Teaching Basic Counseling Skills to Aspiring School Leaders: Active Listening Skills as Critical Components of Team Building and Collaboration

Authors

Paul T. Hackett
L. Christopher Ross
Irene Asuncion

Abstract

The preparation of school leaders in educational leadership programs provides multiple challenges in terms of a set course of study with discrete skills for the leader. Programs in educational leadership have been criticized for curricular disarray (Levine, 2005). Deficiencies cited by an American Enterprise Institute study of 31 educational leadership programs found that a small percentage of instruction in those programs focused on issues such as data analysis, public relations, marketing, and parent and school board relations (Hess & Kelly, 2005). A Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) study of educational leadership programs found that the majority of universities “fall short of implementing the conditions necessary to create high quality programs centered on preparing principals who can lead improvement in student achievement” (Southern Regional Education Board, 2005, p. 8). A move away from curricula organized along those lines began in the 1980s with a new emphasis on skills required of an instructional leader (Hallinger, 2003; Jason, 2001).

Author's Biographies

Paul T. Hackett is Chair of the Department of Counseling and Educational Leadership at Columbus State University.

L. Christopher Ross is a graduate student in the Masters of Community Counseling program at Columbus State University.

Irene Asuncion is a graduate student at Columbus State University.

This is an original work

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Recommended Citation

Hackett, P. T., Ross, L., & Asuncion, I. (2008). Teaching Basic Counseling Skills to Aspiring School Leaders: Active Listening Skills as Critical Components of Team Building and Collaboration. Perspectives In Learning, 9 (1). Retrieved from https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/pil/vol9/iss1/3