Leadership in Song

Developing Collaboration, Community, and Leadership Practices through Music in an Online Course

Abstract

Abstract

 “Leadership in Song: Developing Collaboration, Community, and Leadership Practices through Music in an Online Course,” based on an introductory exercise in an online synchronous educational leadership class, outlines how music can be used as a pedagogical tool to create a cognitive collaborative community of inquiry that fosters a) reflection, b) collaboration, c) value of different leadership practices and d) affective connections to the assignment. Additionally, this assignment provides a transferable activity that school leaders can modify for use with various stakeholders in their schools.  Significantly, this assignment underscores how music, an often-underutilized pedagogical tool in academia, is used to create a reflective, collaborative, engaging, relevant, interactive virtual experience for educational leadership students in an online environment. Using what I term as qualitative response analysis, I included a series of steps traditional to qualitative analysis such as open and axial coding, noting patterns, and maintaining a chair of evidence, students reported what they valued and learned from the assignment and emphasized how this assignment can be used to enhance collaboration and self-reflection, revise initial ideas and understand different leadership perspectives. Importantly, this particular lesson provides lessons in that it can be used online settings as a team building exercise in a classroom, with a leadership team, at the beginning of the school year to help faculty and staff form a community around the school’s goal and mission.