Teacher Leader KnowledgeBase

This KnowledgeBase archive includes content and external links that were accurate and relevant as of September 30, 2019.

The Teacher Leader KnowledgeBase aims to raise awareness of the teacher leader role at the district level and to support teachers aspiring to the teacher leader role through master's degree-level university programs.

Task 5: Enhance Individual and Group Decision-Making

Guideline: Decision making involves collecting data, giving the data context, analyzing it, and forming conclusions about its meaning. The resulting information can be used by individuals or groups to make appropriate decisions about the matter under consideration. Group decision making has the additional dynamic of multiple people participating in the decision process. Teachers in leadership roles understand the dynamics of decision making and help their colleagues enhance their own decision making abilities. This task provides resources to assist teacher leaders in supporting their colleagues.

Resources

Tools

Creative Thinking Tools - The Six Thinking Hats

Individual group members often have divergent viewpoints. Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats is a system fostering collaboration, increased productivity, creativity, and innovation. The concept enables participants in a discussion to move from the traditional argumentative approach to a collaborative process and fosters a more productive dialog. The document provides an overview of the tool and additional resources about it.

Fist to Five Consensus Activity

The Fist to Five consensus activity is a tool groups can use to reach consensus when making decisions. This link is to a set of instructions for using this tool.

Quality Tools for Teachers

This link to the American Society for Quality website provides quality tools for teachers. Each tool has a tutorial explaining how it can be used in a school setting. Teachers in a leadership role may find these tools useful when working with individual teachers or groups of teachers.

Guidelines

Guidelines for Productive Meetings

This guide from the Team Handbook might assist team members with having productive meetings.

Practical Tips

Basic Guidelines to Problem Solving and Decision Making

This Free Management Library article presents a seven step approach to problem solving and decision making. Teachers in leadership roles may find these basic steps helpful working with individual teachers and groups of teachers.

Practicing Listening Skills

This Department of Veterans Affairs website offers suggestions on practicing listening skills. The suggestions may be useful with handling disagreements among school improvement team members.

References

Group Decision Making

This link is to an article on group decision making authored by Fred Lunenburg of Sam Houston State University. As noted in the article's abstract, it "discuss[es] the importance of developing a culture for group decision making and consider some of the advantages, disadvantages, and effective practices in group decision making." The article was published in the National Forum of Teacher Education Journal.