Overview

In MDDE660 I had to identify a social issue that could be addressed through a distance education intervention, and describe the solution and leadership strategies required to enable the program's success. 

I chose to explore the challenges faced by sexual and gender minority youth in sport, and design a proposal for a program to combat discrimination through the development of safe spaces in sport.  

This assignment required me to draw on knowledge from several domains including: 

• Systems inquiry
• Research methods
• Instructional design
• Distance education technology
• Leadership in education

Consequently, in many ways I consider this artefact to be representative of my broad learnings in the Master of Education program. 

Pre-Course Views

The MDDE660 course is a survey of literature in leadership in education. This course was timely and relevant; at the time, I was leading a team of trainers and course developers distributed across North America. I had attended our company’s leadership training program, and while it had equipped me with some basic leadership skills, it was imperfect; the program’s communication and decision-making frameworks were based on a form of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a self-reporting questionnaire whose reliability and validity are both considered poor (Pittinger, 1993; Gardner & Martinko, 2016). Thanks to the critical evaluation perspective I gained from MDDE602, I was able to recognize that most of my beliefs around leadership had been rooted in (well-intentioned) folk wisdom and corporate voodoo (1.5, 1.6). I was ready to learn about real leadership! 

This course was interesting in two respects: Firstly, our cohort was comprised of Athabasca's North American cohort and the Greek cohort, which provided for an opportunity to witness inter-cultural communication unfold.  Secondly, this course explored distance education as a tool for addressing social issues (my first real foray with this concept was during the MDDE602 transcript coding activity, in which I coded the transcript based on gender and interaction). These factors played an important role in my artefact choice. 

Learning Process

Through our course readings, I discovered a multitude of leadership theories and principles. While initially I was swimming with theories, we had one particularly memorable session, led by guest speaker Dr. Susan Bainbridge, in which she compared and contrasted leadership theories. Listening to Dr. Bainbridge while mind mapping helped me to frame transactional and transformative leadership models as distinct from simple people-management (1.10). This knowledge would become crucial as I worked on assignment 2. Through the study of varied leadership theories, I came to recognize that some leadership theories illustrate practices (e.g. distributed leadership, Leader Member Exchange) while others are theories of practice (servant leadership, transformational leadership). 

Project Work and Attainment of Competencies

Issue Selection and Hypothesis

The third assignment in the course was specifically to explore a social or economic problem and develop an intervention requiring leadership in distance education. Prior to the start of this assignment, I spent much time exploring potential options. This was hard for me! My teaching orientation, per the TPI, had historically been low in the social reform perspective.  

I began my investigation by reflecting on the socially-imposed challenges I have faced in my life. It occurred to me to combine my excitement for sport (specifically skiing) with the discrimination I have faced as a member of a sexual and gender minority (1.1). My initial hypothesis, based on my personal experience both as a sports coach and a person of a sexual and gender minority, was as follows:

1. Participation in sport benefits individual participants, communities, and society at large.
2. Elective participation in sport by people of sexual and gender minorities is low compared to the societal average.
3. Experiences of discrimination towards people of sexual and gender minorities in sport lead to decreased participation.
4. A program that results in the elimination or reduction of discrimination in sport will increase participation by sexual and gender minorities, leading to benefits to the individual, communities, and society (5.2).

(Clearly that coursework in MDDE602 had taught me how to develop hypothesis!)  

In order to elaborate upon and validate my hypothesis, I both explored literature, and reached out to a number of organizations across the LGBTQ and sports communities in order to understand their perspectives (1.3). Scant literature was available (which can in and of itself be a sign of an issue); the largest study conducted to date identified that bullying among people of sexual and gender minorities continues to be an issue in sport. I also encountered a lack of responsiveness from numerous national coaching organizations despite multiple follow-up attempts, which was both discouraging and indicative of a problem.

Thanks to my exposure to systems theory in MDDE603, I applied a systems lens to review the participants and interactions within the system of sport: victims, bullies, and leaders who all impact each other within the framework of organized institutions, as well as how institutions interact to either foster or counteract discrimination in organized sport within Canadian society (2.2).

