraged me to start sharing my initial thoughts in writing and speaking in 2020 and to engage in joint discussion. I couldn’t shake it off.
So instead of having a completely finished and thoroughly thought-out book on Agile Educational Leadership, as is actually typical for science, by 2022, following a comprehensive schedule, a first comprehensive text is now being created in an agile and iterative way in an open process characterized by constant exchange. This first version of the AEL book stands for version 1.0 – walk the talk.
Contextualisiation
Before the following chapters of the book gradually elaborate on the Agile Educational Leadership approach with its interdisciplinary context in more depth and with more differentiation, I would like to provide a brief initial context here.
The Golden Circle by Simon Sinekserves as an inspiration for the following structure. And so, at this point, the three questions he has identified as central to successful ventures are brought to the point, answered or, to quote Simon Sinek: what is thedas Why, How und What of Agile Educational Leadership?
Why – What is Agile Educational Leadership relevant for? What is the point?
Sustainable improvements in the education sector are necessary, as the current crisis situation has made abundantly clear.
We are currently experiencing social conditions that hardly allow us any time to talk or philosophize about the future of education because technological changes are progressing so quickly and the ongoing pandemic requires prompt decisions that it is no longer possible to develop elaborated recommendations for action. In fact, we are in the midst of the digital transformation of the education sector and it is important to shape the future today and to give ourselves room and space to act again so that we do not remain reactive. Because today’s learners — regardless of the field — are the actors of tomorrow. They will have to tackle and solve the foreseeable and as yet unknown problems of the (near) future. To do so, they need professional and interdisciplinary skills, knowledge and, above all, confidence in their individual and collective ability to act in lifelong learning. Experiences as well as socialization processes are helpful here, which, in addition to the acquisition of professional skills and knowledge in terms of the development of individuality and personality formation, make it clear how one can learn to deal with mistakes, think critically and act creatively, as well as how to organize oneself and keep an eye on the big picture.
How – Where do we go from here?
Agile Educational Leadership stands for a possible Wie, i.e. a possible way to meet the social responsibility of good education through the appropriate design of good learning and educational contexts under the conditions of digitalization and digitality.
The approach shows the framework for how we can gradually and sensibly shape educational conditions and contexts in various formal, informal and non-formal areas in order to be able to act in the future.
How is Agile Educational Leadership to be understood?
The Agile Educational Leadership approach stands for specific agile leadership in the education sector and for a strategy for action. The aim is to develop a consistent and theoretically sound transdisciplinary framework.
Agile Educational Leadership combines agile values and principles and encourages the handling of organizational and personal ambidexterity in order to be able to act confidently between hierarchies and networks.The focus is on embracing a “both-and” approach in the complexity of diverse decision-making and action options, balancing and enduring it while also wanting to, and thereby revealing connections between dualities. An Agile Educational Leader does not stand for a hierarchical position or function, but for a role with a corresponding attitude and mindset.
AEL provides a framework for wanting and being able to act responsibly under uncertain contextual conditions in the education sector.
What – What does it actually take?
The What brings already existing and familiar perspectives from the corporate context to bear: agile leadership and ambidexterity. Educational organizations, the various educational sectors and individuals are equally relevant. For the education sector, it repeatedly becomes clear how central the role of educational specialists and teachers is in the various areas. Be it in terms of relationship work, their function as a role model and the experiences they enable learners to have by creating meaningful learning environments. As a first step, agile educational leadership starts with the people and stakeholders in the education sector for joint work in and on the education system. This means that personal ambidexterity and organizational ambidexterity are equally important.
What makes agile educational leadership work?
Personal ambidexterity, referred to here as #Ambidextrie4me, stands for a possible practice of agile educational leadership in the course of digital transformation. Here, an educational practice-related concept is developed that includes action-oriented and reflective methods and tools to strengthen one’s own media-related professionalism in the field of education. #Ambidextrie4me contributes to being agile and is characterized by agile practices in the sense of doing agile. Agile values and principles in particular serve as a reference for this, as does a focus on coaching skills in order to strengthen one’s own agile leadership skills through (self-)learning opportunities and training.
People are needed who increasingly engage with and develop #Ambidextrie4me so that agile educational leadership can contribute to the ability to act in the digital transformation of the education sector and the education sector can develop well. Appropriate training and development opportunities are needed to strengthen #Ambidextrie4me.
Lens
Agile educational leadership is one possible way in which the education sector can develop in a future-proof and effective manner in the course of the digital transformation and react more quickly. The approach describes a procedure along agile values and principles and, with the help of appropriate educational and development offers, forms a framework for the action-oriented and reflexive development of an #Ambidextrie4me of actors.
With the Agile Educational Leadership approach, the book aims to offer a suitable framework for joint, networked and iterative action in the education sector. At the same time, with the reference points of education, agility and leadership in the context of digital transformation, this book also represents an educational science reflection in the form of an essay on the (higher) education sector in the current era.
