My academic leadership journey was challenged by multiple factors, ranging from underprivileged households, poor school, inadequacy of academic writing skills, heavy university loads, and full-time job responsibilities. My academic journey influenced my supervision. It was marred by delayed completion of academic projects and throughput. The…

Following a professional program to ensure qualification for school leadership is a growing trend. However, school leaders have also come to understand and use content from educational programs in widely different ways. There is therefore a need to study how participating school principals experience learning differently within one and the same…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the direct and indirect effects of managerial coaching on critical reflection mediated through learning goal orientation. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted a questionnaire survey of 169 employees in 53 teams at an IT firm in Japan. The data were examined using multi-level…

Insights into the learning environment are required especially when applying action learning commonly used in management development programmes (MDPs). The study reports on an emerging action learning conceptual framework that fosters an environment for individual transformative learning in an MDP. The purpose of this research was to make clear…

Due to the crucial role principals have on school outcomes, investing in their training is a cost-effective approach for schools' improvement. Research shows that principals attribute pertinence to their ongoing professional development. However, little research has been conducted on principals' training needs from their viewpoint, particularly in…

Middle-level administrators in African universities are often under-utilised in terms of their contribution to the administrative support for learning and teaching. They also have little access to professional development. This paper presents the findings of a study to develop a programme to enable these administrators to enhance their support for…

The professional development of middle leaders in higher education is little considered in existing research, though there are general concerns being raised about the suitability of the professional development opportunities currently available. This article develops and explores the use of meta-reflection as a method for professional development,…

Facilitating reflection for personal growth in a business context requires careful thought and planning. As a learning process, Business-Driven Action Learning (BDAL) has two points of focus. It aims to firstly identify and make recommendations regarding a business challenge, whist secondly facilitating potentially significant individual personal…

Despite group coaching being used to facilitate goal-focused change in a range of organizational contexts, there is little research evidence of its use or efficacy in continuing professional development programs for educational leaders. In the first part of this article we define coaching and consider the benefits and challenges of several forms…

To meet the increased demand for international business education that prepares college students for studying, living, or working overseas, I propose a four-stage reflective development model to be used in the traditional classroom context to enhance intercultural competence for undergraduate students. I employ the model in a personal development…

The merits of action learning as a change tool and enabler of deep learning are well recognised. However, there is a gap in the literature of participants' stories regarding their experiences on accredited postgraduate executive programmes underpinned by an action learning philosophy. The following account of practice addresses this gap and…

The paper reviews the lessons of planning and running an "Engineering Management" practitioner development programme in a partnership between BP and the University of Manchester. This distance-learning programme is for professional engineers in mid-career experienced in the engineering and support activities for delivering safe,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the gaps in some existing competence frameworks and investigate the power of reflection on one's behavior to improve the process of the competences development. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used a correlational design and a quasi-experimental non-equivalent group design involving a…

This account of practice presents two cases of the application of Action Learning (AL) communication methodology as described by Marquardt [2004. "Optimising the power of action learning". Mountain View, CA: Davies-Black Publishing]. The teams were Czech and international top management teams. The AL methodology was used to improve…

Joseph Campbell's Monomyth not only provides a well-proven pattern for successful storytelling, it may also help to guide teams and team leaders through the challenges of change and innovation processes. In project "HELD: Innovationsdramaturgie nach dem Heldenprinzip" researchers of the University of the Arts Berlin and the Berlin…