Article Review Assignment: Leadership

Article Review Assignment:  Leadership

Name of article:  “Creative leadership:  a challenge of our times”

Name of journal:  School Leadership and Management Vol. 29, No. 1

Name of author(s):  Louise Stoll and Julie Temperley

I located the article in EBSCO HOST on their database on November 2^nd, 2011. 

I thought this was a very good, thorough article on creative leadership.  The title is what got my attention, because I think that creativity is a big issue today and most people resort to “Just show me how to do this”.  I took a different approach with the assignment for this part of the academic article reviews, and did it from a standpoint of a teacher; who is either teaching our types of classes about Therapeutic Recreation, or how we can apply the leadership techniques when we teach others during facilitation of activities.  The article focuses on education and outlines criteria needed to keep creativity going in the classroom.  According to the article, creative leadership is defined as “...an imaginative and thought-through response to opportunities and to challenging issues that inhibit learning at all levels.” (pg. 2)  This directly related to TR because we always need to be thinking on our toes and not every activity or lesson is going to go as planned so we need to be ready to accept challenges or issues that go along with it.  Another aspect of the article that could be applied to my future in TR is that it mentions promoting the creativity of your colleagues.  Depending on what kind of environment and population you are working with, it is always important to make sure that creativity juices are flowing amongst everyone to make it a successful environment.     

I would definitely recommend this article to everyone going into the field!  There is a lot of good information and key points that can not only help you, but spark interests in other aspects.  In this article there authors outline a lot of useful applications such as how to promote creativity of colleagues and goes into great detail.  It was an easy read, because the topic was so interesting so I didn’t lose focus.  The length of the article isn’t bad either; it’s only 15 pages with adequate spacing.  After reading this article I have a lot more insight on creativity.