Cosmopolitan Perspectives on Academic Leadership in Higher Education 9781474223034, 9781474223058, 9781474223027

Citation preview

Cosmopolitan Perspectives on Academic Leadership in Higher Education

Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education Series Editors: Camilla Erskine, Tanya Fitzgerald and Jon Nixon Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education provides a forum for distinctive, and sometimes divergent, ideas on what intellectual leadership means within the context of higher education as it develops within the twentyfirst century. Authors from across a number of nation states critically explore these issues with reference to academic and research-informed practice and development, institutional management and governance, the remapping of knowledge as well as sector-wide policy development. Forthcoming in the Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education series Mass Intellectuality and Democratic Leadership in Higher Education, edited by Richard Hall and Joss Winn Leadership for Sustainability in Higher Education, Janet Haddock-Fraser, Peter Rands and Stephen Scoffham Also available from Bloomsbury Academic Identities in Higher Education, edited by Linda Evans and Jon Nixon Academic Working Lives, edited by Lynne Gornall, Caryn Cook, Lyn Daunton, Jane Salisbury and Brychan Thomas

Cosmopolitan Perspectives on Academic Leadership in Higher Education Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education Edited by Feng Su and Margaret Wood

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2017 Paperback edition first published 2018 Copyright © Feng Su, Margaret Wood and Contributors, 2017 Feng Su, Margaret Wood and Contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xiv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Louise Dugdale Cover image © Jobalou/Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Su, Feng, 1978- editor. | Wood, Margaret, 1957-editor. Title: Cosmopolitan perspectives on academic leadershipin higher education / edited by Feng Su and Margaret Wood. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.| Series: Perspectives on leadership in higher education | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016035495| ISBN 9781474223034(hardback) | ISBN 9781474223027(epdf) | ISBN 9781474223041 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Educational leadership.| Education, Higher--Aims and objectives. |Universities and colleges--Administration. | Education and globalization. |BISAC: EDUCATION / General. | EDUCATION / Higher. Classification: LCC LB2322.2 .C65 2017 | DDC 378--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn. loc.gov/2016035495 ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-2303-4 PB: 978-1-3500-8090-4 ePDF: 978-1-4742-2302-7 ePub: 978-1-4742-2304-1 Series: Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents Notes on Contributors Series Editors’ Foreword Acknowledgements

Introduction: Towards a Cosmopolitan Outlook on Academic Leadership Feng Su and Margaret Wood Part 1 1

2

Theoretical Orientations

4

5

6

7

8

xii xiv

1 15

Academic Leadership and Its Discontents: Cosmopolitan Perspectives John Smyth

17

Everyday Cosmopolitanism: The Challenges of Academic Leadership Fazal Rizvi and Jason Beech

35

Part 2 Cosmopolitan Narratives 3

vii

55

Academic Leadership and Political Oppression in Palestine: Lessons to Be Learnt Rabab Tamish

57

Political Extremes in the Philippines: Academic Leadership and Social Engagement Bienvenido F. Nebres

75

Leadership of Academic Writing Development in England: Narratives of Problems, Pragmatism and Possibility Carol A. Taylor and Jacqueline Stevenson

91

Socio-political Complexities in South Africa: Educational Opportunities, Academic Leadership and Social Justice Bill Holderness

107

Being a Woman Academic Leader in Japan: Intellectual Leadership and Culture Difference Beverley Yamamoto

123

Crossing Higher Education Borders: Academic Leadership in the Learning University Chris Duke

139

vi

Part 3

Contents

Future Directions

157

9 Enabling Academic Leadership: Changing Academic Practice Geoff Layer

159

10 Ethics of Academic Leadership: Guiding Learning and Teaching Alison Cook-Sather and Peter Felten

175

Coda: A Response Helen M. Gunter

193

Index

205

Notes on Contributors Jason Beech teaches Comparative Education and Sociology of Education in the School of Education, Universidad de San Andrés in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is a researcher of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina (CONICET), and associate editor of Education Policy Analysis Archives. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), and visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne (2015). He is currently interested in the use of spatial theories in educational research and in exploring the link between cosmopolitanism and education. Alison Cook-Sather is the Mary Katharine Woodworth Professor of Education at Bryn Mawr College and Director of the Teaching and Learning Institute at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, USA. She has published and presented widely on students and faculty as active partners in education. She has written five books including Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching:  A  Guide for Faculty (co-authored with Catherine Bovill and Peter Felten, 2014) and Education Is Translation: A Metaphor for Change in Learning and Teaching (2006). She is creator and editor of Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education. Chris Duke, MA, PGCE (Cambridge), PhD (London), Hon DLitt (Keimyung, Republic of Korea) is an honorary professor at the University of Glasgow, UK and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia. Roles have included teaching at Woolwich Polytechnic (University of Greenwich) and Leeds; Director of Continuing Education (CE), Australian National University; founding Professor of Continuing Education and Pro-Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick; President of University of Western Sydney Nepean and UWS system DVC; Professor and Director of CE, University of Auckland; Director of Community and Regional Partnerships, RMIT University Melbourne. A  civil society activist in national and international associations and networks, he is widely published in lifelong learning and higher, adult and continuing education.

viii

Notes on Contributors

Peter Felten is professor of History, Executive Director of the Center for Engaged Learning and Assistant Provost for Teaching and Learning at Elon University, USA. His publications include the co-authored books The Undergraduate Experience (2016) and Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching (2014), and the co-edited Intersectionality in Action (2016). He is president-elect of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and co-editor of the International Journal for Academic Development. Helen M. Gunter is professor of Educational Policy and Sarah Fielden Professor of Education in The Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She co-edits the Journal of Educational Administration and History. Her work focuses on the politics of education policy and knowledge production in the field of school leadership. Her most recent books are Leadership and the Reform of Education, published in 2012 by Policy Press; Educational Leadership and Hannah Arendt, published in 2014 by Routledge; and An Intellectual History of School Leadership Practice and Research, published in 2016 by Bloomsbury. Helen is on the advisory board of the Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education series by Bloomsbury. Bill Holderness obtained a BA, UED and BEd from Rhodes University, South Africa, followed by an MA (Educ.) and PhD from London University, UK. He taught for five years at St Andrew’s College, Grahamstown, five years at the Johannesburg College of Education, sixteen years at the University of Bophuthatswana/North West and over sixteen years as Professor of Education at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa. Concurrently, he coordinated a large-scale, community-based primary education upgrading programme for seven years, and evaluated three country-wide education projects. He is currently Professor Emeritus and a full-time NGO Mentor for schools in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Geoff Layer is vice-chancellor of the University of Wolverhampton, UK. Previously, he was deputy vice-chancellor (Academic) at the University of Bradford and Head of Access at Sheffield Hallam University. His teaching career began in further education in Manchester, and he has subsequently taught in business schools in Luton, Sheffield and Bradford. He has published extensively on the access to higher education and on its link with learning and teaching.

