6 Outlining
Activity
Examples follow of using the envelope structure to organize key data, evidence, and quotations to start building your writing in an outline.
Outlines in this way become a way of organizing evidence or content. Quotations or data can easily be shifted or rearranged. It is easier to see redundant information and choose another strategy such as summarization. Outlines also demonstrate where there is missing information or perhaps insufficient information.
The most common errors when writing are errors of citation. In-text citation errors can add up quickly. Ensuring they are correct at the outline stage offers a level of security against errors.
Outline – Leadership
- Discussion of Western Leadership Research
- Definitions
- “A leader is one or more people who selects, equips, trains, and influences one or more followers who have diverse gifts, abilities, and skills and focuses the followers to the organization’s mission and objective causing the followers to willingly and enthusiastically expend spiritual, emotional, and physical energy in a concerted coordinated effort to achieve the organizational mission and objectives” (Winston & Patterson, 2006, 7).
- Definitions disagree
- 2 schools of thought: learned capabilities or natural traits
- All studies have functionally focused on men without stating it
- “Leadership studies in the past few decades have come under increasing criticism for maintaining outmoded constructs and for bearing less than scholastic integrity” (Barker, 2001, 469).
- “Conventional understanding of leadership has been systemically constructed from other conventional knowledge about social hierarchies, and about their command and control structures. This knowledge is then used to validate leadership theories without further critical analysis” (Barker, 2001, 473).
- “The canon of industrial era leadership theories is an adaptation of the hierarchical view of the universe adopted by the early Christian Church, and presumes that leadership is all about the person at the top of the hierarchy” (Barker, 2001, 471).
- “The industrial paradigm of leadership is based in an obsession with the persona of kings and conquerors that can be traced at least as far back as Biblical times” (Barker, 2001, 476).
- “Leadership theory has been based in the understandable but incorrect perception of a direct cause-effect relationship between the leader’s abilities, traits, actions, and leadership outcomes” (Barker, 2001, 478).
- “The assumption that the leader is the source of leadership also implies that the leader is defined by the position in a hierarchy” (Barker, 2001, 478).
- “The problem with current leadership study is that it continues to focus excessively on superior/subordinate relationships to the exclusion of several functions that leaders perform and to the exclusion of organizational and environmental variables that are crucial to effectively leadership performance” (Barker, 2001, 474).
- Definitions
- Discussion of the Common problems of Colonizing leadership
- “Although difficult, it is important to have a good definition of leadership. It is one of the terms most widely used in many areas of human activity, including armed forces, business, politics, religion, and sports “(Silva, 2016, 1). ALL COLONIZING ACTIONS OR AGENTS
- Common Tropes
- Women lead differently
- “I have found that there are two prevailing assumptions: the first is about leadership in general, that it is a construct that can be learned, and the second is about gender and leadership that women have a different leadership style compared to men” (de la Rey, 2005, 5).
- “This perspective points to a distinctive leadership style associated with women, with characteristics that include being more participatory, democratic, more sensitive, nurturing and caring. Other characteristics associated with women’s leadership include good conflict management and interpersonal skills, being excellent listeners and showing tolerance and empathy” (de la Ray, 2005, 5).
- Traits concepts
- “The traits commonly associated with leadership include: effective communication, task completion, responsibility, problem solving, originality, decision making, action taking, passion, vision, ethics, humour, self-awareness, confidence, courage, experience and power” (de la Rey, 2005, 5).
- Woman must give up her femininity to lead
- Military teaches leadership naturally
- “McClelland asserted in 1973 ‘Competency testing provided a better predictor of job success than intelligence testing and thus championed the competency movement’” (Seemiller and Murray, 2013, 33).
- Hierarchy
- “The assumption that the leader is the source of leadership also implies that the leader is defined by position in a hierarchy” (Barker, 2001, 478).
- Glass Ceiling
- Community disengagement
- Women lead differently
- Shifts in Leadership
- “A new framework for leadership studies can be built upon a direct, phenomenological experience of leadership that occurs prior to the creation or adaptation of conventional knowledge” (Barker, 2001, 483).
- “Two key differences that distinguish the transforming system are that this system is not organized by strategic, rational thought, and b0 responds to change not as a disruptive irregularity, but as an integral element of the environment” (Barker, 2001, 487).
- “Process and not structure is the vessel of leadership; chaos and complexity are not problems to be solved, they are the engines of evolution, adaptation, and renewal” (Barker, 2001, 489).
- “First, leadership is a process that is not specifically a function of the person in charge. Second, leadership is a process of adaptation and of evolution; it is a process of dynamic exchange and the interchanges of value. Third, leadership is a process of energy, not structure” (Barker, 2001, 491).
- Indigenous Leadership
- “Ensemble leadership means every follower is a potential leader. Further, the distinction between leader and follower is blurred, in favour of a more collectivist understanding which avoids the oppositional dualism of individual/group” (Rosile, Boje, and Claw, 2018, 2).
- “Collectivism, dynamism, decenteredness, and heterarchy all are weak or missing in traditional leadership literature” (Rosile, Boje, and Claw, 2018, 2).
- “Roles of Humans: The indigenous world is non-human centric. Roles of nonhumans: Nonhumans are barely recognized in traditional leader literature, and at best, merely part of the furniture. Indigenous wisdom not only recognizes nonhuman life, but accords the natural world a starring role in providing wisdom and guidance. Relationships: We recognize that for many indigenous cultures, relationships are ends in themselves. Theories: Most traditional leadership literature still reflects cause-effect linearity, and the search for sameness and generalizability” (Rosile, Boje, and Claw, 2018, 14).
- “Leadership was everywhere, active in alternative – and often highly laudable forms” (Sandefur & Deloria, 2018, 126).
