LEADERSHIP AND MANAGING CHANGE IN THE NEW NORM AND IT’S IMPACT TOWARDS STUDENTS’ OUTCOMES (MCE) IN THE
KINABATANGAN DISTRICT EDUCATION OFFICE
Munah Binti Nasri1 Nurdiana Binti Amiruddin2
Tan Shueh Li @ Adrian3
1Pejabat Pendidikan Daerah Kinabatangan, Malaysia (Email: [email protected])
2Pejabat Pendidikan Daerah Kinabatangan, Malaysia (Email: [email protected])
3Pejabat Pendidikan Daerah Kinabatangan, Malaysia (Email: [email protected]) _______________________________________________________________________________
Abstract: Our world today needs leaders who are prepared, aware of changes, and dynamic in leadership management specifically when facing a VUCA world – The New Norm. This article is from the perspective of a leader in making changes as suggested by John P. Kotter (1995). The leadership’s role is divided into 3 parts: (I) Creating a Climate of Change (II) Enabling and Engaging the Whole Organization (III) Implementing and Sustaining Change. This research paper discusses the leadership’s role in managing change within the organization and the interventions made to increase Kinabatangan District Education Office’s Malaysian Certificate of Education (MCE) result that was on a downward trend in 2019. The 2019 MCE decreased from the previous year in its District Grade Point Average (DGPA) from 5.95 (2018) to 6.13 (2019), while the EFC increased from 88.03% (2018) to 88.87% (2019). The target groups are 534 MCE students and 92 form 5 teachers from 4 secondary schools in Kinabatangan District Education Office (KDEO) in 2020. The focus of this research is to improve the MCE 2020 GPA to grade 5 and increase EFC to 90%. Managing change by the leaders of the Kinabatangan District Education Office was done by Increasing Urgency, Building a Guiding Team, Get the Right Vision, Communicate the Buy-In, Empower Action, Creating Short-term Wins, Don’t Let Up, and Make it Stick (Kotter, 1995). The researcher as the instructional pioneer in KDEO utilizes the Mindakod Program as an intervention to achieve the objective – improving the 2020 MCE.
As a result, the 2020 MCE result has increased to 5.5 (DGPA) and 95.51% Eligibility for Certificate (EFC). Furthermore, the impact towards the students’ performance in Kinabatangan District Education Office has improved by 0.60 (DGPA) which is the biggest improvement in the Sabah state.
In conclusion, all actions by the leader in facing multiple challenges and in managing change during this new norm have been successful and cultivated change in education agendas.
Keywords: VUCA- a situation of uncertainty.In a VUCA world, nothing is certain or sure. It is difficult to predict or plan like before.
Mindakod- to climb, increase
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1. Introduction
The Kinabatangan District Education Office has 35 schools consisting of 31 primary schools and 4 secondary schools. From these 35 schools, 18 schools are considered rural schools while 17 schools are considered interior schools. 3 out of the 4 secondary schools are considered rural schools, namely SMK Bukit Garam, SMK Bukit Garam II, and SMK Paris while SMK Sukau is considered a Category 1 interior school. There are 532 form 5 students in the district and a total of 92 teachers in these secondary schools. All of the children attending these schools come from nearby villages and are rural students who need a lot of assistance. This condition poses
as a great challenge to the district education office, school leaders, and teachers in various aspects such as access to the internet and technological gadgets vis-à-vis urban students.
Nevertheless, change is still crucial especially considering the rapid global change to ensure no child is left behind.
Leaders in the world of education have a monumental responsibility in ensuring that the goals and agendas of education are implemented. Myriads of issues and challenges due to Covid-19 have been plaguing the education sector specifically. The world is becoming more challenging and complex thus creating a VUCA world "The New Normal" which stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. These uncertainties therefore throw us into an unprecedented and unpredictable future. This is particularly worrying for the Kinabatangan District Education Office (KDEO) as the results of the MCE showed a downward trend for 3 years in a row up until 2019. The district grade point average (DGPA) dropped from 5.95 (2018) to 6.13 (2019), though the candidates eligible for certificates (EFC) increased a little from 88.03% (2018) to 88.87% (2019). This has become a point of concern for all parties involved, especially to school leaders – specifically principals, and the district education officer. Therefore, these education leaders need to dig deep to solve this disconcerting issue.
