Reflective leadership in EFL


Göker S. D.

Theory and Practice in Language Studies, cilt.2, sa.7, ss.1355-1362, 2012 (Scopus) identifier

Özet

There seems to be a large discrepancy between leading and learning roles of EFL (English as a foreign language) teacher, learner and principal, which often makes EFL schools fail to build a coherent, collaborative system that supports powerful, equitable learning for all learners. Based on the discrepancy above, in this article, I introduce a reflective leadership framework (RLF) for EFL learners, teachers, and principals, which offers a vision of desirable practice for these three stakeholders with particular roles rather than a set of recipes or a change theory. Reflective leadership is used to describe the concept that learners, teachers and principals should be leaders and learners. I argue that with this reflective leadership type, in which all individuals are empowered to lead for learning, EFL schools could be more effective due to their unique contexts. In this leadership framework, 3 distinct concepts-learning, teaching, and leading-are mutually supportive for more powerful connections between leading and learning. This leadership type particularly offers a theoretically grounded framework for EFL schools, which desire to initiate a communicative curriculum with new leadership roles for students, teachers, and principals by drawing on the following bodies of literature: leading for learning, school-based management, creating a reflective learning community. © 2012 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.