An Innovative Approach for School's Leadership Curriculum

Marjolaine St-Pierre
Faculty of Education, Université du Québec à Montréal

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     Last modified: March 12, 2007
     Presentation date: 07/19/2007 10:45 AM in Coast Hotel Pacific Room
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Abstract
The purpose of this abstract is to present an innovative school’s leadership program recently experimented at the University of Quebec in Montreal. The goal of this program is to transform the traditional curriculum to create a new pedagogic approach in the field school’s management to reinforce the professional development of school leaders in the recent international context of decentralization and educational reform. This innovative, school leadership graduate program, linking interactive online instruction with classroom seminars, is a hybrid of programs that are either exclusively geared toward distance learning goals or those which take place exclusively in the classroom setting. It is based on a school management knowledge model and on the Quebec's school annual planning process. The innovative prospect of using real-life mentoring, practice, online discussions and seminars allow to amass a referential bank of knowledge and to develop school’s management competencies in a new creative way. By the fusion of traditional as well as innovative practices of information technology, this program proposed at school’s principals an innovative manner to enhance their professional identity by the convergence of traditional classroom instruction, the implication of information/communication technologies in the domain of school administration and leadership in Quebec. A four year grant from the FQRSC (Fonds Québécois sur la Recherche en Société et Culture) allows the team to develop this new program to promote the perseverance of graduate level students undertaking programs at the secondary level.