Notes on Contributors

ix

Bienvenido F. Nebres served as president of the Ateneo de Manila University for eighteen years from 1993 to 2011. He was Provincial Superior of the Jesuits in the Philippines in 1983–89 during the time of democratic transition after the years of martial law. He did extensive work to develop science and mathematics in the Philippines and was elected in 2014 as National Scientist by the Philippine National Academy of Science and Technology. After retirement as president, he is engaged in various programmes to help overcome poverty in the country. He completed an AB and MA in philosophy in the Jesuit seminary Berchmans College and obtained a PhD in mathematics from Stanford University. Fazal Rizvi is professor in Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia as well as an Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, USA. He is a board member of the Asia Education Foundation and a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences and Australia India Institute. He has written extensively on globalization and education policy, issues of identity, difference and culture in transnational contexts, Indian higher education and Australia-Asia relations. His most recent books include Globalising Education Policy (2010) and Encountering Education in a Global Era (2014). Fazal is on the advisory board of the Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education series by Bloomsbury. John Smyth is visiting professor of Education and Social Justice, University of Huddersfield, UK. He was Research Professor of Education, Federation University Australia, and is Professor Emeritus Flinders University and Federation University Australia, a former Senior Fulbright Research Scholar, recipient of several awards from the American Educational Research Association and Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. He is the editor and author of thirty books, the most recent Doing Critical Educational Research: A Conversation with the Research of John Smyth (with Down, McInerney and Hattam, 2014). Research interests include policy sociology, policy ethnography, social justice and sociology of education. Jacqueline Stevenson is professor of Education Research and Head of Research in the Sheffield Institute of Education at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Her research areas include equity and diversity in higher education, widening participation, pedagogic diversity, the stratification of higher education and the enactment of higher education policy into practice. She co-convenes the Society for Research into Higher Education Access and Widening Participation Network,

x

Notes on Contributors

which brings together colleagues concerned with issues of access, participation, inclusion, equity and social justice in higher education. She also sits on the Executive of the National Education Opportunities Network, which supports those involved in widening access to higher education and social mobility. Feng Su is senior lecturer in Education at Liverpool Hope University, UK, and a visiting research fellow to The Education University of Hong Kong. His main research interests and writings are located within the following areas:  crosscultural learning contexts and the development of the learner in higher education settings, and academic practice and development as these relate to the frameworks of institutional and sector-wide change. His latest books include Chinese Learning Journeys:  Chasing the Dream (2011), The Reorientation of Higher Education: Challenging the East-West Dichotomy (edited with Adamson and Nixon, 2012) and Professional Ethics: Education for a Humane Society (edited with McGettrick, 2012). Rabab Tamish is assistant professor at Bethlehem University in the West Bank. She has a rich experience in developing community programmes with the objective of enhancing the quality of students’ learning. She is the former director of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, which aims to enhance the quality of teaching and learning at Bethlehem University by providing faculty members with diverse opportunities to enhance their teaching and research skills as well as their pedagogic capacities. Carol A.  Taylor is Reader in the Sheffield Institute of Education at Sheffield Hallam University, UK, where she leads the Higher Education Research Group and co-leads the Space and Place Interdisciplinary Research Group. Carol’s research interests are space, gender and power, participatory pedagogies, student engagement in higher education and feminist research methodologies. She has been principal investigator on a range of externally funded and institutional higher education projects. Carol is co-convenor of the European Educational Research Association Didactics – Teaching and Learning Network and a member of the Gender and Education Editorial Board. Margaret Wood is principal lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Theology at York St John University, UK. She has a particular research interest in educational enquiry in higher education through which she aims to develop pedagogic understandings by creating structures and conditions for genuine dialogue to

Notes on Contributors

xi

develop student agency and to embed this within practices. She is a member of the Editorial Board for the journal Research in Education and a member of the panel of international referees for the Journal of Education for Teaching (JET). Beverley Yamamoto is from London but now living in Japan. She received her PhD from the University of Sheffield. Beverley is professor in Transformative Education in the Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, Japan. She is director of the Human Sciences International Undergraduate Programme and deputy director of the International College. Her research interests are internationalization of education, health promotion, youth sexual health, transnationality and gender. Beverley has a leadership role in three research projects, two funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and another commissioned by the International Baccalaureate Organisation.

Series Editors’ Foreword What are universities for in the twenty-first century? This is a question that is now debated not only within universities themselves but within wider society and across the political spectrum: we can no longer assume a consensus regarding the ends and purposes of higher education or the role of universities in fulfilling those ends and purposes. Consequently, leadership within higher education cannot simply be a matter of managing the status quo: leadership necessarily involves an understanding as well as analysis of the twenty-first-century world and of how the university might contribute to the economic, social, cultural and political challenges that we face. In short, it requires leadership that is both visionary and programmatic: visionary in its understanding of the past as well as present and future impacts of globalization and programmatic in its grasp of how universities might respond to that impact. What might such leadership look like? This series aims to address that question with reference to academic practice and development, institutional management and governance, the remapping of knowledge and sector-wide policy development. Central to each of these areas of concern is the importance of interconnectivity in a context of increasing institutional and global complexity: interconnectivity within and across institutions, regions and cognate fields. The gathering of agreement is one of the prerequisites of leadership at every level – and that requires an understanding of different viewpoints and opinions, some of which may be in direct conflict with others. The capacity to balance, respect and contain these differences is what constitutes leadership. This inevitably raises important ethical questions regarding leadership in a more complex and subtle setting, where leadership goes beyond the ‘command’ model of telling others what to do and expecting them to do it. The twin themes of interconnectivity and ethics cut across the series as a whole. Cosmopolitan Perspectives on Academic Leadership in Higher Education focuses these twin themes on the notion of academic leadership as developed in various national and regional contexts by academics working at different points within their institutional settings. The central argument of the book is that intellectual leadership requires what its editors call ‘a cosmopolitan outlook’. Such an outlook, they argue, focuses on the specific circumstances pertaining at the

Series Editors’ Foreword

xiii

local level – and the particular challenges arising from those circumstances – while framing them within a perspective that acknowledges the significance of broader cultural, social and political factors. The contributors to the central sections of the book (Part Two) highlight key issues regarding interconnectivity and the need to build an ethical foundation for agreement building across cultural, social and political divides. The main framing chapters – comprising Parts One and Three– provide some theoretical perspectives on the notions of ‘academic leadership’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’ and a range of suggestions as to possible ways forward. Helen Gunter – in her response to the contributions – raises important questions that will need to be addressed in following through the various trajectories proposed in this timely and outward-looking book. The main message is that we shall need to go on thinking about what academic leadership means in an increasingly interconnected and divided world. Feng Su and Margaret Wood have brought together an international group of authors who provide us with some of the necessary resources to set about that task.

Acknowledgements This book was a direct result of the reflection on our experience of academic leadership, and the conversations with other colleagues and academic leaders at different levels. Many of these academic leaders have contributed to this book. As the editors, we are grateful to everyone who has supported the publication of this book. In particular, we are grateful for the guidance and advice from the Bloomsbury ‘Perspectives on Intellectual Leadership in Higher Education’ series editors, Jon Nixon, Camilla Erskine and Tanya Fitzgerald. We benefited greatly from the conversations with Jon Nixon at a number of editorial meetings in York, and we have appreciated his generosity in terms of his time and intellectual support. We would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for the critical but constructive comments they made on the original book proposal. We would also like to thank Alison Baker the Education publisher at Bloomsbury for her support and advice in the early stage of the book. Editorial assistant at Bloomsbury Maria Giovanna Brauzzi’s patience and attention to the detail has helped us greatly in the preparation of the final manuscript. We would also like to thank J’annine Jobling, a good colleague who kindly commented on the draft manuscript. We also thank our families – their love and support have made this intellectual endeavour possible. Lastly, we would like to acknowledge that the book has benefited from research funding from Liverpool Hope University. We would also like to acknowledge that York St John University provided one of the editors with the space and support needed for the book.