As a leader, the Chief District Education Officer (CDEO) has to manage change in the district’s education landscape in the new normal. Change in this sense is a transformational process of the organisation’s mentality, methodology and approaches to new emerging patterns. In an organisation, change is needed so that the system and new procedures can be improved, implemented and run smoother. According to the Free Encyclopedia, Wikipedia 2013, Change may refer to: The process of becoming different. Change is a patterned behavioral change from one stabile form of status to another different stabile form. This shows that change is inevitable and facing it is only a matter of time.
2. Literature Review
The educational institution is faced with a tremendous challenge due to the government’s move of implementing a nationwide Movement Control Order (MCO) as a preemptive move to curtail the Covid-19 virus. Schools nationwide were ordered to close down to either slowdown or prevent the spread of the virus altogether. This closure has prevented the physical contact between children in schools thus reducing the number of cases (Jude & Eli, 2020). Among those severely affected by this MCO are the Malaysian Certificate of Education (MCE) students. The Malaysian Education Minister has described this batch of MCE 2020 candidates as the most challenging generation whom are all forced to face with a radically different teaching and learning environment compared to before Covid-19.
Alternatives in conducting teaching and learning in a world plagued by Covid-19 is by utilising technology (Salsabila et al, 2020). In education, utilising technology is not something new. The transition to a fully techno-centric teaching and learning environment has brought forth a new norm to our society. All members of society including parents, students, teachers, district education offices, state education offices, and even the education ministry has to accept the fact that they have to get used to the new normal to ensure that the education process and its activities are not halted due to the spread of this heinous virus. When a leader plans to
implement change, it has to be done systematically in order to have meaningful impact (Kotter, 1996). According to the model of change suggested by John Kotter, his model starts by identifying the needs required for change. When a need has been identified, the next step is to create urgency for that need. A leader needs to convince its members that there is a need for change. After needing to change, the next step is for the leader to build a team that has influence and power to mobilise the plans of change. That group will then create a clear vision and make it as its goals that need to be achieved.
In order to get the vision clearly across, communication is vital among all members of the organisation especially regarding the desired goals. After the members have understood the vision, the leaders of change and its members need to overcome obstacles or resistance from sources trying to resist change. After these obstacles have been overcome, the leader needs to highlight its short term wins to boost the confidence of members in schools. The next stage is to make meaningful wholesome solutions to realise the vision. Finally, after change has been accepted as part of the organisation’s culture, the process of change is thereby completed and perfected. The model of leadership of change according to Kotter can be seen in Diagram 1:
Diagram 1: Kotter’s Eight Step Model
Research conducted by Syahidah Haziyah Sulaiman, Jamal@Nordin Bin Yunus (2021) has supported the importance of the role of a competent leader in dealing with challenges in organizational management of MCE students during the Covid-19 pandemic. Among the leadership of change’s competencies are goal framing, capacity building, defusing resistance, conflict and institutionalising. Other researches like the one conducted by Edmonds (1979), Mortimore, Sammons & Thomas (1994), and Purkey & Smith (1983) confirmed that effective leadership is about leaders who bring added value to output – students. Other leadership factors that have been identified are school culture, school conditions, students’ discipline, distribution of resources, curricular knowledge of the leaders, the level of teaching and assessments, work focus, transparency, provision of positive reinforcement, communicative skills, and others.
3. Research Methodology
The methodology and design of this research is based on Kurt Lewin’s Action Research Model (1946).
Diagram 2: Kurt Lewin’s Action Research Model (1946)
The planning stage of this research involves identifying gaps and issues needed for change using Kolb’s Reflection (1984). The action stage involves creating and implementing the interventions and building teams for change using the Kotter Model. The observation stage involves analysing of data and results based on the action taken using School Examination Analysis System and MCE results. The reflect stage after evaluation is done after observation using the SWOT Analysis to plan for follow-up action.
4. Results
As an instructional leader, especially to ensure results in education, it is important to analyse the MCE data of the KDEO. The analysis has been done to compare the results of the 2017, 2018 and 2019 MCE. The district grade point average of the KDEO for these years are 5.84 (2017), 5.95 (2018) and 6.13 (2019). The percentage of students eligible for certificates is 85.26% (2017), 88.03% (2018) and 88.87% (2019). To ensure that teachers conduct good home based learning sessions, the district education office has empowered the Learning Sector’s School Improvement Specialist Coaches + (SISC+) to implement a program called Mindakod.
Mindakod is a word from the language of the Sungai race of Kinabatangan which means rise.
The objective of the programme is to increase the district grade point average to 5 and to increase the number of students eligible for certificate to 90% in the 2020 MCE.
