Planning and Decision Making (Management Of Vocational Education)

INTRODUCTION

Planning and decision making are prerequisites to successful leadership. These processes encompass numerous aspects of the leader’s role, from staffing and program development to evaluation. And although planning and decision making each have a great impact on occupational education leadership, they must be considered in many respects to be closely related areas. Decision making often takes place on a day-to-day basis: in effect, whenever the leader must Aspects of occupational education, involves a great deal of decision making. Thus, the two processes must often be utilized in concert to effect meaningful educational progress and improvement.
This chapter serves as a foundation for various applied aspects of occupational education leadership provided in other chapters. Presented are some basic notions about planning and decision making. Decision making is discussed in terms of its ties to education, its impact on various areas, and how it may be carried out. Planning is related to education progress, federal and state activities, policy making, and decision making. In addition, the determination of school and community needs are highlighted. These needs provide a basis for program planning and decision making. It is anticipated that material provided in this chapter will be readily applicable to other section of the book which deal with planning, development, management, and evaluation.

EDUCATIONAL DECISION MAKING

From the initial establishment of formal education, leaders have been required to make decisions. Although early decisions involved simple matters such as whether or not to hire a certain teacher, contemporary decision making has become much more complex. Today, the decision-making process may be utilized in conjunction with a host of educational activities, such as budgeting, constructing, programming, and evaluating.
In a sense, everyone must demonstrate same skill in decision making. Fundamental decisions such as what clothes to wear, what route to take to work, and what to order from a menu reflect the basic need to make sound judgments in everyday life. However, decisions made by occupational education programs could have significant impact on a building contractor’s income, persons seeking employment as teachers, an administrator’s work load, and the employers of program graduates. In contrast, a decision to eliminate certain programs could have an adverse effect on teachers’ job as well as on general morale within the school and the community. Thus, we must recognize that decision making plays a most important role in occupational education. Sound decisions are respected and sometimes praised, whereas poor decisions are not accepted as pleasantly and are occasionally unacceptable to the public.

How, then, may decision making be defined? We may consider decision making as the selection of an action or position from among available alternatives. Naturally, the leader builds upon this basic definition to suit his or her needs and situation. Various factors related to the foregoing definition are emphasized in the following paragraphs.

Importance of Decision Making to The Leader
The close ties between decision making and leadership are often ignored. To put it rather bluntly, professionals are paid for making decisions. The occupational education teacher is paid for deciding which instructional strategies will be most effective with students in a particular class. The counselor is paid for providing students with meaningful career information and guidance. Similarly, the leader is paid to make administrative and supervisory decisions. These decisions, in turn, serve as at least a partial basis for the leader’s evolution. Many a leader has been promoted or released based upon his or her decisions.

The leader must also recognize relationships between decision making and indecision. Some leaders thrive on indecision, only making decisions when it is absolutely necessary. This approach to leadership can have a negative impact on education in the schools. A basic reason is that indecision may often end up being a decision. Take, for example, the leader who cannot decide whether to often a certain program. If a decision is not made, the time necessary to purchase equipment, hire teacher, and establish schedules will soon pass. Thus, indecision has resulted in a decision by default: the program will not be offered at the present time because it cannot be organized.

Impact of Decision

One reason that some leaders hesitate to make decisions is due to the major impact that these decisions may have on education. One such area relates to personnel. Personnel-related decisions can, under various circumstances, cause persons to be hired, fired, transferred, or promoted. This, in itself, presents a reasonable case for the seriousness of decision making. Personnel decisions are very closely tied to financial decisions. Since personnel costs constitute the bulk of educational budgets, a leader would do well to consider the financial implications of personnel decisions as well as the decisions themselves.
Program- related decisions are also of great importance, because they can dictate what will be offered, how it will be offered, and when it will be offered. The decision to offer a cooperative occupational program instead of a school-based laboratory program may carry with it an obligation to maintain work stations in business and industry. Deciding in favor of the laboratory program might, on the other hand, obligate a leader to provide support for expensive machinery or factors, such as school and community needs, decision making in this area must be supported by valid information sources. To do otherwise could seriously affect the leader’s credibility as well as his or her leadership position.

Although, in truth, few decisions are irreversible, many are quite difficult to reverse or change. One such example is the investment of dollars in a new occupational education building. Once this investment has been made, the money may not be used for other purposes. A second example has to do with grating tenure. If school policy provides tenured faculty with employment rights until retirement, decisions to grant tenure certainly have a long-range impact on budgets and programs. The reader may note that each of the example above has the potential to limit future flexibility by tying up resources with ongoing efforts. Each potential decision must be examined in relation to its long-range impact as well as what it will affect today.

Factor Related to Effective Decision Making

Effective decision making does not just happen. the leader who intends to make sound judgments must consider many elements in the decision process. Among these are the philosophies held by educators, the context in which a decision will be made, information to be used for making the decision, participation in the decision making process, and the timing of the decision.

1. Philosopies
The philosophies held by educators can have great impact on decision making. As finch and Crunchkilton (1979, p .27) note : ‘ in an education organization, decisions must not only consider the economic aspects but must also take into consideration the philosophies possessed by those associated with the education process. ‘ Varying philosophies individuals give rise to differences of opinion, and these differences must be ameliorated before sound decision making can take place.

Of particular concern are the philosophies held by decision makers. When the decision maker does not feel that a certain change aligns with his or her personal beliefs, it might be extremely difficult to modify this nation. If effective decision making is to take place philosophical conflicts must be recognized and dealt with early in the process. The leader has to be aware that his or her philosophy can color decision that are made. It is of major importance to keep one’s philosophy in proper perspective when decisions are being made.

