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Richard Elliott · 09-21-2004, 02:32 PM

Quote:

Bridget Chung wrote:

This has reminded me of a totally not MA related managemen/personnel development course I did some time ago called "Situational Leadership".

Apparently the leader/teacher should adjust their leadership or teaching style to suit the development stage of the person.

The 4 stages are:
D1 - Enthusiastic beginner - has little knowledge or experience of the task but has loads of energy and enthusiasm. Optimistic.
D2 - Disillusioned learner - Frustrated, Demotivated, flashes of competance
D3 - Capable but cautious contributor - med-high competance but doubts self from time to time. Can be apathetic.
D4 - Self Reliant Achiever - Justifiably confident, self-assured, inspires others, autonomous.

People can oscillate between these stages too, but the idea is to adapt your coaching style to suit the stage of the person:

S1 - Give very specific instructions and plenty of feedback.
S2 - Coaching. Praising. Explaining and encourage/guide person to come up with the solutions themselves.
S3 - BE supportive, reassure, collaborate with them. Help them to solve problems for themselves.
S4 - Just let them get on with it, but acknowledge their achievements and provide them with challenges.

Just a curious parallel.

Thanx Bridget. I remember teaching ESL to refugees a number of years ago. I worked really hard for these guys for they were so motivated and I remember going thru these stages. My own failure at times was pushing on to S4 when I should have stayed at S2 and S3 longer. I also found determining learning styles a challenge: sight, sound, touch and hearing. I also had one student from Sudan who seemed convinced the key to understanding english was to understand infinitives. Maybe I'll do better next time.