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03-07-2019

Oman Observer

Muscat, Dysfunctional students can lead to dysfunctional employees but it all depends on the method of teaching and not just the curriculum says Omani author, Adnan al Jahdhami, author of the book, Theory of Change. While there are many books on leaderships, Theory of Change looks at the combination of education and leadership. This aim of the book is to help one change by mastering two skills: leadership and learning how to learn. “Everyone tend to blame on the curriculum but it is not the curriculum, it is actually how the subjects are being taught in schools.

The method of teaching should be changed where students are taught through projects in connection with the community and companies and organisations need to be linked with schools. Students are capable of coming up with thousands of solutions,” said Al Jahdhami. He pointed out that education is still delivered the way it was done in the past with standardised testing instead what we need today is project based planning which is designed model of education for each type of student because if a student scores high mark than others does not mean he is the smartest. It indicates the test suited him and other students’ talent is in other areas.

Those students should be able to develop that particular area. He is in the opinion that business must be integrated with education so that the change begins in schools. “Currently the education is failing students globally because schools are not integrated with the community, they do not have any involvement in solving community issues and organisations are not close with the schools. We have students graduating from high schools with no knowledge in life skills.”

At the same time leadership qualities are not just meant for the top level of the management team but at middle level as well. “Effective departments exist when they are headed by good leaders because they can create other leaders. So even if there is a good CEO but broken middle level leadership, the result would be staff that does not share the vision of the organisation as it is not aligned. The same goes with schools as teachers are not just educators, they are leaders.” The author was in oil and gas field for almost 10 years and founded many businesses and lately, he developed a travel app.