Introduction: Towards a Cosmopolitan Outlook on Academic Leadership Feng Su and Margaret Wood

Cosmopolitanism which has taken up residence in reality is a vital theme of European civilization and European consciousness and beyond that of global experience. For in the cosmopolitan outlook, methodologically understood, there resides the latent potential to break out of the self-centred narcissism of the national outlook and the dull incomprehension with which it infects thought and action, and thereby enlighten human beings concerning the real, internal cosmopolitanization of their lifeworlds and institutions. (Beck, 2006, p. 2) This book offers a radical perspective for leadership in higher education. It is based on the belief that we require cosmopolitan perspectives on academic leadership, which in turn require historical grounding. This book cuts loose from the ‘traditional’ and ample existing literatures on academic leadership, much of which suggest that leadership is based on hierarchical notions of positions in the institution in which typologies of traits, styles, skills and characteristics often predominate. ‘Academic leadership from the evidence gathered in this project, can be described as a process through which academic values and identities are constructed, promoted and maintained’ (Bolden et al., 2012, p. 3, italics in the original), and in this book we view academic leadership as relating directly to the core academic functions of teaching and learning, research and service, as distinct from the managerial aspects of leading higher education institutions such as financial and strategic planning, marketing and human resource management. We argue that understandings of academic leadership require historicity and situational specificity as seen in this volume through the narrative accounts. These narratives situate academic leadership in specific locales and

2

Feng Su and Margaret Wood

particular and diverse contexts. In our view, cosmopolitan outlook and vision are needed for academic leadership. It is therefore with the cosmopolitan outlook that we begin.

A cosmopolitan outlook on academic leadership Held (2010, pp.  14–15) suggests that ‘there is not one unified or monolithic understanding of cosmopolitanism’ and views cosmopolitanism as ‘the ethical and political space which sets out the terms of reference for the recognition of people’s equal moral worth, their active agency and what is required for their autonomy and development’ (p. 49). Beck (2006) has defined a ‘cosmopolitan outlook’ that is contrasted with the national outlook. The view of cosmopolitanism that forms the premise for this book is located in the concepts of ‘relationality’ and ‘interconnectivity’. These concepts are understood in terms of the interrelationships between the personal understandings of the contributors seen in their reflexive narrative accounts of their experiences at the ‘local’ mirco level, each in their own specific contexts, and the wider connections to the metanarratives developed in this volume. These meta-themes may have ‘relatability’ in that while contexts differ, the discourse is known and understood beyond local boundaries. The individual narrative accounts are drawn from across the globe, but they allow us to connect through what Appiah (2005, p. 213, in Nixon, 2011, p. 63) refers to as ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’, which recognizes ‘the interdependency of the local and the global: this sense of the global-in-the-local and the local-in-the global’ (Nixon, 2011, p. 64). While the cultural contexts, experiences and circumstances may differ in this book, they allow those ‘wider lateral connections’ – to which Rizvi and Beech refer in their chapter – to be made across the globe. We share with them a view of cosmopolitanism as ‘based on the capacity to participate in open-ended conversations with others without necessarily reaching an agreement or defining universal maxims’, and the narrative accounts contribute to a ‘reflexive cosmopolitanism’, enabling others to consider and connect through the elements in these accounts which have meaning for them. We maintain that these connections support the development of a cosmopolitan outlook. Beck (2006, p. 2) has argued for the latent potential of the cosmopolitan outlook, methodologically understood, to ‘enlighten human beings concerning the real, internal cosmopolitanization of their lifeworlds and institutions’. Our understanding of a ‘cosmopolitan outlook’ takes us back to the etymology of the word ‘cosmopolitan’,

Introduction

3

which combines the concepts of ‘cosmos’ and ‘polis’ (Beck, 2006, p. 45). Tracing the development of understandings of cosmopolitanism from that of the Stoics to more recent thinking about this concept, Held (2010, p. 40) refers to the Stoics as ‘the first to refer explicitly to themselves as cosmopolitans’ and for whom each person inhabited two worlds, a local and a wider community, seeing the individual as belonging to the wider world of humanity (p. 41). Holton (2009, p.  2) discusses this combination of the cosmos or the world as a whole with polis, or political community, which together form the word ‘cosmopolitan’, thus conveying ‘ideas of a global politics involving citizens of the world. However, the terms cosmopolitan and cosmopolitanism have come to take on far broader meanings, to do with being at home in a world of mobility and travel, involving contact between peoples and cultures. In this way, cosmopolitanism has recently become seen as a way of life as much as a sense of political or ethical obligation to the world as a whole.’ Our perspective on this concept derives from the way we think about ‘place’, in terms of both the local community and the wider community. The cosmopolitan outlook is informed by knowledge situated locally in the particularities of specific cultural, political, social contexts which promote dialogue across borders. In our view, reflexive cosmopolitanism is a form of border crossing. Hannerz (1997) examined borders, both literal and metaphorical, suggesting that borders ‘have become a more general vocabulary of discontinuity and difference in society and culture’ (p. 538). He suggested that ‘[n]ew collectivities come into being as people cross some social or cultural dividing line together and define their shared distinctive qualities in such terms’ (p. 545). We demonstrate that border crossing occurs through deliberation and dialogue with others. In this volume, academic leaders share their lived experiences embedded in their personal narratives. These individual and subjective accounts reflect particular experiences of issues in higher education which also have wider global resonance. The ability to relate to aspects of these lived experiences promotes inter-subjective understanding and dialogue across different contexts. This in turn allows academic leadership to be ‘cosmopolitanized’ by enabling some of the ‘global problems, inequalities, risks and challenges’ – to which Rizvi and Beech refer and which in this book are applied to academic leadership in higher education – to be interpreted and understood ‘within a collective framework’ (Rizvi and Beech). However, we emphasize ‘collective’ rather than ‘corporate’. We do not conceptualize cosmopolitanism in a ‘corporate’ form of market-led globalization (Nixon, 2011, p. 51) but rather in a democratic and reflexive form. Cosmopolitanism in this reflexive form contributes to the development of the interconnected knowing of others

4

Feng Su and Margaret Wood

via the connections that are forged as we encounter others through the honest accounts of their real everyday lives and experiences. The purpose is not to seek homogeneity across diversely situated cultural, political, social, economic contexts but rather, through dialogue and encounter, to enable the construction of understandings of academic leadership in varying manifestations and the cultivation of a ‘cosmopolitan mindset’: developing a cosmopolitan mindset involves not simply learning to get on with the locals at a surface level (observing national days, particular forms of greeting and eating together), though this is an obvious starting point, but actually committing to a deep level respect for the traditions and values of others and internalising the insights. This means not simply taking the insights out of the suitcase when one is a guest in the other’s place but actually carrying the insights into one’s life, regardless of time and place. It means becoming a different person in the world, becoming comfortable with trying to see things through other people’s eyes, while maintaining one’s own sense of judgement around what it means to be a person who shares the world with others. (McNiff, 2013, p. 502)

