Educational leaders today are well versed in the complex and often overwhelming nature of their respective roles. The difficulty of educational leadership increases exponentially when implementing innovative practices like competency-based learning that challenge every aspect of the traditional structure and function of schools, thereby requiring a strategic change framework to ensure fidelity and sustainability of the implementation. The transformative autoethnography research design guided this study, for the purpose of uniquely highlighting one administrator's reflections and perspective when creating an innovation configuration map draft that could be used to support implementation of competency-based learning. The map draft was shared with current and former educators who provided feedback on their perspectives of the elements within the map and the usability of the map. The data reveal the importance of educational leaders using a reflexive process and aligning experience and expertise with the change leadership process. Findings also demonstrate how important it is for educational leaders, particularly campus administrators, to access, understand, and use research-based tools to support strategic change implementation. Themes that emerged were (1) the importance of clarity of purpose and audience in the creation of the map, and (2) the importance of honoring a collaborative process when creating a map. Future researchers could use this transformative autoethnographic research design and additional components of the concerns-based adoption model to study or implement a similar and a different innovation, as well as benefit from the personal and professional growth this method offers.

Master of Arts / Communications Studies / Timothy R. Steffensmeier / This study explored how millennials make sense of leadership in civic life beyond a college classroom. Competency-based learning, specifically as it relates to leadership development, was considered along with the importance of helping others make sense of leadership learning beyond theory to practical application. Competency-based learning considers the practical teaching points set in front of students and posits that they are helpful for making an often nebulous notion of leadership more tangible. The focus of this study was a group of undergraduate millennial-aged college students, selected from a Leadership in Self and Society course. Leadership itself has countless definitions. This study used the definition of leadership according to O’Malley, Fabris McBride and Nichols (2014) as "mobilizing others to do difficult work, work that is more provocative, engaging and purposeful" (p. 50). By examining meanings of adaptive leadership utilizing the described experience of a small subset of students who participated in a college leadership development classroom experience, this study built on a broader notion of how leadership is communicated and understood in a classroom and separately beyond in communities. In considering how operating from the frame of leadership as an activity not a position, data was gathered on how people make sense of acts of leadership and the ambiguity that comes with adaptive situations, by examining the words used to describe their lived experience using a phenomenological research approach. This study strived to build a foundation for other studies to consider articulation of lived leadership experience as a means of building competence within the field of adaptive leadership.

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Purpose: This article provides an integrative review of competency-based education (CBE) in medical and nursing programs and examines the effect of CBE on students’ academic performance, technical skill development, and overall satisfaction and preparedness for future practice. Background: In recent decades, CBE has increasingly been discussed in medical and nursing education programs. The impact of the CBE curriculum on learning outcomes including academic performance, technical skill development, overall satisfaction, and preparedness for future practice has not been fully elucidated. Method: A review of the literature was conducted, and multiple databases were searched for studies that analyzed the impact of CBE on learning outcomes in medical and nursing program learners. Results: The overall trends in feedback showed that CBE was well-received by students, with high satisfaction scores reported. CBE was also shown to be equally or more effective than the traditional didactic model in developing students’ competencies and improving academic and clinical performance. Conclusion: Our comprehensive review of the literature suggests that competency-based education can be an effective framework that potentially outperforms traditional educational approaches on outcome measures related to clinical knowledge, technical skill, and/or clinical judgement.