HRDC Soft Skills Aug23

Pedagogical Leadership in Academic Institutions
Using Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline as a reference, the session focussed on evolving a shared institutional vision through individual visioning, as the basis for leadership.

The session began with sharing by participants from their own experiences/understanding the following questions

What are challenges being faced by our institutions?

● Aspirations

– What are the aspirations of the institution?

– What are aspirations of faculty?

– What are student aspirations?

– what are parent's aspirations?

● What is the need or purpose for leadership?

The nature of leadership as a shared role than a set of traits, the possibility for each faculty to 'achieve leadership' by developing personal capacities, the need for "collegiality" in an academic institution was discussed.

Presentation slides available here.

Learning Writing Skills
This was a session on 'writing skills' for college teachers. It started with a general discussion of the human abilities of language and thought. The discussion then proceeded to the qualities that help someone become a good writer, such as the 'courage' to take a position and to accept one's mistakes. The presentation then moved on to different kinds of writing, which included essays and creative works. As this was a session for people with an academic backgrounds, the next major topic we considered was academic writing. After a slightly involved discussion of academic writing in different disciplines, the session concluded. The slides of the presentation can be downloaded here.