We connect elements of this to ‘morally productive cosmopolitanism’ (Rizvi and Beech). This is not an absolutist view of the world or a conceptualization of knowledge ‘as “out-there” and independent of the knower, having a status that is untouched by and owes nothing to the human condition of the beings who possess the knowledge they are concerned with’ (Kelly, 2004, p. 26). In our view ‘morally productive cosmopolitanism’ is that which contributes critical insights and nuanced and particular understandings of the world interpreted in different ways. Academic leadership needs the cosmopolitan outlook in the two worlds we inhabit, the local and the wider world. We argue that a regard for our citizenship in the wider world is fundamental to our humanity, to our encounters with others and to the cosmopolitan outlook. Leadership always looks easier when viewed from the outside, maintained Bolman and Gallos (2011, p. 210). Academic leadership from the inside in firstperson accounts is one of the threads that weaves together the leadership narratives in the central section of this book. Leadership is connected here with a strong sense of the power of passion and purpose in what can be sometimes challenging contexts. The academic settings are varied and there is great value in learning about leadership from contexts with which we may be less familiar. Experiences from some of these contexts can challenge ideas and accepted understandings about leadership in very different systems and situations. We

Introduction

5

argue that there is a need to learn about leadership from those contexts that present the greatest challenge to traditional conceptions of ‘leadership’. As mentioned previously, the narratives point to the importance of developing understandings based on situational specificity, by which we refer to knowledge derived from the specific situations in which leadership is practised rather than universalized understandings. The narrative approach has the power to elicit contextual understandings ‘from the inside’ in all the unpredictability and, at times, the volatility of those situations. These can challenge some of the premises from which ‘traditional’ understandings of leadership have been developed, and therefore we argue that they offer the reader much from which to learn.

Cosmopolitan narratives . . . we are always part of the story we are telling and can never get out of it; we write ourselves into our own narratives through the lens of our historical and cultural experiences with self and others. (McNiff, 2013, p. 502)

In Part Two of this book, the narratives focus on the contributors’ development of academic leadership in relation to cosmopolitanism. This approach offers ●

●

●

a deep contextualization within each narrative account, which are written in the style of first-person accounts. The interplay of context and story is an important aspect of this style; the opportunity for contributors to tell the story of their academic leadership lives, relating this to the conceptual lens of academic leadership and cosmopolitanism; insights into how they make sense of their journeys of ‘becoming’ and ‘being’ academic leaders through their stories.

In the development of this book we have engaged in ‘conversations’ with our contributors, which have been, for us, a form of ‘cosmopolitan learning’. Drawing on interpretations of life narratives from settings and experiences very different from our own has contributed to reflexive understandings and to enrich these through locating ourselves as ‘cosmopolitan learners within a pedagogical space of hugely expanded proportions’ (Nixon, 2011, p. 61). As editors also, we each have our own narratives. Feng worked in the information technology sector before he became an academic, with an educational background from China and England. One of the challenges he faced in working

6

Feng Su and Margaret Wood

in the university was to understand the ends and purposes of higher education in the English context, and how it might have an impact on his academic practice. It was a difficult realization that his prior understanding about higher education was vastly different from the demands of English higher education. The expectations were more complex, varied and challenging. Being an academic in England, one is expected to teach well, publish research and engage with the wider communities. In the first few years, it had been a learning journey for him to adapt in the new profession. More recently he has been in a position to mentor others and share his practice with other colleagues. The transition to becoming an academic leader involves having dialogue with others in different settings, and this dialogue is hugely relationship based. Margaret has over twenty years of experience in higher education, working in three UK universities, and during this time she has held academic leadership responsibilities. Her career in higher education has been located within the particular context of UK universities at a time when ‘internationalization’ has been a significant part of university life. She has enjoyed responsibility for the academic leadership of a postgraduate programme which has been ‘delivered’ both ‘locally’ in the UK university where it was developed and also globally in the Gulf and in East Africa. This experience was an important form of ‘cosmopolitan learning’, contributing significantly to her understanding of the self and of others in relation to one another and to each other in a world of difference (Nixon, 2011). It was a potent form of personal and professional development, increasing her knowledge and understanding of academic practice in different cultural and political contexts and also creating spaces for ideas to be shared and friendships forged. The narrative accounts of academic leadership in this book are drawn from a range of diverse contexts and disciplines, making it important to locate each within the particularities and complexities of the environment in which it is situated. Middlehurst (1993, p. 160) identifies factors in the external and internal environments that have an influence on leadership. For Bolden, Gosling and O’Brien (2014, p. 755), the external environment of higher education has been marked by significant changes, many of which will be recognized in higher education institutions in different global contexts. Something of the geo-political, socio-cultural, organizational and policy context of each account, therefore, needs to be understood. Through the narratives, we hear the voices of those with experiences of academic leadership in different roles, at different levels and in different countries. These subjective portrayals of academic leadership are necessarily partial, as seen through the eyes of those

Introduction

7

located personally and professionally within the narratives. Middlehurst (1993, p. 7) noted the inherent complexities in the concept of leadership and the subjectivities inherent in this because our view of the world is filtered and tainted by the lens of our own experience: Leadership is difficult to predict in advance and is usually recorded with hindsight, inferred from a combination of observed events and behaviour and reported through the perceptions of interested parties. Leadership as a concept is therefore unlikely to be value free, being dependent upon individual or collective perceptions and beliefs.

Reflecting on her experiences as a woman vice-chancellor at a leading English university, Rothwell (2016) saw integrity and honesty as having particular importance for leadership and how difficult it is to be a leader unless one is authentic. She also suggested that enthusiasm, excitement, commitment and passion are needed by leaders. ‘If you can’t be passionate about what you believe we should do, we can do and where we will get to, you can’t expect anyone else to be’ (p. 13), adding ‘[i]f you’ve got that commitment behind you, it’s amazing what can be done’ (p. 13). In the narratives in Part Two, we read powerful leadership accounts that reflect the enthusiasm, excitement, commitment and passion to which Rothwell refers. These academic leaders demonstrate the need for selfknowledge, knowledge of their institutions, people and the environment, and how, as Nebres reflects in his chapter, these realities interact and influence each other. Rothwell referred to the two things she loves about leading a university: ‘it is about problem solving and it is mostly about people’ (p. 5). The experiences in the narrative accounts often required problem-solving and always involved dealings with other people. Leadership, in the account of Taylor and Stevenson as they argue in this book, ‘is activated in webs of relations within institutional settings’ and captured in their idea of a three-dimensional ‘embodied leadership’, which they elaborate as having an individual dimension  – ‘we all of us experience our lives in and through our own bodies and their affective capacities’, a relational dimension – ‘we always exist as bodies-in-relation’ and an axiological dimension – ‘our bodies enact our values by expressing what we mean, feel, think and care about’. A particular form of academic leadership within an ‘embodied’ cosmopolitanism as an unfolding ‘open reflectiveness’ is explored by Cook-Sather and Felton in Part Three of this book. In Cook-Sather and Felton’s work, the binaries of traditional hierarchical roles and relationships are challenged and an alternative discourse of connectivity is examined.

8

Feng Su and Margaret Wood

The narrative form – the journey of becoming an academic leader as a passage across time and space – is a central feature of each of the chapters in Part Two and reflects our own concern as editors with academic leadership as both situated and multi-layered. The significance lies in the narrative. No one is born as an academic leader. It is the response of individual academics to the contexts they are located in. It is a journey of becoming an academic leader, which involves emotional labour and sometimes personal struggles.

