Organization Of Mass Sports Work Of A Comprehensive School Through Distributed Leadership

Abstract

The materials presented are devoted to the consideration of the organization of mass sports, fitness and health work among students of secondary schools. The concept of distributed leadership, which is unreasonably not widespread in the education system, was chosen as the main technology for solving the stated problem. This approach is used to organize the long-term interscholastic project “South Coast Olympic Games”, in which schoolchildren of all age categories are involved. In the preparation and conduct of the Children's Olympics, the organizing team is divided into creative groups, the management of which is carried out jointly by children and adults. Students take an active part in the implementation of the project from the design stage to the completion stage and post-project reflection. Such technology contributes to the development of their independence, the ability to lead and obey, take responsibility and delegate authority. The described processes are unique for our education system. They allow us not only to use the personal resource of children and adults in their active interaction, but also to bring them to the need for close cooperation with the outside world, the school’s social partners, both organizations and specific people, which helps to increase the degree of openness of educational systems in general. The bright, successful people involved in the project (champions, politicians, journalists, businesspersons, artists) are not school workers, but, of course, they are authorities and role models for schoolchildren.

Keywords: Distributed leadershipstudent self-determinationschool Olympic Gamesschool sports worksocial partnershipand project

Introduction

A large number of foreign studies have been devoted to leadership issues in organizations ( Barber, & Murmed, 2008; Coleman, 1988; Covey, 1992; Druker, 2002; Wenger, 1998; Wiley, & Hilton III, 2009) and Russian scientists ( Akindinova, Kuzminov, & Ysin, 2016). Some works describe leadership problems in educational organizations ( Kasprgak & Isaeva, 2015) and others. However, issues of distributed leadership have been discussed relatively recently in the scientific community.

The essence of the concept of distributed leadership, which began to spread rapidly from the end of the twentieth century, is the sequential distribution of the stages of project activities in which the employees take the management of this activity with the most competence in this matter: work planning, demand research, advertising, supply, etc. This concept is most effectively implemented when certain conditions are met, such as the relative homogeneity of the group, the sociability of its members, and the focus on results, as some of the founders of this theory Bradford and Cohen ( 1998) wrote in their works.

It should be noted that in the concept of distributed leadership and related scientific areas it is considered as organizational leadership, i.e. the opportunity to participate in the management of the organization, and business leadership, both formal and informal participation in direct professional activities and the emergence of multiple cumulative professional relationships between employees ( Bonacich, 1987; Kamenskiy & Karygin, 2019). Today, separate works began to appear dedicated to the consideration of issues of distributed leadership in the field of education ( Kasprzhak, Bayburin, Bysik, Filinov, & Isaeva, 2015). At the same time, this technology is still more focused on business, and in the education system, it has not yet taken its rightful place. This is due not so much to objective reasons as to the general rigidity and traditionalism of this type of activity. At the same time, paradoxically, the most conservative sphere of life in the modern school is mass sports. Physical education classes and sports competitions today are not much different from the same classes a hundred years ago. But during this time more than one generation of students managed to change, and what was effective earlier ceases to work now.

The proposed approach is aimed at changing the prevailing stereotypes. A special role in the implementation of this direction belongs to the school's social partners, whose activity allows us to establish new socially significant functions of the education system. Launched processes are a manifestation of social corporatism, due to the increasing role of human capital, the value of social stability, the complexity of social relations, the focus on self-organization and self-development of society.

Problem Statement

The study is devoted to studying the influence of the ideas of distributed leadership on the effectiveness of mass sports activities of a comprehensive school, determining the necessary and sufficient conditions for using this approach in the modern education system. During its implementation, the essential characteristics of the concept of distributed leadership in an educational organization were revealed, which includes an understanding of this process as an integrative connection of the aspirations of all participants in educational activities to achieve success based on the most efficient use of each person’s personal and professional potential. The methods and techniques of organizing and supporting sports-mass work in a comprehensive school are highlighted; the results of applying of the declared strategy in solving the problem of involving schoolchildren in sports are identified and experimentally substantiated.

Research Questions

A range of questions was identified in the work, to which both the teachers of secondary schools who took part in the study and the school's social partners were looking for answers:

Purpose of the Study

It is development and justification of the conditions for the implementation of the concept of distributed leadership in the organization of mass sports of a comprehensive school.