Table 1: Grade Point Average (GPA) of Kinabatangan Secondary Schools 2017-2020
YEAR
SMK BUKIT GARAM
SMK PARIS
SMK SUKAU
SMK BUKIT GARAM
II
DISTRICT DIFFERENCE
2017 5.83 6.01 6.55 5.54 5.84 -
2018 6.10 5.54 6.16 5.85 5.95 -0.11
2019 6.18 6.01 6.07 6.06 6.13 -0.18
2020 (KPI)
5.87 5.55 5.95 4.86 5.83 +0.30
Plan
Act Observe
Reflect
Action Research
Plan
Act Observe
Reflect
Action Research
Table 2: Eligible for Certificates (% EFC) of Kinabatangan Secondary Schools 2017-2020
YEAR
SMK BUKIT GARAM
SMK PARIS
SMK SUKAU
SMK BUKIT GARAM II
DISTRICT DIFFERENCE (%) 2017 86.22 88.46 75.38 88.50 85.26 - 2018 84.77 92.05 92.50 86.29 88.03 -2.77 2019 91.30 80.43 93.83 87.88 88.87 +0.84 2020
(KPI)
95.96 85.50 94.00 100 90.00 +1.13
Figure 1: Results of the Mindakod Programme to Secondary Schools’ Grade Point Average (2019-2020)
Figure 2: Results of the Mindakod Programme to Secondary Schools’
Percentage of Students Eligible for Certificates (2019-2020) 5. Discussion and Conclusion
When facing the unexpected, drastic changes need to be adapted efficiently by leaders in and intelligent and creative manner through cooperative measures within the organisations
6.18 6.01 6.07 6.06 6.13
5.65 6.04
5.40 5.09 5.50
0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00
SMK BUKIT GARAM
SMK PARIS SMK SUKAU SMK BUKIT GARAM II
PPD KINABATANGAN
2019 2020
91.30
80.43
93.83
87.88 88.87
95.94 96.43
94.12 95.24 95.51
70.00 75.00 80.00 85.00 90.00 95.00 100.00
SMK BUKIT GARAM
SMK PARIS SMK SUKAU SMK BUKIT GARAM II
PPD KINABATANGAN
2019 2020
members (Drucker, 2017). Preparation in all forms and aspects need to be done immediately so that adaptation to changes can be done and best decisions can be made. Therefore, as a leader, the Chief District Education Officer (CDEO) has to have the right skills and transformational leadership competencies to influence the attitudes of the officers in the office, principals and teachers in schools so that changes can be done when conducting home based teaching and learning classes. The leadership of KDEO therefore discussed and created interventions to aid schools with supportive programs to solve issues related to students that will be facing their MCE in the new normal.
A CDEO has to be efficient in adapting to drastic changes, improve on the decision making process, be creative, and make collaborative and trustworthy decisions (Drucker, 2017). According to John F. Kotter, the role of leaders in making changes can be created and proliferated into 3 main tasks with 8 steps. Part I: Creating the Climate for Change (II) Engaging and Enabling the Organisation (III) Implementing and Sustaining Change.
A) Creating a Climate for Change:
Step 1: Creating a Sense of Urgency
The Covid-19 virus has threatened human lives globally. The education sector is particularly affected due to the Malaysian Education Ministry’s Circular and Implementation Guidelines for Home Based Learning during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period on the 27th of March 2020. In order to implement this, the CDEO has to ensure that principals are aware of the need to change. As a leader, the CDEO has to determine the direction and propagation strategies that are needed to achieve this vision. Leadership is a process that has to be done by changing (Kotter, 1999). Therefore, the CDEO has to gain the trust of all its officers in the district education office and the 4 secondary school principals in order that all are ready to ensure the necessary changes happen. A Focused MCE Performance Dialogue was conducted to explain the rationale of change by explaining the gap between the 2019 and 2020 MCE and how to close that gap. The CDEO brought along all the officers and principals to reflect using Kolb’s Reflection (1984). Reflections are important as a chance to ponder, analyse issues, look for suggestions, and actions to generate new ideas to deal with the ongoing issues. Kolb’s reflective process has 4 cycles:
Cycle 1: What happened? The 2019 DGPA is 6.13 and the 2019 EFC is 88.87%
Cycle 2: Why and how did it happen? The MCE DGPA decreased 3 years in a row from 5.84 (2017) to 5.95 (2018) to 6.13 (2019).
Cycle 3: New ideas. What improvements can made? How can improvements be made?
Cycle 4: Application of new ideas. Managing actions. How actions are implemented.