Learning from the margins Included among the narratives in this text are stories of academic leadership in what is sometimes challenging and difficult terrain. We have accounts of leadership in extreme and politically charged situations, in impoverished communities and in isolated and trying conditions. Through these we gain insights into leadership in socially demanding circumstances and in situations of poverty and political oppression, and through these we witness leadership as a social mission to improve lives in marginalized communities. The socio-political context is seen to exert an important influence on the exercise of academic leadership, and this is evident in the accounts drawn from divided societies and oppressed communities. Here we see leadership which reflects a strong belief in public service values and social democracy. As asserted earlier, there is much to learn from perspectives on academic leadership which draw on experiences in contexts that present some of the greatest challenges to traditional conceptions of leadership, and these narratives add value and distinctiveness to this text. Our argument is that, traditionally, the literature on leadership has come from a dominant western perspective and that there is a lack of literature representing perspectives from other contexts. This volume purposefully seeks to be more inclusive in terms of the variety of contexts and experiences represented. For example, we include leadership from a gender perspective and an ‘outsider’ perspective in Beverley Yamamoto’s chapter. Ethnicity and academic leadership in South Africa’s apartheid system in which ‘the black majority was disenfranchised, disadvantaged and disempowered economically’ is the perspective offered in Bill Holderness’s chapter. The political context of the Palestinian higher education system informs the perspective on academic leadership in the chapter by Rabab Tamish, while in their chapter, Carol Taylor and Jacqueline Stevenson provide a professional identity perspective as women research leaders. From a social responsibility perspective,

Introduction

9

Bienvenido’s chapter is a powerful account of leadership engaging with major social problems and poverty, the context for which is the Philippines. A knowledge transfer perspective is evident in Chris Duke’s chapter, which examines university engagement across borders, for example ‘between the world and language of the higher education sector and other worlds beyond’. Taking the idea of borders and boundaries, Chris’s chapter examines these across global, national and institutional contexts, and he suggests that differences and tensions reside transnationally and globally between countries, cultures and higher education systems. A number of broad marginalized areas of leadership are identifiable in the narrative accounts, including gender, race and ethnicity, politics and social responsibility and professional identity. In terms of gender, women’s approaches to leadership is a field of study within the leadership literature, and the narratives in this volume demonstrate the interplay of gender, issues of power and politics with other marginalized areas of leadership. Carol Taylor and Jacqueline Stevenson narrate their experiences and the issues they have encountered as women in academic research leadership roles, arguing for research leadership as an embodied practice which strives to create supportive research cultures. Their aims as leaders have sprung from a commitment to the values of social justice and a desire, as they say, to ‘give voice to the “view from below”, that is, to enable research to engage with voices not normally heard in mainstream academy and whose voices are undervalued or misrecognized and misreported’. This is exemplified in Carol’s research with women students and in Jacqueline’s research with minorities. As research leaders, they have worked alongside colleagues to share and offer up their own research writing for critique, in a spirit of openness and transparency. Grogan and Shakeshaft (2011) saw one component of women’s approaches to leadership as being ‘leading with and through others; listening carefully to what others say; leading with passion; and using the power of leadership to address social justice issues’ (p. 102). We can recognize these elements in the accounts of Carol and Jacqueline, and also in the words of Chris Duke who reflects that ‘[l]eading means going first, attempting what others are asked to attempt: more example, less command’.

Structure of the book The book has three parts, each of which views academic leadership and cosmopolitanism through a different lens. Theoretical perspectives relevant to a

10

Feng Su and Margaret Wood

discussion of the broad field of academic leadership and cosmopolitanism are explored in Part One. Smyth sets the scene by examining some of the terminology of leadership and exploring key elements of academic leadership, situating this within the discourse of critical cosmopolitanism. Smyth argues that there has been some ‘conceptual thinness and confusion’, which, he maintains, has hindered the development of understandings of academic leadership. This prompts him to ask ‘what is driving this frenzied pursuit of such a poorly conceptualized and seemingly ill-defined concept?’ Following an examination of the nature of academic leadership today in the context of the massification and commodification of higher education and the ‘entrepreneurial university’, he develops an understanding of a socially critical orientation to academic leadership in higher education. He positions higher education with a ‘public good’ at its core and offers a convincing argument for the importance of cosmopolitanism within a new critical theory of academic leadership. A morally productive cosmopolitanism that is ‘rooted’ in the context of everyday lives and experiences is explored together with the significant challenges this poses for academic leadership in promoting the associated dispositions and strategies. The focus, as Rizvi and Beech argue, should be on cosmopolitan learning. Embedded in understandings of this concept are historicity, relationality, reflexivity and criticality. The argument is that ‘cosmopolitanism is based on the capacity to participate in open-ended conversations with others without necessarily reaching an agreement or defining universal maxims’, and their concern is also with the implications and challenges for academic leadership. Part Two consists of autobiographical accounts of the experiences of academic leadership drawn from diverse international settings. The narratives in Part Two are drawn from diverse contexts from across the globe and offer unique insights into the challenges of academic leadership. Through these international and interdisciplinary first-hand accounts, we see how academic leadership in higher education is interpreted differently in different settings. The contributors to Part Two share insights into their ‘lived experiences’ of their development as academic leaders and they explore how the settings and systems within which they have worked have influenced that development. While these are separate accounts drawn from different contexts, each contributes distinctive insights into some of the shared common meta-themes. These meta-themes, to which we previously alluded and which are woven through the text, include academic leadership and social justice, social engagement in the everyday lives of others, gender, culture, politics and ethics. Part Two therefore explores academic leadership from the stance and perspective of each academic leader as the narrator

Introduction

11

of his/her own story. Through these rich narratives, we come to know not just what these academic leaders do but we also learn about their values and beliefs, hopes and aspirations. ‘Reframing’ refers to ‘a deliberate process of shifting perspectives to see the same situation in multiple ways and through different lenses’ (Bollman and Gallos, 2011, p. 13). While the contexts in the cosmopolitan narratives of academic leadership experiences in Part Two differ, they do share some common themes and we argue that ‘reframing’ is enabled through the ‘reflexive cosmopolitanism’ referred to above. We have argued that the ability to relate to aspects of these lived experiences helps to develop inter-subjective understandings of academic leadership in higher education. We would not align ourselves to a view of the leader as someone ‘set apart’ from his/her followers, someone who is expected to know all the answers in order to direct the followers. We argue that a cosmopolitan perspective on academic leadership shifts the debate from notions of leadership based on institutional positionality. Leadership is exercised by different people in different ways, and these may be formal and informal. As Middlehurst (1993, p. 161) points out, leadership will be exercised in varying ways ‘since in one situation an individual may act as leader, while in another he or she may act as subordinate or colleague’. Our contention is that an understanding of academic leadership ought to include the responses of individual academics in leadership roles to the contexts in which they are located. Becoming an academic leader can be likened to a journey which involves emotional labour and sometimes personal struggles, and we have suggested therefore that energy and creative optimism are necessary. This is evidenced clearly in the leadership narratives. Part Three discusses some of the implications for those with responsibility for academic development and for all those concerned with cultivating the qualities necessary for leadership in the wider society. In Part Three consideration is given to the questions raised by the central argument in this book for a range of constituents including academics, institutions and policy-makers. The wider policy landscape of curriculum and pedagogic changes and the challenges for academic leaders in higher education are examined in Geoff Layer’s chapter in Part Three. He argues that restricted understandings of leadership as the preserve of the institutional head and their senior team have now been displaced by the view that ‘academics as leaders and managers are central aspects of the university’. Perhaps the spirit of hope is evident in the model of leadership suggested, based on inspiration which shapes beliefs and releases ‘game-changing momentum’.

