Readings for ELT 653

1) First and foremost. You are to continue to reread your action research books.

2) You will be doing some reading for your action research as you revisit your literature review.

If you are having trouble with your writing, you might want to revisit this book:

Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills. Written by John M. Swales, Christine Feak

3) Reading Together as cadre (and discussing in the forums)

Galford, R., and Maruca, R. ( 2006) Your Leadership Legacy. (Required) This book suggests that now is the time to look backwards and ask what will your legacy as a leader be and how can you start the process of growing into this legacy. There lots of good strategies for leadership.

We will responding to some of the exercises in this book.

Sawyer, K.. Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration' This book will help you get in the spirit of thinking about the role of groups in organizational change. Group Genius is best suited for breakthrough ideas and not for routine improvement projects, where individuals might perform better. Even when individuals come up with a breakthrough idea, they are normally at the center of a web of people and ideas that came together. Genious is the flip side of high risk. One has to be willing to take risks to have gains. This book provides a guided path for a company that wants to infuse a creative learning culture throughout their organization. This book has lots of example.

You don't have to read it cover to cover. Just get the general sense of the argument and think about your action research, your role in it and the role of the groups of people that you work with. Working toward expertise is a collaborative game... are you playing?

• Part 1, description of the creative power of collaboration.
• In Part 2, shares results of research on the collaborative nature of the mind
• In Part 3,he makes the arguement that innovations emerge from complex organizations and many interacting team susing examples like... Motorola’s Razr phone, Pringle’s Prints, and the Linux operating system and companies like Cisco and Apple, YouTube, eBay, Toyota and 3M.

Innovation is what drives today’s economy, and our hopes for the future—as individuals and organizations—lie in finding creative solutions to pressing problems. My goal in this book is to reveal the unique power of collaboration to generate innovation. And it’s my hope that you’ll use these new insights about “group genius” to create more effective collaborations in your own life—at work, at home, and in your community.

4) Professional Interviews

Reading: -- On Career Searching

The web is full of advice for preparation for interviews. Don't accept everything you read as some advice will not work for you. Trust yourself and what you know. Your situation is your own. You have to find your own best answers, be we can help you do this. THE BETTER PREPARED you are, the more confident you will be be. For example, if someone asks you what would you say is your biggest fault, or what is something negative a co-worker might say about you...what do you do? Think about this now, and have an answer ready. Another question, "I see you just graduated from Pepperdine, tell me a bit about what you learned." If you have to look cross-eyed and think for 5 minutes, or buy time by saying that was a good question, you missed the boat. You will be one of the candidates left behind. You should have a well-rehearsed, two minute or so description of what you gained from your education. It should roll off of your tongue (but not so fast that feels memorized). We can work on that one as a group as well. You should find a way to bring your action research into the interview. Give a short (elevator) version and then check if they want to hear more about your action research. We will talk more about interviews later. Read my advice for writing the ideal job prospectus and for being interviewed for that job.