Research Methods

The research methodology is based on the leading approaches in modern education: personal-activity, information-humanitarian and psychological-acme logical. The essence of the personal-activity approach in considering the issue of managing educational systems from a distributed leadership position is to look at these systems as a set of interconnected elements. They ensure the child’s personal development in activities aimed at positive creation of both himself and the surrounding reality, searching for his own “I”, the desire for leadership for the success of a common cause. The information and humanitarian approach involves the use of innovative technologies not only as a tool for searching, collecting and processing information, making managerial decisions on this basis, but also to enhance direct communication between participants in the educational process, combining virtuality and reality. The psychological and acme logical approach develops theoretical principles and concepts that suggest that students develop a desire to achieve their own peaks (“acme”), a constant increase in personal potential and development resource, and the manifestation of individuality, which is realized only when a person is under the influence of internal spiritual and spiritual efforts committed to self-improvement. At the same time, his activity is aimed at the transition from normativity, commitment, craftsmanship to creativity, art, skill, which is often a long and controversial process.

The achievement of the goal when performing certain tasks and testing the hypothesis was carried out using a set of theoretical methods. They are interdisciplinary analysis and synthesis of scientific literature on the research problem, generalization and classification, and there were practical methods based on the use of included pedagogical observation, written and oral surveys, expert assessment and interviewing, analysis of performance, generalization of independent characteristics.

Findings

Massive sports work in a modern school is most often carried out traditionally and consists in students attending physical education classes and attracting them to participate in interscholastic competitions in certain sports. A pervasive phenomenon in schools was the omission of physical education lessons for far-fetched reasons of "exemption ", or simply absenteeism. Students are not interested in learning new sports elements, improving physical development indicators. This negative state of affairs has become one of the reasons for the revival of the set of GTO norms and even the assignment of additional points to those who have acquired them when entering higher education institutions in order to increase the motivation of schoolchildren for this area of their own development.

In 2016, in the Lyceum No. 590 of St. Petersburg and other partner schools (five educational organizations of the city), a survey of students of several age categories was conducted: group 1 (grades 3-4), group 2 (grades 5-6), and the third group (grades 8-9). In total, 1956 schoolchildren took part in the experiment.

The wording of the questions differed depending on the age of the respondents, but the general meaning was to identify the attitude of students to their own health, to sports, willingness to engage in physical development at school and at home. The survey results are presented in Table 01 .

The team of the organizers of the experiment proposed a technology for the preparation, organization and conduct of school Olympic Games, later called the South Coast Olympic Games, since three large coastal areas of St. Petersburg took part in their conduct. School physical education and sports, due to the characteristics of childhood and adolescence, should be of a bright festive nature, and not get lost in the stream of everyday life. Such a striking event is the school Olympics. The preparation itself for it during the year is already an important motivating factor for the child, because he understands that his idols, famous champion athletes, every participant and even fans will receive a welcome reward at this sports festival. The competition is accompanied by the activities of numerous children's associations for the organization of quizzes, contests, quests. The sports included in the South Coast Olympic Games were selected depending on their popularity in St. Petersburg schools: football, basketball, volleyball, table tennis, checkers, chess, shooting, swimming, aerobics, school sports day. Boxing competitions were highlighted in a separate nomination. The progress and conduct of this inter-district holiday is described in detail in the relevant publications ( Kamenskiy, 2016; Karygin, 2017).

The key organizational and pedagogical idea of the announced project was the concept of distributed leadership. Own child-adult team, consisting of physical education teachers, trainers, senior students who are fond of this sport and have special achievements on their sports path, was in charge for the preparation and conduct of competitions for each individual sport. The school’s social partners were also included in the creative groups: eminent athletes, sports judges, sports journalists, businesspersons, and politicians. Communication with the bright, held personalities at the stage of preparation for the competition had a significant impact on the students themselves and their parents, who began to treat with great respect to the enthusiasm of their child.

Following the results of the last sports festival, a second diagnosis was carried out, the results of which are confirmed by the data analysis of in-depth interviews taken from individual participants in the experiment, both children and adults. The follow-up study involved 2022 people from educational institutions in three districts of the city (Table 02 ).

According to the results of primary and repeated diagnostics, a positive dynamics of the level of formation of healthy lifestyle values was revealed.