12

Feng Su and Margaret Wood

Conceptualizing leadership as a process of influence, Northouse (2010, p. 382) reminds us of the centrality of ethics to leadership saying that: ‘Although all of us have an ethical responsibility to treat other people as unique human beings, leaders have a special responsibility, because the nature of their leadership puts them in a special position in which they have a greater opportunity to influence others in significant ways’. In Part Three, Cook-Sather and Felten define academic leadership as ‘any effort to enrich and improve teaching and learning undertaken by an individual (such as a staff member or student) or a programme (such as an academic development unit)’ and make a powerful argument for ‘academic leadership that embraces an ethic of reciprocity and the practice of partnership in learning and teaching’. Rather than seeing leadership in individualistic terms, they emphasize a more connected and democratic view of leadership with others by advocating mutually respectful relationships within a partnership approach as a formal manifestation of this. Layer argues for an approach to leadership based on influence and persuasion to inspire others and, with some parallels to the view of leadership in Cook-Sather and Felton’s chapter, he advocates the importance of connectivities between learning and the learner. Layer reasons that models of academic practice which promote this engagement are those which create the flexibility and space for learner innovation. However, he contends that academic leaders need to demonstrate adaptability, flexibility and entrepreneurship in order to ‘do different things at different times to manage the development of individuals and the university’. In this chapter we have developed an understanding of cosmopolitanism in a democratic and reflexive form and considered an understanding of academic leadership in terms of a learning journey. We have argued that in the uncertainties of the external environment of higher education today, the focus of such learning for this journey should be cosmopolitan learning. Academic leadership in higher education today brings many challenges and requires energy, ebullience and a sanguine spirit, as our contributors’ accounts evidence, and we argue that dealing with the challenges requires a cosmopolitan outlook. In the contributions to this volume, we see leadership through that ethic of reciprocity to which Cook-Sather and Felton refer. It is the relationships with others that are foregrounded by our contributors rather than portraits of autocratic leaders adopting the ‘command and control’ model alluded to by Layer. In expounding a cosmopolitan approach to academic leadership, we locate cosmopolitanism from different perspectives,

Introduction

13

including the local specific contexts and the global cultural, political, social, economic contexts. Bolden et al. (2008 as cited in Bolden et al. 2012, p. 41) maintained that ‘in order to appreciate the complexities of leadership practice within universities, it is necessary to consider it from a number of levels and perspectives, including personal, social, structural, contextual and developmental.’ The cosmopolitan outlook on academic leadership proposed in this book is multi-layered and locates leadership levels and perspectives across the expanse of diversely situated geo-political, socio-cultural, economic, organizational and policy contexts. Across these contexts, we have argued for priority to be given to spaces to connect with others across disciplines, settings and levels. It is therefore interconnectivity and ‘ethical reciprocity’ through a keen awareness of ourselves in relation to others that are at the heart of our proposal for a cosmopolitan approach to academic leadership.

References Beck, U. (2006), Cosmopolitan Vision, Cambridge and Malden, CA: Polity Press. Bolden, R., J. Gosling and A. O’Brien (2014), ‘Citizens of the academic community? A societal perspective on leadership in UK higher education’, Studies in Higher Education, 39 (5): 754–70. Bolden, R., J. Gosling, A. O’Brien, K. Peters, M. Ryan and A. Haslam (2012), Academic Leadership: Changing Conceptions, Identities and Experiences in UK Higher Education, London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. Available online: http://www.lfhe.ac.uk/en/research-resources/published-research/researchby-theme/leadership-in-practice/index.cfm (accessed 19 December 2015). Bolman, L. G. and J. V. Gallos, (2011), Reframing Academic Leadership, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Grogan, M. and C. Shakeshaft (2011), Women and Educational Leadership, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Held, D. (2010), Cosmopolitanism. Ideals and Realities, Cambridge: Polity Press. Holton, R. J. (2009), Cosmopolitanisms. New Thinking and New Directions, Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kelly, A. V. (2004), The Curriculum: Theory and Practice, 5th edn, London: Sage. McNiff, J. (2013), ‘Becoming cosmopolitan and other dilemmas of internationalisation: reflections from the Gulf States’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 43 (4): 501–15. Middlehurst, R. (1993), Leading Academics, Buckingham: SRHE/Open University Press.

14

Feng Su and Margaret Wood

Nixon, J. (2011), Higher Education and the Public Good: Imagining the University, New York & London: Continuum. Northouse, P. G. (2010), Leadership: Theory and Practice, 5th edn, London: Sage. Rothwell, N. (2016), Leadership in Higher Education. Leadership Lecture and Questions and Answers, October 2015, London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.

Part One Theoretical Orientations Part One establishes the theoretical and conceptual foundations for the book, bringing together understandings of cosmopolitanism and academic leadership. Smyth in Chapter 1 asserts the importance of a socially critical orientation and cosmopolitan ways of thinking. These can interrupt the arid discourse and the tensions of managerialism and individualism and have importance for the tasks of academic leadership, offering possibilities for a more hopeful future. Rizvi and Beech in Chapter 2 develop their perspective on everyday cosmopolitanism, which they apply to morally productive ways of thinking about academic leadership. Beginning with everyday experiences, Rizvi and Beech focus on our humanity through everyday encounters and experiences.

1

Academic Leadership and Its Discontents: Cosmopolitan Perspectives John Smyth

Introduction This chapter argues that academic leadership is one of the most hazy and confusing topics in higher education and is consistently posited as the supposed panacea for all of higher education ills. In an opening move, the chapter draws from Trow (1985) to help disentangle the various strands of the symbolic, political, managerial and academic that inhere in the term. Discussion then positions academic leadership within the global and local contexts, to demonstrate how it has become the ‘new planetary vulgate’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 2001)  in its endorsement of the pernicious imperialism of competition, choice, self-responsibilization and the supremacy of the market. The chapter concludes by proffering critical cosmopolitanism, with its interconnected dimensions of self, other and the world, as a possible basis for a more generous and convivial way of conceiving academic leadership – one that has at its core the capacity to ‘investigate . . . the contradictions, dilemmas and unseen side-effects’ (Beck, 2006)  of the way higher education is currently being misconstrued.

Academic leadership: A term in search of meaning The term ‘leadership’ has long captured our attention and imagination as the dominant way to locate responsibility for resolving complex issues. As I wrote on this topic, almost three decades ago (Smyth, 1989), in respect of education:

18

John Smyth If we were to try to find a more alluring, seductive (even magnetic) word in the educational language to fire the collective imaginations of educational policy analysts, we would be hard pressed to go beyond the notion of ‘leadership’. (p. 1)

I went on to argue that the term ‘leadership’ has ‘instant appeal to those who are looking for a way of remedying what is deemed to be wrong with [educational institutions] in Western democracies’ (p.  1). The illustrative vignette I drew upon from Tolstoy’s War and Peace is as apt now as it was then: Napoleon was standing a little in front of his marshals, on a little grey Arab horse, wearing the same blue overcoat he had worn throughout the Italian campaign. He was looking intently and silently at the hills, which stood up out of a sea of mist, and the Russian troops moving across them in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of firing in the valley. His face – still thin in those days – did not stir a single muscle; his gleaming eyes were fixed intently on one spot . . . When the sun had completely emerged from the fog, and was glittering with dazzling brilliance over the fields and the mist (as though he had been waiting for that to begin the battle), he took his glove off his handsome white hand, made a signal with it to his marshals, and gave the order for the battle to begin. (Cited in McCall, 1976, p. 139)