Context was an important feature of this assignment. The official evaluators of this project, who were professors and internationally-situated colleagues in the field of education, did not necessarily have backgrounds in social equity or in sport. Consequently, I conducted preliminary research into the Canadian context of human rights and sport in order to help my peers recognize the importance of a sport equality program (1.2). I also framed the argument in the context of the value of sport in the development of the individual and society.

Presentation sample: disseminating the beneficial effects of participation in sport

Developing the Intervention

While half of the issue was in defining the problem situation, the other half was around creating an effective intervention grounded in education. An intervention would need to address these questions, which I generated through reflection and literary review (5.1):

1. What forms does discrimination take in sport?
2. What are the impacts of discrimination in sport?
3. What are the positive and negative correlates to acceptance of sexual and gender minorities?
4. Who are the individuals who can create this change?
5. What skills, knowledge and attitudes can we provide the agents of change to ensure success?
6. Which organizations need to be involved in order to design, launch, and support the solution? (1.11)

Literature review using the Library’s EBSCO platform and through the web (1.4) led me to answers to most of the questions, which formed the basis of the problem definition as well as the solution expressed in the research paper and presentation (5.6).

From my perspective, the most interesting and pointed question was number 3. I had observed through my life that simply “educating” people on sexual and gender minorities does not seem to eliminate discrimination. This observation was borne out by peer-reviewed research (Reinhardt; O’Brien, Shovelton and Latner; Johnson et al) which identified a number of correlates unrelated to education on LGBTQI issues, but related to intelligence, positive social interactions with sexual and gender minorities, and the development of empathy.

Presentation Sample: Correlates and non-correlates of LGBTQI acceptance

Given these findings, I needed to adapt the nature of the intervention; educating sports participants on equality was unlikely to create meaningful change. Instead, I recognized that change could be created by equipping the agents of change with the skills and knowledge to successfully develop empathy in sport participants and generate positive social interactions between LGBTQI people and sport participants (5.5).

Program Design

The assignment’s delivery took the form of a written paper, a presentation, and facilitated discussion (1.9).  In developing the paper, I started by synthesizing the content identified above into a problem definition (including an analysis of why sport is important in Canada along with the value of addressing discrimination in sport), description of the impacted audiences, a proposed program structure, and a leadership model that would enable successful implementation of the program (5.7, 5.8).

From an instructional design perspective, I applied the skills and knowledge acquired in MDDE603 and 604 to outline the audience, program structure, course objectives, support systems and stakeholders (2.7). I also explained how Distance Education was the preferred model for reaching the hundreds of thousands of coaches across Canada (2.6).

Assignment Delivery

My presentation became a learning opportunity for my classmates to begin to recognize the issue of discrimination, both in sport and in their own contexts of employment, family, society, and beyond (4.4). After presenting the content, I created discussion among my peers using some questions. Recognizing that our class was made of cohorts in Canada and Greece, I provided an opportunity to all participants to reframe according to their lens with questions 3 and 4:

1. Is diversity important in sport? What advantage is there to creating spaces that encourage equality?
2. What social or cultural barriers do you foresee to successful implementation of the Sports Together program? How can leadership be used to overcome such barriers?
3. How could this program be adapted to apply even more broadly in Canada? Would the core framework function for other marginalized groups (based on race, religion, gender, etc)?
4. The Canadian political and legal climate is very different to that of Greece. What sort of leadership adjustments or program changes would be required in Greece to activate this program? (5.8)

The participants’ well-thought-out commentary in the ensuing discussion affirmed the notion that equality in sport is outside of most people’s awareness, and that a program such as Sports Together could lead to better outcomes in sport for people of sexual and gender minorities.

Post-Activity Reflection

My experiences in MDDE660 transformed my perspective and practice of leadership. I have taken on the president role with Toronto’s most active travelling ski club; consequently, I am able to apply my personal practice of leadership on an almost daily basis with our board of directors, our snow school, and our membership base. I have also sought out opportunities to blend social justice with our club, such as endorsing fundraisers with Track-3, the disabled skiing association, and empowering our directors to bring snow sports to minority communities within Toronto.

Ultimately, this assignment empowered me to recognize areas in which education can be a force for social transformation.