Global Vision for Learning and Design 

In my global vision for learning and education, I raise the issue that students increasingly need to cultivate soft skills like communication and collaboration to succeed as students, workers, and citizens in a globalized and digital world. One way to authentically bring these skills into the K-12 classroom is through project-based pedagogies like gamification and game-based learning. These pedagogies not only provide opportunities to develop soft skills, they are also more equitable approaches that garner student interest and value students as individuals. 

To begin implementing my global vision for learning, I focused on the school I currently work at. While considering how to bring change to my organization in regards to pedagogy, I spoke to a few of my colleagues and students. In these conversations I discovered a few additional needs: the history department has a lower pass rate among core classes; and, teachers at the school want applicable and relevant professional development that is treated with fidelity. These are important elements that need to be considered, but without careful planning, my vision could easily become unmanageable. 

Illuminated Leadership Plan

With this in mind, I developed a project scope to address these ideas while still remaining manageable for the team working with the project. I outline what is in scope and out of scope for the project while working with current organizational constraints and stakeholder considerations. For example, this project needs administrator approval, input from subject matter experts, and alignment with current district objectives. I also provide a timeline and rough estimation of budget.

Image: proposed timeline and milestones for the project

I then created an implementation plan in three parts. The initial part of the project consists of creating a team, getting input from the history department staff, prototyping, and then testing the professional development. The midpoint of the project is the actual professional development session where staff will have the opportunity to acquaint themselves with gamification or game-based learning. I created a prototype for the professional development session to demonstrate how facilitating a session for teachers with varying levels of experience could provide opportunities for learning and growth for all participants.

Image: title slide for prototype professional development

Informed by theories of andragogy and respect for the experiences staff members bring, this slides deck allows teachers to guide the session based on their interests, and then work with their colleagues to discuss the practicality of implementation. Finally, in order to assess the success of the professional development, the last portion of the project is devoted to getting feedback from the staff members. 

Evaluation and Feedback 

Evaluating a project throughout its duration is critical to helping the project stay within scope, provide accountability for those working on it, and ensure the project meets the outlined goals. As this project is broken down into three parts, I focused on three areas for evaluation. During the pre-project phase, evaluation is centered on following the workflow and sticking to project objectives. While this seems fairly rigid, spaces for teamwork and initiative can be brought in through collective leadership styles and supportive coaching. 
With the implementation phase, evaluation comes directly after the professional development session in the form of feedback from the participants. While this type of feedback can give some initial ways for the facilitators to know what went well and what can be improved, it does not show what the participants learned and how they implemented it. In order to evaluate the success of the project, I created an evaluation plan in the form of a self-reflection survey for staff members to complete after they used either a game-based lesson or a gamification element in the classroom.

Image: part of the evaluation survey focused on the lesson staff members used

A self-reflection ensures the staff member is able to authentically use the information from the professional development, while also showing the professional development team how the information was taken and applied in context. 

References

Center for Creative Leadership. (2025, September 25). The 6 principles of leadership, coaching, based on assessment — challenge — support. Center for Creative Leadership. https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/the-six-principles-of-leadership-coaching/ 

Evans, N. et al. (2024, September 9). How to reimagine  education for the 21st century. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-to-reimagine-education-for-the-21st-century/ 

​​Freire, P. (2009). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary  Global Contexts 2(2), 163-174. 

Gee, J. P., & Price, A. (2021). Game-design teaching and learning. Strategies, 34(3), pp. 35-38.

Knowles, M. (1980). The modern practice of adult education: From pedagogy to  andragogy. (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge Books.  

O’Neil, C. & Brinkerhoff, M. (2018, February 1). Five elements of collective  leadership. NPQ. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/five-elements-collective-leadership/.

Thalheimer, W. (2018). The learning-transfer evaluation model: Sending messages to enable learning effectiveness.