In order to ensure changes are agreed by all parties, the CDEO has to use a SWOT Analysis. Conflicts that arise have to be dealt with by balancing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in order to ensure that it does not repeat while trying to implement change. When analysing its strengths, most of the obstacles and challenges faced during online and offline home based learning can be solved due to the trust by the principals towards the leadership calibre of the district education officer. According to Kotter & Schlesinger (2008), the main agent of change of a successful change is the main leadership in the organisation.
According to Ronquillo (2011), the leadership styles that fit 21st century learning are futuristic, innovative and strategic. Therefore, strategic leadership is described as a main driving force in implementing successful strategies.
When analysing weaknesses in the SWOT analysis, infrastructural aspects such as the lack of computers and devices among students are apparent. However, from the CDEO’s point of view, this does not pose as an excuse to halt the home based learning sessions because teachers can opt to conduct offline learning methods such as sending offline materials to the homes of students or to the collection centres designated by the community of each village affected by the MCO while adhering to the standard operating procedures (SOP) of the Malaysian Health Ministry.
At the same time, the opportunities observed by the CDEO during this time is the ability to apply for more assets such as computers that could be fully utilised by students to participate in the online teaching and learning sessions. Many courses have also been offered online such as webinars. Teachers also need to take the initiative to expand their knowledge and skills that could be useful during alternative teaching and learning sessions like online learning. Teachers can also attend continuous professional development programmes. Next, the threats that have been identified by either the CDEO or the principals throughout the online teaching and learning sessions is poor internet connectivity, network and technical difficulties. This is a serious issue that can stunt the online teaching and learning process if it is not solved promptly.
Step 2: Building a Guiding Coalition
According to Hammen et al. (2010), in order to pioneer change and to implement new strategies during this pandemic, a leader has to bring together all the subordinates from the KDEO and schools to work together collaboratively. This process requires strong leadership and good support towards middle leaders and lower-tier leaders. Therefore, a human resource analysis was conducted resulting in the KDEO creating a committee to organize and structure a program called Mindakod. Subsequently, a Mindakod team was formed, led by the Deputy District Education Officer of the Learning Sector comprising of a few assistant district education officers and the SISC+. Forming a strong team is important to create critical awareness in implementing change while increasing the momentum towards successful change.
All the officers in the Learning Sector and principals have to embrace the role of leadership together with the district education office in order for the execution of Mindakod to be done from the aspects of planning, implementation, assessment, and improvement.
Teamwork is paramount to help increase the competency of individuals, encourage creativity and hopefully trigger innovative ideas that cater to the district education office’s goals. In other words, teamwork needs to be embedded in the culture of all members of the education office so that they remain relevant to function as support to the school leaders to increase students’
outcomes.
Step 3: Creating a Vision of Change
According to J. Kotter (1999), a clear vision allows everyone to understand instructions by its leaders about the changes and its benefits for the organisation’s future. The vision of the Kinabatangan District Education Office is “Improving School Quality and Students’ Outcomes
in the Kinabatangan District to Fulfill the National Educational Aspirations”. In order to suit this vision with the current change during this pandemic, the district education office has introduced a short, catchy, and memorable slogan in order to deliver the message of its vision.
The slogan is called Agirot which means excellence. The abbreviation of A-G-I-R-O-T is in the Malay language which stands for resolve, persistence, inspiration, diligence, optimistic and steadfast. From a directional standpoint, the KDEO has determined the slogan to be
“Kinabatangan District Education Office, Striving for Excellence”.
B. Engaging and Enabling the Whole Organisation
Step 4: Communicating the Vision
As a leader, having a vision helps to set the direction of the organisation. The slogan
“Kinabatangan District Education Office, Striving for Excellence” in its essence wants all members in both the KDEO and schools to be admirable in performing their duties and responsibilities. In other words, the slogan hopes that each member aspires to be an Agirot Leader, and/or Agirot Teacher, to have an Agirot Attitude, be in an Agirot Team, have an Agirot Strategy, or be an Agirot Student. Having a slogan like this helps the leaders to motivate teachers especially those teaching Form 5 candidates facing the MCE. It is important to instill positivity among teachers when facing changes while fulfilling their duties during this pandemic. This also will hopefully reduce the tendency of principals and teachers to resist change and encourage it instead. As a CDEO, the key component during this pandemic is effective communication that improves the relationship of all parties. Leaders must have effective transformational leadership competency (Tai, 2017). Concurrently, the KDEO also encouraged all schools to create their own slogans. As a result, schools came up with their own interesting and meaningful slogans like Tagason and Apigot, which indicate that the vision of the KDEO is embraced by the schools in the Kinabatangan district and successfully applied by them.