- “Standing Rock suggested a more human set of leadership values: decentralization spirituality, self-deflecting humility, collectivism, the navigation of subgroup interests, and a sometimes contentious but epistemologically distinct diffusion of authority” (Sandefur & Deloria, 2018, 126).
- “Questions are more readily talked to consensus rather than enunciated as a winning argument aimed at establishing the dominance of one position over another. It is less a question of convincing a powerful leader to take a particular action than convincing everyone of the rightness of a certain course” (Sandefur & Deloria, 2018, 130).
- Ogimaaekwe
- “It is a native woman’s sacred obligation and responsibility to lead the way, through traditional women’s leadership and authority, to reclaiming the earth, humanity, and all our relations via an ecoethics of reciprocity” (Waters, 2003, xii).
- Conclusions
- Leadership is not management
- Leadership is not for employment
Outline – Bell Curve
- What is the Bell Curve?
- Definitions
- “A bell curve is a type of graph that is used to visualize the distribution of a set of chosen values across a specified group that tend to have a central, normal values, as peak with low and high extremes tapering off relatively symmetrically on either side” (TechTarget 2023)
- “Most of our school is still based on ‘normal’ distributions and Newtonian thinking, which breaks down reality into independent variables and cause and effect. This view of the world has permeated multiple disciplines, from medicine to statistics and management” (Gore 2022).
- “Most human activities, as well as many disciplines from physics and biology to linguistics, finance, and computer science, follow a Pareto distribution instead of a ‘normal’ Gaussian curve” (Gore 2022).
- “The joke that when Bill Gates walks into a bar, everyone in that bar becomes a millionaire on average, illustrates the point” (Gore 2022).
- “This model holds that most phenomena occur around the middle point, while few occur at either the high or low extreme ends. An assumption of bell curve distribution permeates educational projects on several dimensions that far exceed the scope of the infamous book” (Fendler & Musaffar 2008, 63).
- Statistical errors and assumptions
- Price and Cutler (2001) present a literature review of the flaws of Hernstein and Murray’s work including criticisms of definitions of race and intelligence, problematic sources of data, flawed interpretation of data, leaps of logic amounting to hasty generalization fallacy, and funding for the work from sources with specific agendas.
- “Hernstein and Murray created a specific picture of the world: The intelligent control over themselves and society. They naturally do well in school. They gain opportunities to continue their schooling. They have choices about what profession they pursue, and once they begin working, they make good salaries. This money gives them choices about where to live and what amenities they can buy. They band together, because they attend the same colleges, they become leaders and exert control over society” (Price & Cutler 2001, 478).
- “The history of how quantitative epistemology came to be is rarely presented, discussed, or even mentioned in present day coursework” (Arellano 2022, 116).
- “For BIPOC communities, this usually means being compared to white peers. For women, this means being compared to men, and so on” (Arellano 2022, 116).
- What is normal?
- Social structural assumptions from the bell curve
- “The bell curve supports three games (class systems) that are destructive” (Price & Cutler 2001, 488).
- “Hernstein and Murray attempted to turn back the wheels of time through asserting that there are significant differences between races and that these differences cannot be helped. The other frame that is sustained by the bell curve is that between men and women” (Price & Cutler 2001, 489).
- “Specifically, the creation of the construct of ‘intelligence’ was based on Eurocentric values and the subsequent creation of intelligence tests was designed to highlight the superiority of the white race, were normed on that population, and any responses that fell outside of that context were considered wrong and inferior” (Grant, et all. 2002, 348).
- Definitions
- Systems of Oppression, Power and Privilege
- Power
- “Power may be defined as people’s access to resources that enhance their changes of getting what they need in order to lead safe, productive, fulfilling lives” (David, Schroder, & Fernandez 2019, 1058).
- Privilege
- “Privilege may be defined as unearned power that is only easily or readily available to some people simply as a result of their social group membership” (David, Schroder, & Fernandez 2019, 1058).
- “The assumption of the bell curve distribution allows for such concepts as acceptable rate of failure and the average student” (Fendler & Muzaffar 2008, 63).
- “Naturalization of the bell curve is unjust because it perpetuates the inevitability of failure; we hold that the idea of failure should be attributed to popularly ascribed features instead” (Fendler & Muzaffar 2008, 63
- “The paradigms of oppression in educational research that I consider here are a) the model of cultural hegemony, b) the analysis of oppression as a matter of capitalist accumulation, c) the model of oppression as a matter of regulatory discursive norms” (Lissovoy 2008, 83).
- Racism
- “In schools, this systemic racism results in a series of structural and pedagogical injustices, including tracking, retention, low expectations for students of color, and generally the privileging of the needs of White students” (Lissovoy 2008, 87).
- “These standard methods of knowledge production and resulting knowledge products can cause harm amounting to epistemic violence” (Grant, et all. 2002, 350).
- “Our ideas are shaped by the social order. Under slavery and the plantation economy, the knowledge of the period reflected that social order and the social arrangements therein. Such oppression was deemed to be normal” (Newby & Newby 1995, 14).
- “As pointed out earlier, what passes for knowledge is not an isolated phenomenon but shaped by the political economy and social order of its day” (Newby & Newby 1995, 17).
- “Our purpose here is to criticize one of the fundamental justifications of educational sorting practices, namely, the belief that a normal curve distribution is a representation of real things in nature” (Fendler & Muzaffar 2008, 63).
- Internalized Racism
- “Eventually, members of the oppressed racial groups may no longer need society to perpetuate such inferiorizing messages, because they begin inferiorizing themselves in overt and subtle ways” (David, Schroeder, & Fernandez 2019, 1066).
- Power
- Changing multicultural identities
- Evolving understanding of systems of oppression