Effective Learning and Teaching of Leadership from AAAS

One of the documents that I respect is from an organization called The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). This group is an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world. Their Project 2061 developed a book called Science for All Americans which includes some real gems (see http://www.project2061.org/publications/sfaa/online/Chap13.htm) that are largely transferable to the advancing of leadership around the world. I bought their book and recommend it.

Standing on the shoulders of these giants, and leveraging on what they have already done, I will offer some insights on applying what they use for Science instead to Leadership.

For anyone in the business of teaching or training, your experience, like mine, may validate their Chapter 13: EFFECTIVE LEARNING AND TEACHING and the principles identified therein. I'm only listing the ones here that apply. First I'll list their principles and then connect it to leadership learning.

• Learning Is Not Necessarily an Outcome of Teaching
• What Students Learn Is Influenced by Their Existing Ideas
  
  • People have to construct their own meaning regardless of how clearly teachers or books tell them things.
  • To incorporate some new idea, learners must change the connections among the things they already know, or even discard some long-held beliefs about the world.
• Progression in Learning Is Usually From the Concrete to the Abstract
  
  • Young people can learn most readily about things that are tangible and directly accessible to their senses—visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic.
  • With experience, they grow in their ability to understand abstract concepts, reason logically, and generalize.
  • Many people need concrete examples of new ideas throughout life.
  • Concrete experiences are most effective in learning when they occur in the context of some relevant conceptual structure.
  • The difficulties many students have in grasping abstractions are often masked by their ability to remember and recite technical terms that they do not understand.
• People Learn to Do Well Only What They Practice Doing
  
  • If students are expected to apply ideas in novel situations, then they must practice applying them in novel situations.
  • Students acquire desirable skills as they are permitted and encouraged to do those things over and over in many contexts.
• Effective Learning by Students Requires Feedback
  
  • The mere repetition of tasks by students is unlikely to lead to improved skills or keener insights.
  • Learning often takes place best when students have opportunities to express ideas and get feedback from their peers.
  • Feedback ought to be analytical, to be suggestive, and to come at a time when students are interested in it.
  • And then there must be time for students to reflect on the feedback they receive, to make adjustments and to try again—a requirement that is neglected, it is worth noting, by most examinations and assessments.
• Expectations Affect Performance
  
  • Students respond to their own expectations of what they can and cannot learn.
  • If they believe they are able to learn something, they usually make headway.
  • But when they lack confidence, learning eludes them.
  • Students grow in self-confidence as they experience success in learning, just as they lose confidence in the face of repeated failure.
  • Thus, teachers need to provide students with challenging but attainable learning tasks and help them succeed.
  • What is more, students are quick to pick up the expectations of success or failure that others have for them.
• Start With Questions About Nature
  
  • Sound teaching usually begins with questions and phenomena that are interesting and familiar to students, not with abstractions or phenomena outside their range of perception, understanding, or knowledge.
  • Students need to get acquainted with the things around them—including devices, organisms, materials, shapes, and numbers—and to observe them, collect them, handle them, describe them, become puzzled by them, ask questions about them, argue about them, and then to try to find answers to their questions.
• Insist on Clear Expression
  
  • Effective oral and written communication is so important in every facet of life that teachers of every subject and at every level should place a high priority on it for all students.
  • In addition, science teachers should emphasize clear expression, because the role of evidence and the unambiguous replication of evidence cannot be understood without some struggle to express one's own procedures, findings, and ideas rigorously, and to decode the accounts of others.
• Use a team approach
• Do Not Separate Knowing From Finding Out
  
  • Science teaching that attempts solely to impart to students the accumulated knowledge of a field leads to very little understanding and certainly not to the development of intellectual independence and facility. But then, to teach scientific reasoning as a set of procedures separate from any particular substance—"the scientific method," for instance—is equally futile. Science teachers should help students to acquire both scientific knowledge of the world and scientific habits of mind at the same time.
• De-emphasize the Memorization of Technical Vocabulary.
  