Step 5: Remove Obstacles
Even though the MCO was implemented to curb Covid-19, the vision of KDEO still has to be implemented according to the Kinabatangan District Education Office Strategic Plan as usual in the new normal. In order to ensure that the MCE 2020 objectives are still achieved, the KDEO has to ensure all existing obstacles have to be removed. The CDEO always communicates with the members of the district education office and school principals by conducting Management Meetings, Curriculum Meetings, and Focused MCE Performance Dialogues. The result of these meetings and dialogues is the creation of the Curriculum Strategic Plan. (J. Kotter, 1999). In order to remove the obstacles and gaps of the previous MCE, as a leader of change, the CDEO has to provide support to the teachers to improve their professionalism consistently while implementing instructional change to improve their work effectiveness (Sentocnik et al, 2016). The result of these discussions created a new idea called the Mindakod Programme by empowering the SISC+ officers to implement 4 interventions:
1. Implementation of Professional Learning Communities (PLC) through the sharing of best practices to increase the professional academic discussions among teachers about home based learning in their respective schools. The SISC+ managed to implement teacher sharing sessions among the 4 schools and the 92 teachers who are teaching form 5
throughout 2020 by using applications such as Padlet, Telegram, and Whatsapp. In the Language Unit, which includes the Malay Language and English, 72 PLCs have been conducted in 2020 compared to only 11 in 2019. For the Social Science Unit, a total of 22 PLCs have been conducted in 2020 compared to only 7 in the year 2019. For the Science and Mathematics Unit, 66 PLCs have been successfully conducted in 2020 while in 2019, only 17 were conducted. For the TVET Unit, 15 PLCs have been conducted in 2020 while 0 PLCs were done in 2019. For other subjects, 7 PLCs were conducted in 2020. In a nutshell, 432 PLCs have been conducted throughout 2020 compared to just 173 PLCs in 2019.
2. Coaching and Mentoring was conducted to empower the roles of the Middle Leader Team (MLT) of the 4 secondary schools comprising the Department Heads and Head of Panels throughout the year 2020. These coaching sessions by the SISC+ were done by using online platforms such as DELIMA, Cikgootube, EduWebTV, and other social meda applications like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and the Kinabatangan One Stop Centre.
Continuous improvement and analysis of these coaching sessions are done using Google Forms and Data Studio (shorturl.at/bdgG9).
3. MCE Marking Scheme Workshops were conducted to increase the marking skills and answering technique skills among the form 4 and 5 teachers. The KDEO has invited excellent teachers from other districts and invited speakers from Lahad Datu and Kota Marudu via Google Meet.
4. Networking with Excellent Teachers were done to improve the relationships and create a platform to share their knowledge with teachers by inviting these teachers with specific skills like markers or subject experts from other districts and states via webinars, colloquiums and workshops all through online mediums.
Ensuring that Mindakod goes on smoothly is important. Therefore, the leadership of KDEO uses the One Page Project Manager (OPPM) to not only serve as a as a reporting tool, but it has become a good leadership device which allows the leaders to communicate and mediate the status of projects – from big mega projects to the little minor projects within the organisation. The Mindakod OPPM was created after the action plan was revised and discussed thoroughly with the leadership. As a result, the OPPM of Mindakod serves as a traffic light and a control method to execute all the planned interventions within the action plan.
In this new normal, online learning is the only way and initiative to sustain a good learning experience even though teachers and students cannot meet physically (Mohd Salleh et al 2020). Online learning is conducted globally during the Covid-19 pandemic (Dong et al 2020). Therefore, the 12020 Sabah State Education Department provided a Home Based Learning Manual to help teachers conduct home based learning as a learning alternative during the new normal. There are 3 methods of home based learning: online, offline, and offsite. This is not only challenging for teachers, but this situation also affects students greatly as they come from various social and economical backgrounds – especially since all 4 secondary schools in the Kinabatangan district are rural schools. They face difficult hardships when trying to participate and conduct online learning. It is common that all the students in rural areas have
1 The 2020 Sabah State Education Department Home Based Learning Implementation Manual was used extensively when planning and implementing the interventions
problems with internet connection. From a socioeconomic perspective, many students are from the lower income strata and cannot afford to have the proper devices and technology for online learning. Therefore, most of the home based learning methods are conducted offline by sending modules and exercises to the homes of the students or to the police station of the villages as stated in the 2020 Sabah State Education Department Home Based Learning Implementation.