About the book
This book should not even exist yet. After all, is it possible to publish something that is not yet completely finished and will therefore be further developed, improved, rearranged, discarded and supplemented in a parallel process? ?
But what a year 2020 was!
Different times, different motivations and ultimately different decisions with regard to everything that is currently happening in our society. And so a freely and openly accessible book on the Agile Educational Leadership approach is now being created online, iteratively and transparently.
So yes, it is possible.
Ambition
Figuratively speaking, the aim of this book is to pick up existing perspectives and approaches like threads and tie them together to form a strong rope in the form of Agile Educational Leadership. Such a rope could provide support to move step by step in and with the education sector through the digital transformation, especially when the ground feels shaky or the dynamic winds of change pick up.
This book builds on what is already known, expands and supplements what already exists and develops new ideas and approaches for the education sector. The Agile Educational Leadership approach thus sees itself in the truest sense as a dwarf on the shoulders of giants, from which the interdisciplinary field can be viewed and surveyed more broadly.
Structure
The following subject areas and chapters are currently planned for the first complete version of the book – Version 1.0.
- Educational
- Digitality
- Individual-focused approach
- Ambidexterity
- Agilität
- Leadership
- Agile Educational Leadership
- One more thing
These chapters will gradually be published online over the next few weeks and will then be available for comment. The book will only show its structure and outline at the end of version 1.0 in June 2021, even if it may appear differently here on the website for technical reasons – because it is open where further impulses will lead the writing process.
Agile creation process
As the subject matter suggests, the web-based text is created dynamically, iteratively and in sprint cycles along agile principles. In view of the digital transformation in the education sector, it seems more than appropriate to make new ideas and considerations accessible, share them, obtain feedback and improve them as quickly as possible under dynamic conditions.
Agile Educational Leadership is an approach that aims to combine theory, practice, transfer and empiricism in equal measure and establishes interdisciplinary links. Above all, this includes bringing together the specialist perspectives of educational science or educational science with those from economics and computer science. The fact that it also includes perspectives from sociology, philosophy, communication and media studies and psychology in places is obvious when it comes to the topic of agility, leadership and the educational context.
The AEL book, with its diversity of perspectives, will therefore develop in concentric circles around an initial core, version 1.0, as a starting point and will be expanded and improved from there. The aim of the first version is to present an overview of the central relationships and to find out where the approach fits well for whom and where there are still open questions that should be dealt with in more detail. In the sense of a “T‑shape”, further versions can then go into greater depth and further networking on individual topics and named terms. Each version of the AEL book only ever represents an interim status, with the final point or understanding of “Done” corresponding to the respective objectives of the sprint cycles.
A note to begin with!
On the one hand, it is easy to name you, the readers, i.e. the target group for the subject matter presented here, because it can only be assumed that you are interested in education and the future of education within and outside educational institutions and organizations in the broadest sense.
On the other hand, it is equally difficult to anticipate how broad your actual interests are beyond subject boundaries and various fields of action in the educational context and where these could presumably lie across disciplines in the transfer between theory, concept and practice. It will therefore be the case that in a first version of Agile Educational Leadership, it will probably not be possible to take on and formulate every specialist perspective in a completely satisfactory way for you as a reader. But this is also in the nature of a first version, which will subsequently be improved in an agile sense in iterative loops.
In order to be able to include your interests at an early stage, I work with the target image of an MVP – a Minimal Viable Product. This MVP is already shown openly during the development process and is therefore also open and freely accessible for your input.
The online text made accessible here matures through the possibility of a timely public review via the DUA-Blog. There you have the opportunity to comment, argue, supplement or provide other impulses from theory and practice.
The feedback and comments are reviewed and answered editorially by the entire DUA project team and are incorporated into ongoing revisions and the backlog. This also means that the version currently being read here and now may already have been changed and expanded tomorrow. These are options of an online medium from which the development process of the entire work should benefit. The first complete version of a freely and openly accessible online book will be available in June 2021. Ideally, we will be able to complete the next, second and improved version by summer 2021.
In this respect, I would like to appeal to you as readers to engage with this diversity of perspectives between theory and practice – especially those that at first glance seem foreign or further removed from your previous professional point of view – as well as to be open to the ongoing development process.
Acknowledgments
In order for the book to be online in a first version by June 2021 or to be “Done” in the sense of the Definition of Done (DoD) of version 1.0 of the book, support around the actual writing process was and is necessary, for which I am very grateful.
In terms of the book’s content and the way it was written, many intensive discussions with colleagues and other interested parties on the future of (higher) education were and still are part of the process. I have also received a variety of smaller and larger impulses, sometimes even surprising contacts, via social networks.
However, the most important support I currently receive is from the cooperation in our DUA project team, which is very active in research, editing and proofreading as well as technical implementation. We would not be able to realize the AEL book in its present form, in addition to other tasks in the DUA project, in terms of content, operations and technology, without the shared desire to test ourselves in agile working, getting involved in new technical and professional things, finding creative solutions and not without the enormous and competent energy within our team.
Thank you.