2. Context

The context in which decisions are made may also effect decision making process. Context refers to the surrounding environment and conditions. This may encompass the geographic area served by a school economic conditions, the social setting, and the residents of particular locale. Seemingly rational decisions made in location may be considered irrational in another setting. This may be due at least part of the context in which decisions are made. Take the case of proposal to expand occupational education offerings in county. One alternative might be to build a new countywide occupational education center, another might be to build occupational education wings on existing high schools. Regardless of the basic considerations a leader must deal with (e.g., accessibility and transportation and costs versus breadth of offering), parental concerns must also be taken into account. This might include potential loss of children’s identity and erosion of the community as an educational and cultural center the leader is clearly much better of to be a student of educational context rather then may relying on input from person within the schools.

3. Information

The sources and The of information used for decision making play an equally important role. Many leaders who are about to make decision would like to have information at hand which is extremely accurate and up to date. Unfortunately, This is not always possible. such a situation leaves the leader with decisions that must be made based upon incomplete or date information. To help alleviate this problem, the leader would do well to maintain valid data banks in those areas commonly tied to decision making. This maight include areas such as employeers’ projected need for the new workers, economic growth rates, and the status or former students. Of course, many other types of information could be gathered and store of the future use. The exact nature of this information is dependent upon the educational setting and the types of anticipated decisions to be made.

4. Participation

Research findings indicate that participatory decision making may be quite beneficial. This, coupled with ethical and morale considerations, provides heavy support for the active involvement of professional staff in decisions that may affect them. Participatory decisions making provides several basic benefits (Newell, 1978, p. 139):

1. Better decision due to involvement by staff
2. Greater likelihood of effective implementation
3. Increasing individual growth through participation in the decision masking process
4. Integrating individual goals with those of organization
5. Aiding in organizational unity

It should be recognized that participation cannot be on a token basis. Staff members must be active participants in the decisions-making process and understand that their input is respected.

5. Timing

Often overlooked is timing of particular decision. An otherwise effective decision may well be in effective if information is released at an in appropriate time. Additionally, timing may be important when those affected by the decision need access to useful information. If for example a decision to change from half day occupation education programs to two week on two week of programs is announced just before a school board election, a result may be the loss of members who support occupational education. The way the timing relates to information about decisions may be illustrated by an example of a shift to competency based occupational education. If decision is made during the summer just prior to its implementation, teachers will not have time to prepare their needed material and assessments. They will also have little opportunity to interact with each other prior to the start of the school year. Providing greater lead time between decision and implementation will give a much better opportunity for teacher preparation, not to mention the reduction in individual frustration.

THE DECISSION PROCESS

As noted previosly, decission making is often situation specific. Even so, there is much to the decission making process that may be generalized across situation. Alto decission content may often fary, deprocess asociated with that content remainds basicaly satble. Decission making is first related to the past, the present in the future. This is followed by a brief view of how dicission making and problem solving are closely related.

The past, present, and future

McFarland (1976) notes that the time aspects of decission are closely aligned with their foundamental nature. We identifies three points in time that should be considered in relation to decission making ; “1 the past, in wich problem develop, information acumulates and the need for a decission is received, “2 the present, in which alternatives are found and the choice is made, “3 the future, in which decission are caried out and evaluated”(mc farland,1976,p.262). consequently, decission making in the present in volves consideration for the past. This storical antecedents of current situation are usefull to view since they may assist the leader in making more rational decession. Consideration must also be given to implementation of a decission and evaluation of its effectiveness. When making decission, the leader must not look past history and future implication because the are basic to the decission process it self.

Decission making as problem solving

In a basic sense, much of what constitutes decission making is actually problem solving. Any time that a decission is used to solve or reduce a problem, the decission making process is taking place. We may consider problem solving to have six basic steps.

1. Identifying the problem area
2. Defining the problem
3. Determining alternative solution
4. Identifying consequences of solution
5. Selecting the best alternative
6. Examining consequences of the decission

Altough problem solving is foundamental to any number of areas, it used in educaton is closely related to previously mentioned factors : philosophes, contecs, information, partispation, and timing. Obviusly, problem in one local may not be a problem else were. This is why the leader must keep these factors in mind whenever decission are made.

Problem solveingare begins with identification of problem area. This problem is typically a broad, loosely knit situation that needs to be examined (e.g., descipline or teacher morale). Next, the problem its self defined. This aspect of the process is most critical because it will serve to communicate what the problem actually is. The problem should spesify the difficulty that exist rather than how it will be corrected. An example of such a problem sated in somewhat general term is : “students’ actions in the classrooms are disruptive to the point where teachers’ effectiveness has been greatly reduced.” With the problem properly defined, it is than appropiate than determine alternative solutions. These must also be quite spesific and not subject to misinterpretation. Looking at the discipline problem area and problem, we might come up with three alternative solutions:

1. Initiated a stricter disciplinary policy,
2. Relieve the assistant principal, who carried out the present disciplinary policy,
3. Provide in-served for teachers in the area of class control and descipline.

There may be other possible solutions, but for purpose of this discussion, only these three will be considered.
Identifying the consequences of solutions 1, 2, and 3 may prove to be quite interesting. Alternative 1 might be excellent in theory but in practice could cause a sharp drop in student morrale. Carrying out alternative 2 could be an appropriate solutions but may, in turn, create a difficult personnel problem. Alternative 3 could be most effective but, in the same time, be viewed as an “administrative cop-out” by teachers who favor 1 or 2.

Based on the consequence identified, it is now appropriate to make a decision and live with it. Of equal importance is to note the decision's actual consequences. Perhaps certain of these have been anticipated. Other should also be duly noted so that similar problems may be handled more efficiently in the future. It is important to follow up on a decision that has been made. This may entail extensive evaluation of its impact, interviews with professional personnel, and recording personal observations. Evaluative information is most useful because it can assis the leader to make more effective decisions in the future.