Windsor-Oakland Teaching and Learning Conference

Theme: Leading Change in Teaching and Learning: Vision, Influence, Action
Date: May 13-14, Pre-conference Forum May 12, 2015

The purpose of the ninth annual University of Windsor-Oakland University Teaching and Learning Conference is to celebrate and recognize educational leadership on the ground: to explore the kinds of projects educators undertake every day, as they try to improve teaching and learning in their own contexts and communities. The Conference provides a forum for participants to network with emerging and established educational leaders, and to learn knowledge and skills that can help them carry out successful leadership projects. How can you be an educational leader through innovation and best practices in your own classroom and beyond, serve as a model for your colleagues, and bring about change?

Although research on leading educational change has been limited in North American contexts, there is clear evidence internationally that embedded, or distributed, leadership is important to institutional improvement. Innovation and change often happen because people in a variety of roles and networks, make collaborative commitments to solving problems and to seeing initiatives come to fruition. Building effective programs to support these leaders and to bring together their networks appears to be a valuable lever in systemic capacity building and knowledge transfer (Holt et al., 2010 cited in Wright et al., 2014). Distributed leadership is “a leadership approach in which individuals who trust and respect each other’s contributions collaborate together to achieve identifiable goals. It occurs as a result of an open culture within and across an institution. It is an approach in which reflective practice is an integral part of enabling action to be critiqued, challenged and developed through cycles of planning, action, reflection and re-planning” (Jones et al., 2014).

Pre-Conference Forum: Teaching and Learning Leadership in Higher Education

This year a new Pre-Conference Forum will be held on May 12, 2015. The Forum will explore the development, roles, challenges, and insights of developing and experienced educational leaders, through facilitated, engaging, and interactive sessions.

 
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