Moving Students to Deeper Learning in Leadership

Abstract

Complex and adaptive challenges threaten human well-being and sustainability. However, our leadership graduates often lack the capacity and or commitment to address these challenges in a meaningful way. This paper details a five-year study exploring the impact of an interdisciplinary undergraduate course on the development of global capacities, complex Adaptive Leadership, Socially Responsible Agency, and systems thinking. The course instructors used innovative and intentionally divergent learning methods to challenge students to serve as stewards of their own knowledge and facilitators of their own learning through the confrontation of authentic and complex challenges. The researchers note transferable qualitative findings that demonstrate the profound impact of the noted leadership learning experience on the development of Socially Responsible Agency, along with Adaptive Leadership capacity and systems thinking.

A framework for the facilitation of accelerated leadership and management capability development in the workplace

“…In a higher education learning context, to achieve a motive of mastering a topic, a learner might decide to use a strategy such as summarizing the main ideas of an article (Hogan et al 2015;Huntley-Moore and O'Connor 2014). Such an approach is referred to as a deep approach to learning, whereas a surface approach involves the learner rote learning the content of the subject in order to reproduce it, such as for a test or exam, rather than to understand content (Biggs 1979;Marton and Säljö 1976;Stover and Seemiller 2017). Supporting the meta-learning helps learners to become more aware of their self-regulatory behaviours and to recognize the effectiveness of learning strategies they use, and how to apply their learnings in their context (Jackson 2004;Cook 2022).…”

Using Guided Critical Reflection to Discover Deepened and Transformative Learning in Leadership Education

“…Day et al (2014) suggest the use of self-narratives or self-stories as a way to increase self-awareness. Class preparation reflections, metacognition (thinking about thinking), note reflection, and observation reflection are methods of helping students move to deeper levels of learning (Stover & Seemiller, 2017). Though verbal reflection might prove to be more difficult to assess, it is still presented as a viable reflection method for helping students synthesize theories and convert them into practice (Roberts, 2008; White & Guthrie, 2016).…”

Global education movement: English as a second language teachers’ perceptions of integrating volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity elements in lessons

“… Maier et al (2016 , p. 155) also affirmed that “when dealing with an uncertain future, a different conceptual approach to thinking about uncertainty is needed.” Hence, ESL learners need to develop their critical thinking and expand their views on the use of language in the future ( SiRicord and Shah, 2017 ; Baimanova et al, 2020 ). On the other hand, complexity in the real world arises when there is difficulty in identifying and quantifying it ( Bennett and Lemoine, 2014 ; Maier et al, 2016 ; Stover and Seemiller, 2017 ). Ambiguity challenges learners’ skills to predict and be clear on issues that are vague and subject to interpretation ( Reeves and Reeves, 2015 ; Asmolov, 2018 ).…”

“…Thus, the combination of the 21st century and volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) environment is an ideal approach for ESL teaching and learning practices ( Seow et al, 2019 ). For that, Stover and Seemiller (2017) and LeBlanc (2018) suggest the incorporation of VUCA because it can create a meaningful learning environment. Wang (2019 , p. 52) expresses that “the educational success in the 21st century focuses on competencies that go beyond cognitive development, such as the ability to critically seek and synthesize information and to direct one’s learning.” Likewise, learners need to prepare for real-life challenges due to the unprecedented complex challenges and problems in the world today ( Bennett and Lemoine, 2014 ; Maier et al, 2016 ; Rowan et al, 2019 ; Seow et al, 2019 ).…”