As far back as 1959, Warren Bennis, one of the early pioneers of leadership research, noted that despite the huge amount of literature on the topic, even at that time, leadership was a top contender for one of the most confused notions in the behavioural sciences. Little has changed since then, apart from the accumulation of even more wordage! When applied to higher education, Allen and Gupta (2016) make the observation that ‘talk of “academic leadership” is everywhere’, or as they cryptically put it, ‘the phrase academic leadership has gone viral’ (p. 81). Bolden, Petrov and Gosling (2008) set the stage with their argument that ‘academic leadership’ is a subset of the more expansive notion of leadership. The enduring problem seems to be that despite the exponential growth in the literature pertaining to leadership, and its academic variant, it still remains a highly ‘contested’ concept (Grint, 2005, p. 17) and arguably ‘one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth’ (Burns, 1978, p. 2). As Bennis and Nanus (1985, p.  21) conclude, ‘leadership is like the Abominable Snowman, whose footprints are everywhere but who is nowhere to be seen’ (p. 358). Bolden, Petrov and Gosling (2008) go on to argue that this lack of clarity ‘has not diminished calls for better leadership’ (p.  359); indeed, on the ‘contrary, . . .

Academic Leadership and its Discontents

19

leadership is widely perceived as “a panacea for organizational ills” (Currie, Boyett and Suhomlinova, 2005, p. 268)’ (p. 359). It has almost become an uncontested article of faith that leadership is the ‘driver of national competitiveness’, and in the context of higher education worldwide, that change is impossible without ‘strong leadership’, which in turn is ‘pivotal’ (p. 359) to the advancing of national objectives and workforce regeneration. What gets overlooked and lost here in the quest for ‘enhanced leadership’ (p. 359) is not only the vagueness of the concept, but also its inherent contradictions and tensions – for example, the fact that what is being called for is a largely ‘individualistic and managerialist approach’ (p. 359) that seems to have little understanding of the wider global context in which leadership is located. Almost four decades ago, Pondy (1978) raised severe reservations about the field of leadership as envisaged in the social sciences and proffered the proposition, invoking and advancing Wittgenstein (1974), that ‘leadership is a language game’. Little seems to have changed, with Gunter (2001) depicting the leadership terrain as continuing to remain ‘very busy’, while being dogged by ‘silences’ (p. 2) and ‘boundary disputes’ (p. 3) that continue to confuse and confound its ‘conceptual underpinnings’ (p. 2). Gunter also pointed out what being a scholar in this area has done in terms of ‘how [her] own professional identity has been challenged and reshaped’ in how she had to deal with the ‘dominant language and discourse of “effectiveness” and “improvement” ’ (p. 3). What Pondy (1978) was alerting us to all these years was the fact that ‘somewhere along the line we [have] lost sight of the “deep structure” or meaning of leadership’ and instead we have become fixated with its ‘surface structure’ (p. 89) at a very superficial level. This kind of conceptual thinness and confusion can be seen, for example, in Macfarlane’s (2012) question about whether academic leadership ‘means leadership of academics or by academics’ (p. 7). Macfarlane seeks to remove the ambiguity in his own work by using the term ‘intellectual leadership, to denote the ways in which senior members of the academic profession are performing as leaders often in an informal sense’ (p. 7). That is to say, they are untitled leaders, not occupying positions like deans or vice-chancellors. While this kind of side-stepping may be helpful to Macfarlane, it is unclear how it advances our theoretical understandings. Another aspect of the conceptual confusion with the term ‘academic leadership’ in academia is that it is unclear what it is referring to: a list of ‘qualities or traits’, or a ‘set of functions’ (Macfarlane, 2012, p. 5). Invoking Trow (1985) to try and provide some clarity, Macfarlane says that leadership develops meaning

20

John Smyth

‘in the context of academic life’ around the four dimensions of the symbolic, political, managerial and academic identified by Trow (1985). Symbolic leadership, according to Trow (1985), has within it ‘the ability to express, to project, indeed to seem to embody, the character of the institution, its central goals, in a powerful way’ (p. 143). Symbolic leadership also brings with it ‘internal’ and ‘external’ dimensions – internally, to present, explain and justify the purpose of the institution, its central goals and decisions to participants ‘by linking its organization and processes to the larger purposes . . . in ways that strengthen their motivation and morale’ (p. 143). Externally, symbolic leadership refers to the articulation of ‘the nature and purposes of the institution [in ways that help] to shape its image, affecting its capacity to gain support from its environment and to recruit able staff and students’ (p. 143). Political leadership, the second of Trow’s (1985) dimensions, refers to ‘a leader’s ability to resolve the conflicting demands and pressures of his [sic] many constituencies, internal and external, and in gaining their support for the institution’s goals and purposes, as he [sic] defines them’ (p.  143). In the current academic climate, it is not hard to see how this dimension of leadership could assume some prominence. At a pragmatic level, notwithstanding the apparent contradiction in terminology, Trow’s (1985) third dimension, Managerial leadership, takes the form of ‘the familiar capacity to direct and co-ordinate the various support activities of the institution; this includes good judgement in the selection of staff; the ability to develop and manage a budget; plan for the future; and build and maintain a plant’ (pp. 143–4). Finally, in an effort to envisage something unique to academia, Trow (1985) advances the fourth notion of Academic leadership, involving, among other things, ‘the ability to recognize excellence in teaching, learning and research; in knowing where and how to intervene to strengthen academic structures; in the choice of able academic administrators, and in support for them in their efforts to recruit and advance talented teachers and scholars’ (p. 144). While Trow might at one level seem to be offering a helpful heuristic for extricating us from a conceptual maze, the question still remains: what is driving this frenzied pursuit of such a poorly conceptualized and seemingly ill-defined concept? To cast any light on this question we have to consider the existence of two parallel universes  – one of which seems to be producing the other. On the one hand:

Academic Leadership and its Discontents

21

There are more scholarly-sounding publications on the subject [of academic leadership] than specialists can keep up with; numerous well-endowed firms offer academic-leadership training and guidance; think-tanks constantly urge the need to nurture more academic leaders and corporations that can cultivate them. (Allen and Gupta, 2016, p. 81)

In addition, the concept is deeply ensconced in ‘academic jobs [advertisements] . . . Research Councils’ funding schemes . . . government policy documents on higher education . . . university promotions and appraisal procedures . . . academic workload calculations . . . [and the] deliberations in university committees’ (p. 81). Yet at the same time, on the other hand, we have serious questions being raised about ‘the slow death of the university’ (Eagleton, 2015)  and indeed whether ‘public universities are going to disappear’ (Semuels, 2015).

