Assessment of Leadership Approach: Compilation and Review of Personal Learning Journal

Assessment

The unit will be assessed via two pieces of assessed work that will test your ability to think critically about your own leadership style and to assess whether you can synthesis empirical data with how organisational leadership is conceptualised.

Task

Firstly compile a personal learning journal or process log.  It should particularly draw on your on experiences during this module but also maybe other modules from the programme (e.g. PDP), and your previous experiences in organisations. It is important to reflect upon how you think and how you feel and how ideas (from the text book and journal articles) covered in the programme relate to your current and part work experiences and your current learning on the module.

Secondly produce a review of your learning journal that critically reflects on your leadership approach.  This summary should identify what your experience has taught you about your own approach to management and leadership and suggest how you might take your development forward. 

The review/summary of your personal reflections will be the main focus of the assessment.  The review can be presented in any style or format that you choose (either traditional written rational academic style, or more emotional prose styles such as poetry, pictorial as opposed to text, video etc) but it MUST cover the key elements identified below.  It should not be merely a simple critical summary of the content covered on the programme.  Its purpose is to identify what you have experienced and how you have felt about it.  Please attach your "Personal Learning Journal" as an appendix with your review.

2000 words for learning journal summary plus completed learning journal/log as an appendix. Please submit via blackboard.

The unexamined life is not worth living”. Socrates, in Plato, Dialogues.

Each week you will be encouraged to keep a personal learning journal/log.  This will help enhance your analytical skills, develop self-awareness and an ability to learn from your experiences.  During the module you will be involved in a number of activities that may form the basis for your assignment such as:

a. Participation in group discussions e.g. around particular issues or case studies;

 

b. Participating in a number of experiential activities;

 

c. Leading and organising part of a session.

Experiences Your experiences from both the classroom interaction/ engagement and work experiences that related to the theory covered in the module.  Try to identify specific incidents and useful to include bits of dialogue.  Feelings Your feelings engendered in response to any aspect of the programme/experience.  Reflections Take time to reflect and gain deeper personal insight. Thoughts Key ideas, concepts, models and theories from the literature that develop and/or change how you make sense of situations.  Implications of above Applications - How things might develop differently particularly in relation to new theories you may have developed.  Ideas about how your personal insights might be applied in future situations. How do you need to develop?

Additional background and advice

Obviously this will not be a "neat and simple" exercise as ideas and thoughts cannot always be easily categorised and some ideas may overlap.  However it is important to capture your ideas on a side of A4 whilst they are current so that you can track how they change/develop as the module progresses. You can capture these views in pictures, words, poetry or any way that feels, seems right for you at that point.

Schedlitzki, D. and Edwards, E. (2017) ‘Studying Leadership: Traditional and Critical Approaches, second edition’. London: Sage.

This book will allow you to keep up with the various set readings for each of the topics that will be covered during the module. Indeed, all lectures are based on, or inspired by, chapters from this textbook and it is expected that you will have read through the relevant sections prior to attending the taught sessions. Please see the lecture and seminar plan later in this booklet for more details.

If you are unable to access the 2017 edition you can also use the first edition published in 2014.

As well as the Schedlitzki and Edwards text, you might also find it useful to access other popular leadership textbooks. A starting list is given below, but do visit the library yourself and get familiar with the wealth of information available to you on the various topics:  

Jackson, B. and Parry, K. (2008) ‘A very short, fairly interesting and reasonably cheap book about studying leadership’. London: Sage.

Carroll, B. Ford, J. and Taylor, S. (2015) ‘Leadership: Contemporary Critical Perspectives’. London: Sage.

Western, S. (2013) Leadership: A Critical Text, second edition, London: Sage.

As highlighted in the lecture and seminar plan later in this booklet, alongside the weekly reading from the textbook, each week carries with it an additional core reading in the form of academic journal articles. Some of these will act as discussion pieces for seminar work, and others are suggested to supplement your knowledge, or expand on points made within the lectures. If these articles are not available via the UWE library service, they will be provided through the Leadership Blackboard site. Otherwise, it is expected that you personally access them. If you are unsure of this process, you can learn more through the library website, or through speaking with a dedicated librarian.

As well as books and the journal articles we find for you, we expect you to consult other sources too. There are many useful journals, so the following are only some that we would recommend as good quality, credible academic resources:

Human Relations; Organization; Organization Studies; Leadership; The Leadership Quarterly; Journal of Management Studies; British Journal of Management; ephemera; Gender, Work and Organisation

Unsuitable Academic Sources

Various sources, particularly certain websites, are not appropriate for formal inclusion in your academic work. Where academic journal articles and books are put through a rigorous review process, these others are not, making them sometimes untrustworthy and unreliable. An indicative (but not exhaustive) list includes:

Wikipedia; BizEd; BusinessBalls; BusinessStudiesOnline; Ebea; Tutor2u; TopMarks; RevisionStation; BusinessCaseStudies; Tes; RewardLearning; RevisionGuru; Mindtools

It is worth stressing that this is only an indicative list. You are expected to exercise appropriate caution when choosing your sources. The list of textbooks and journals above, and the reading list for each lecture topic (see lecture/seminar plan), all provide you with some research possibilities, meaning that you need not rely on such questionable websites and sources. If you are not sure about the quality of the source/resources you would like to use then please ask.