As educators, we grapple with a myriad of dilemmas and often have difficulty resolving issues that relate to curriculum and instruction, funding, facilities and supervision, to name a few. Depending on the leader(s), a variety of ethics come in to play when making decisions. The ethic of connectedness refers to community building and welfare as central to moral thought and practice (Bradley, 2007). Responsibility to community building and welfare begins in the schools and must be an acculturated practice within the schools so future generations possess the knowledge, skills and dispositions that ensure a connectedness to their society (Marzano et al., 2005;Barth 2006;Collinson et al., 2006). This article will explore the importance of an ethic of connectedness to effective school leadership and the experience of a Pennsylvania school district in nurturing and building a connectedness within the school community.
Collaboration has been identified as a vital component to enhancing the educational context and is a key component to professional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2013). With that being said, technology offers a viable and productive venue for such collaboration to take place. The dilemma for districts is determining how to provide in-service education opportunities that promote the use of technology for the purposes of enhancing collaboration. This article explores how in-service opportunities that utilize technology for collaboration can enhance professional capital within the educational context. Recommendations for both district-level leadership and the individual practitioner are outlined.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.