Michele G Smith

The Teaching of Leadership: A Comparative Analysis Michele G Smith

Publisher Marketing: ACSC put a renewed focus on teaching leadership during the 1996 academic year. A fresh examination of "teaching leadership" was called for by this renewed emphasis. In order to provide the ACSC faculty with information and resources to develop the best leadership curriculum possible, this development study examined the course structure, content, teaching methods and evaluation criteria used in prominent military, professional, business and educational institutions. The first step in the study was to identify ACSC requirements through a review of both the past and present day ACSC curriculum, as well as interviews with individuals involved in the leadership community within ACSC and Air University. Then the study analyzed the findings which represent responses from seven military institutions, nine business and professional organizations, and twenty-three universities. Lastly, by combining ACSC requirements and the analysis, the study developed recommendations for future enhancements to the ACSC leadership. Recommendations were made for each of the areas of course structure, course content, methodology and evaluation. The recommendations for course structure included restructuring the sequence of course lessons to take a building block or hierarchical approach that more closely follows Bloom's Taxonomy. For course content, the school should consider conducting a similar research study next year, narrowing the focus to a specific theme or suggested area of study. Regarding teaching methods, ACSC should develop or purchase a CD-ROM interactive computer program to teach leadership. The school should increase the number of case studies as defined in the study. Additionally, the study recommends that a psychometric test be used that will help in identifying personality weaknesses. Such a test will balance the picture the individual student gets of him/herself from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) currently used by ACSC. Lastly, ACSC should then tap into the leader