Step 6: Generate Short Term Wins.
A leadership of change has to generate short term wins to achieve the vision and goals of the district education office. KDEO has therefore set the 2020 MCE KPI. The target for the 2020 MCE KPI in terms of DGPA is 5.83 and in terms of EFC is 90%. When this analysis was made, 3 out of 4 secondary schools’ GPA in Kinabatangan showed significant improvement thus resulting in the increment of the district grade point average. In 2019, the MCE DGPA was 6.13 and increased to 5.50 for the year 2020. This increment brought about an increase in the overall EFC of the district as well to 95.51% in 2020 compared to 2019’s 88.87%.
IMPACT OF THE MINDAKOD PROGRAMME TOWARDS STUDENTS’ OUTCOMES Summary of the 2020 KDEO MCE results:
1. Highest increment in DGPA out of 24 DEO’s in Sabah (+0.60).
2. 3rd highest increment in EFC out of 24 DEO’s in Sabah (+6.64%).
3. Highest increment in subject GPA for the Malay Language Subject in Sabah (+0.46) 4. 3rd highest increment in the percentage of Honours in the Malay Language Subject in
Sabah (+4.03%).
5. Highest subject GPA increment for Islamic Studies in Sabah (+0.88) 6. 3rd highest subject GPA increment for History in Sabah (+0.56%) 7. 3rd highest increment in subject GPA for Mathematics in Sabah (+0.64) 8. Highest increment in subject GPA for Science in Sabah (+0.76)
The success of the 2020 MCE is due to the results of the programmes and interventions that were implemented by KDEO which has been shared to each school, by awarding them with Award for Best GPS Achievement, Award for Best EFC, and Award for best Subject GPA.
Awards were given during the July 2021 Monthly Assembly and Kinabatangan District Level Teachers’ Day. These kinds of awards motivate the members of the organisation to continuously change in the future.
C. Implementing and Sustaining Change
Step 7: Build on the change
According to the district education office, the goals that were created need to be mobilised as a team. The success acquired by the district education office does not only belong to itself, but all who directly contributed to it i.e. principals, senior assistants, teachers, support staffs, students, parents, and the local community. All these parties play important roles and contributions in sustaining change. Therefore, a learning culture needs to be done cohesively.
Due to this fact, the district education office conducted a sharing session about the Best Practices of the Mindakod Programme to all the district education offices (DEO) in Sabah. This sharing session has hopefully encouraged the development in knowledge, skills, intellect, and progressive mindsets that are amicable in both its ethical and moral values. These changes are
important if the organisation aspires to inculcate these values within its culture. Besides that, a review of all the Curriculum Strategic Plans was made to review its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges in the near future. Follow-up action was also taken on interventions that were less or not successful. On the other hand, successful interventions might require further improvement to ensure continuous success.
Step 8: Make it stick
In order to cultivate changes in school, a few steps need to be identified. Action Research was conducted to identify issues that occur especially on low performing subjects. Fixing and improving the quality of education so that teachers are aware and critical are appropriate measures to leave behind old ways and prepare for change by conducting action research (Mc Niff, 1988).
Amidst the fast paced technological advancement, learning cannot only be focused within the physical classroom only. Besides that, the quality of teaching and learning especially in the new normal needs to be improved through innovation. The Kinabatangan District Education Office has organised an Innovation Competition to create innovative, creative, dynamic teachers and motivate them at the same time. This is to ensure that students do not feel bored while participating in home based learning. Teachers can use a variety of ways to make these sessions more interesting.
On top of that, the KDEO conducted a colloquium for leaders in the district. A Kinabatangan District Leadership Colloquium was organized consisting of all the school leaders including those from other districts. This is crucial as a follow-up action to ensure that during the new normal, the leaders are dynamic and flexible in implementing change. The theme of the colloquium was Quality Leadership Striving for Excellence.
In conclusion, a leader of change requires credibility and a good reputation in order to inspire and motivate everyone. A leader needs to make everyone aware of the importance of being professional when responding and reacting to change. A leader also needs to motivate and inspire everyone to be more enthusiastic and collaborative when facing changes. According to Yakob (2009), to ensure an organisation’s excellence, a leader has to be competent in managing change. This will increase the enthusiasm and confidence of the organisation to face the challenges ahead when striving for success. A strong and powerful leader will surely become a great figure in the organisation - bringing forth great change to everyone within their purview.
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