  • Understanding rather than vocabulary should be the main purpose of science teaching. However, unambiguous terminology is also important in scientific communication and—ultimately—for understanding. Some technical terms are therefore helpful for everyone, but the number of essential ones is relatively small.

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Applying AAAS Principles to Leadership

So leveraging what they have already done, let's consider some insights on applying what they use for Science instead to Leadership. What do these transferable AAAS principles tell us about effectively teaching leadership skill to the next generations?

• Perhaps that the use of jargon should be avoided
  
  • Personal opinion: It seems to me that many leadership peddlers have imagined their own set of semantic ‘handles’ for labeling concepts that have been around since people have been around, and many have copyrighted their imaginative new terms so they can sell their advice about things that have not changed much in thousands of years.
• We need to find concrete experiences for new leaders. West Point does a great job of doing this. How can you?
• Leadership is especially one of those areas that has to be experienced, not just taught.
• Make early leadership experiences as tangible as possible.
• Another correlary to people constructing their own meaning is that until learner is ready, there can be no learning. An eastern idea is that if the tea cup (read mind) is already full, how can any more tea (read understanding) go in?
• Mentors or coaches that provide feedback to the relevant conceptual structure can be effective. This can be done in small groups or individually.
• Stories can provide the concrete grounding with context.
• Older learners can start to link their experiences to the theories that explain what occurred and give additional insights.
• Long-held beliefs about the world that may need to be discarded include:
  
  • Poor Examples. I have seen this play out with some people exposed to especially bad leadership examples. There is often a strong emotional response to some behaviors they were exposed to that can pose an obstacle to learning how to lead effectively.
  • Cultural Norms. Another example of this with leadership is cultural norms in various parts of the world. In many places it is expected that a “leader” will use coercion and compulsion, and disrespectful behaviors. Although these may work in the very short term, in the longer term, they are destructive with humans.
• New leaders need opportunities to practice over and over in many contexts.
• Effective learning of leadership requires feedback from a mentor, coach, peers, etc.
• Reflection is a key component of growth, processing what occurred. The Army and other organizations has found this effective with a process called an after action review. Coaches do it with game films.
• Especially with younger leaders in training, we have to find ways to help them believe they can, and scope the experience to have small successes, growing the scope as they increase in confidence and ability. Keep ability linked closely to confidence so it is well rooted.
• Be cautious about over-reaching relative to their abilities so as to not cause a loss of confidence in the face of repeated failure as an unintended consequence. There is an obligation on adults to watch for the younger ones learning leadership.
• Provide leadership students with challenging but attainable learning tasks and help them succeed.
• Project positive expectations in the next increment of scope of learning and practice of leadership.
• Start With Questions About Social Relationships and Leaders they have experienced.
  
  • Sound teaching usually begins with questions and interpersonal situations that are interesting and familiar to students, not with abstractions or situations outside their range of perception, understanding, or knowledge.
  • Students need to get acquainted with the human interactions around them and to observe them, describe them, become puzzled by them, ask questions about them, argue about them, and then to try to find answers to their questions.
• Emphasize clear expression for the same reasons they do for science. It is 100% transferable to leadership.
• Use a Team Approach.
  
  
  • The team provides leadership opportunities amongst each other as they learn in the context of team responsibility, feedback and communication.
• Do Not Separate Knowing From Finding Out.
  
  
  • Leadership teaching that attempts solely to impart to students the accumulated body of knowledge leads to very little understanding and certainly not to the development of intellectual independence and facility.
  • Help students to acquire both leadership knowledge and leadership thinking (habits of mind). Life is too dynamic for simplistic formulas or models to work in all situations. The goal is to anticipate and plan, but then to adapt depending on the situation.
  • De emphasize the Memorization of Technical Vocabulary. Understanding should supersede leadership terminology. Some technical terms are helpful for everyone, but the number of essential ones is relatively small. Jargon is less important in leadership than in science.
  • Link new concepts to their existing ones.

So there you have it. The application of concepts intended for other fields of endeavor applied to the challenge of teaching leadership to the next generation. Thanks to AAAS for their excellent work.