4.6 Assignment - Critical Reflection Journal-Blog

Real-World Challenges in Leading Innovation and Change in P-12 Learning Environments

Write a reflective blog post on this week’s readings, Roundtable dialogue, and/or your action research learnings. The blog writing may be your choice, but it must be substantive, including outside scholarly works, etc.

Currently, we are witnessing a significant transformation in education, and to face today’s real-world challenges, we need to be adaptable to change.  As technology advances in education, so do educators’ challenges to serve their students effectively.  Educators in the last two years had their classrooms upended, and they had to shift to, for some, a foreign online learning environment that they were inadequately unprepared for.  Hargis (2020) asks, “ What is effective online teaching and learning in higher education?  Nearly two years later, post-pandemic questions surrounding the effectiveness of online education continue to surface. 

As with most changes, quick decisions had to be made based on fast and easy solutions, often made by leaders with minimal experience in online teaching.  Change is never easy and seldom pleasant.  However, the only constant to change is change itself.  In Dr. Bridges’ book, "Transitions – Making Sense of Life’s Changes,” he describes what one goes through during change.   First, he looks at “the need for change” and then the “transition process itself.” 

Change, according to Bridges, is often situational. However, on the other hand, a transition is more psychological and long-term.  As we put this into the context of  “The Cycle of Change as it applies to Online Learning” and considering the recent worldwide pandemic, is online learning simply situational and the solution to a short-term problem or situation or is it more of a transition in that with the introduction of technology in the classroom, online education becomes the new way of learning for future students. Veletsianos (2020) asks, “Can online education ever be as good as face-to-face education?” 

Rather than debate the merits of online education versus face-to-face, perhaps we would be better served to take this opportunity post-pandemic to completely reimagine education as a whole and especially to be more inclusive and accessible to all students. For this to happen, educational leaders must maintain their insightful academic lens by continually reviewing the vast advancements in educational technology and the best ways to create an effective online teaching and learning community; by doing so, they can utilize technology that aligns with educational outcomes.

References

Hargis, J. (2020). What is effective online teaching and learning in higher education?

Academia Letters, Article 13. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL13

George Veletsianos. (2020). Learning Online : The Student Experience. Johns Hopkins

University Press.