Joint leisure of physical education and sports orientation allowed students to make new acquaintances among peers with similar interests. Some of the pupils, following the example of their new acquaintances, joined the non-profit public organization in support of youth “Krasnoselsky District Youth Union”, where they were able to participate in creative events and volunteer activities. Some of the pupils decided to spend their summer vacations profitably and, together with the Employment Center of the Krasnoselsky District, worked in the field of landscaping their parks.

Interscholastic Olympic Games are not a copy of adult competitions; it is more a long-term game in which most students are involved. It contributes to the formation of the child’s motivation, awakens the desire for competition, success. Moreover, technology of distributed leadership helps students to feel the spirit of command.

Conclusion

As a result of the study, the authors were able to uncover the problem field of distributed leadership in the educational environment of the mass school, its role in organizing mass sports. Analysis of domestic and foreign sources allowed us to come to an understanding of this concept as an opportunity to increase the personal potential of the child (physical, moral, intellectual), the image of the educational organization. The study and analysis of the results of the implementation proposed by the authors of the technology in the form of preparation and holding of a mass long-term sporting event allows us to conclude that the claimed approach is effective. In the future, it is planned to study in more detail the information and communication environment of the school, the entire media space, represented not only by school newspapers and websites, but also by municipal, district, regional, federal mass media. The stated prospects can be realized with the active involvement of social partners, including status, media figures involved in the implementation of this project, which is one of the key conditions for the application of distributed leadership ideology in educational systems.

Acknowledgments

The authors are sincerely grateful to the students and parents of the pilot schools, the leadership of the education system of the Krasnoselsky district of St. Petersburg, the directors of educational organizations who took an active part in the South Coast Olympic Games, as well as to the Nikolai Valuev Foundation, personally its chairman Maxim Anatolyevich Kastyrin and, of course, the founder of the Fund, Nikolai Sergeyevich Valuev, who provided great material and moral support to the project.

References

• Akindinova, N. V., Kuzminov, Y. I., & Ysin, E. G. (2016). Ekonomika Rossii: pered dolgim perehodom. [Russian economy: before a long transition]. Economic issues, 6, 5-35. [in Russ.]
• Barber, M., & Murmed, M. (2008). Kak dobitsy stabilno visokova kachestva obrazovania v chkolah. [How to achieve a consistently high quality education in schools]. Education issues, 3, 7-60. [in Russ.]
• Bonacich, P. (1987). Power and centrality: A family of measures. American journal of sociology, 92(5), 1170-1182.
• Bradford, D. L., & Cohen, A. B. (1998). Power Up: Transforming organizations Through Shared Leadership. San-Francisco: Wiley.
• Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of sociology, 94, 95-120.
• Covey, S. (1992). Principle Centered Leadership. NY, USA: Free Press.
• Druker, P. (2002). Effektivnoe upravlenie.[Effective management]. Moscow: FAIR. [in Russ.]
• Kamenskiy, A. M. (2016). Organizatsiya sportivno-massovykh meropriyatiy v usloviyakh sredney shkoly [Organization of sports and mass events in high school]. Fizicheskaya kul'tura: vospitaniye, obrazovaniye, trenirovka, 3, 9-12.
• Kamenskiy, A. M., & Karygin, S. N. (2019). Raspredelennoe liderstvo v razvitii socialnogo partniorstva obrazovatelnoy organizaciey sportivnoy napravlennosni. [Distributed Leadership in the Development of Social Partnership by an Educational Organization of a Sports Orientation]. Man And Education, 3, 4-8. [in Russ.]
• Karygin, S. N. (2017). Organizacia uglublennogo izuchenia predmeta fizicheskay kultura na osnove integracii obshego I dopolnitelnogo obrazovania. [Organization of in-depth study of the subject of physical education through the integration of general and additional education]. Man And Education, 1(50), 132-135. [in Russ.]
• Kasprzhak, A., Bayburin, R., Bysik, N., Filinov, N., & Isaeva, N. (2015). Direktora shkol kak agenty I reform rossiyskoy sistemy obrazovaniya. [Directors of schools as agents of I reform of the Russian education system]. Education issues, 3, 122-143. https://doi.org/10.17323/1814-9545-2015-3-122-143. [in Russ.]
• Kasprgak, A. G., & Isaeva, N. V. (2015). Pochemu direktora avtoritarni? [Why are directors authoritarian?] Public education, 8, 52-66. [in Russ].
• Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Wiley, D., & Hilton III, J. (2009). Editorial: Openness and the Future of Higher Education. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 10(5). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v10i5.788