Global and local contexts of academic leadership To explain this seeming conundrum and its relationship to the problematic term ‘academic leadership’, we need to turn our attention to what Naidoo (2003) refers to as the ‘repositioning of higher education as a global commodity’ (p. 249), or the ‘commodification thesis’ (Naidoo and Jamieson, 2005, p. 37). The essence of this ‘thesis’ is that: Governments world-wide have linked higher education reforms to the concept of globalization . . . including the intensified integration of national economies, the acceleration of advances in information technology and the development of post-Fordist work practices. (Naidoo, 2003, p. 249)

The argument proceeds that ‘these developments are perceived to have given rise to a new type of economy, the “knowledge economy” ’, linked to fostering the ‘ability to compete successfully in the world context’ (p. 249). In other words, ‘higher education has been positioned as a crucial site for the production, dissemination and transfer of economically productive knowledge, innovation and technology’ (p. 249). We see this positioning, for example, in the massification of higher education to better equip populations with ‘higher order skills’ in the production of ‘high value goods and services’ as well as in the outright sale of teaching and learning in the ‘international educational marketplace’ (Naidoo and Jamieson, 2005, p. 38). But this repositioning also has a number of manifestations in the changes

22

John Smyth

occurring to the nature of academic work (see Smyth, 1995), which in turn is linked to the nature of academic leadership – the two are inextricable. The genesis of the major reform pressures (including the press for ‘academic leadership’) on higher education worldwide, therefore, resides in ‘the attempt by government to harness public universities in a relatively unmediated manner to economic productivity and to position higher education as a global commodity’ (Naidoo, 2003, p. 249). The widely deployed shorthand analytical motif used to denote what is being done in the attempt to steer academic leadership in this direction is that of the ‘entrepreneurial university’ (Zaharia and Gibert, 2005; Taylor, 2014). It is worth dwelling on this ‘buzzword, cure, claim and condemnation’ (Taylor, 2014, p. 1) for a moment for what it might reveal in terms of the style and substance of mooted forms of academic leadership. The wider origins of what is occurring to academic leadership in universities lie in the diffusion of a ‘new planetary vulgate’, or set of commonly accepted or recognized propositions, which Bourdieu and Wacquant (2001) call ‘NewLiberal Speak’. Its framing emphasis is upon promulgating notions like individualism, competition, choice, self-responsibilization, the supremacy of the market – all within the context of a seeming rolling back of the state. This new form of ‘imperialism’ is ‘pernicious’, they argue, because it comes ‘under the cover of modernization’ and it is committed to remaking the world in a way that ‘sweep[s] away the social and economic conquests of a century of social struggles’ (p. 2). Following Bourdieu and Wacquant (2001), there are a number of worrying silences in respect of this new chum on the block. First, it is a form of ‘symbolic violence that relies on a relationship of constrained communication to extort submission’ (p. 2, italics in original). Space for debate, argument, contestation and critical questioning has been closed down. Second, and equally worrying, the constrained set of ‘undiscussed presuppositions’ (p.  2) that constitute the neoliberal project mentioned above rely for their legitimacy upon the prestige of ‘supposedly neutral agencies . . . [like] the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Commission, and OECD’ (p. 2) and a panoply of international conservative think tanks. Third, the unimpeded ‘international circulation of ideas’ that emanate from these supposedly prestigious sources not only conceal how these ideas were formed and in whose interests but also give them the ‘appearance of logical necessity’. Obfuscated along the way are ‘the historical roots of a whole set of questions and notions: the “efficiency” of the (free) market . . . [and] the celebratory reassertion of (individual) “responsibility” ’ (p. 3), to mention two. And finally, what is concealed is that these ‘planetarised’,

Academic Leadership and its Discontents

23

‘uprooted’, ‘departicularised’ notions are converted into ‘a universal common sense’ (p. 3) that makes us forget the ‘complex and contested realities’ from which they emerge and are embedded. They are, therefore, not only a set of ideas that reshape the way we live our social relations but are ‘celebrated with sheep-like enthusiasm’ (p. 4) in their mindless and inevitable adoption. I can best illustrate what is involved in the specifics of this mode of academic leadership, if that is what it is, by drawing upon Stephen Ball’s sociological biography of his career as a UK academic, along his path from the ‘welfarism’ university to the ‘neoliberal’ university – and the insights this invokes for academic leadership. He offers the caveat that this explanation comes with a number of ‘ruptures, tensions and inconsistences – which remain unresolved and difficult to explain’ (p. 817). Notwithstanding, at the essence of Ball’s (2015) narrative is the imperative to create a new kind of ‘productive self ’ which is central to the entrepreneurial university – in particular, what he calls the ‘proliferation of new spaces of . . . individualism’, which are also ‘spaces of calculation’, along with their ‘excruciating visibilities’ within which academics have to relate to one another and establish their ‘place’ and their ‘worth’ (p. 826). Academic leadership has thus become caught up in the wider neoliberal gamut afflicting public institutions worldwide. The way Ball (2015) experienced it was through what Lynch, Grummell and Devine (2012) call ‘crafting the elastic self ’ (pp. 134–53). That is to say, in order for academics to be rendered more competitive and productive, they have to be made ‘malleable and open to change’ (p. 135) in line with the organization’s goals, missions and interests. However, as Lynch, Grummell and Devine (2012) argue, these goals ‘cannot be realized simply through top-down directives but must be internalized by employees as the “common sense” approach to behaving in the organization’ (p.  135). The way Ball (2015) put it is that ‘we are constantly incited to make spectacles of ourselves’ (p. 826) in the constant pursuit of ‘perpetual reform’ (Zaharia and Gilbert, 2005, p. 31). Ball (2015) illustrates the nature of this ‘common sense’: My email is punctuated by frequent and insistent requirements for me to account/count for myself. We are constantly expected to draw on the skills of presentation and of inflation to write ourselves and fabricate ourselves in ever lengthier and more sophisticated CVs, annual reviews and performance management audits, which give an account of our ‘contributions’ to research and teaching and administration and community. Typically now applications for posts and for promotion run to 40/50 pages and are littered with scores, indexes and ratings. (p. 826)

24

John Smyth

The net effect, he says, is that ‘we become transparent but empty, unrecognisable to ourselves in a life enabled by and lived against measurement, our days are numbered – literally’ (p. 826). The view of academic leadership that lies behind what is regarded as the new entrepreneurial university is one that heavily endorses what it means to be ‘economically literate’ (Allen, 2014, p. 2). What Allen (2014) means by this is that academics need ‘to better understand the financial landscape in which [they] operate’, so as to ‘at the very least cover the costs [they] incur’ (p. 2). Another way of putting it is that ‘academics must learn to feel personally responsible for the economic future of the institution that employs them’ (p. 2, italics in original). All of this returns me to the form of academic leadership necessary for this state of affairs to exist. One of the most pervasive ways in which academic leadership is written into existence in the entrepreneurial university is through what anthropologists Cris Shore and Laura McLaughlan (2012) call ‘third mission activities’ – the first two being conventional forms of teaching and research; ‘so-called “third mission” or “third stream” activities [constitute] activities geared towards “knowledge transfer”, forging links with industry and commercialising university research and teaching’ (p. 267). Rather than continue to focus on the shortcomings and inadequacies of the field of academic leadership as it currently exists, it may be more helpful to turn my attention to a more hopeful possibility.

Towards a critical cosmopolitan ‘outlook’ or view of academic leadership In this section I will not attempt to provide an exhaustive account of cosmopolitanism or the cosmopolitan perspective – this is a complex philosophical area, and it is not my field of expertise; there are others in this volume vastly better equipped than myself to do that. What I will do, however, is provide some pointers to what a socially critical approach to academic leadership might look like (see Smyth, 2016) that is cognizant of, and informed by, the traces of an emergent ‘critical cosmopolitanism’ (see Delanty, 2006; 2009; Mendieta, 2009)  and what that might mean for new ways of thinking about academic leadership. There is a sense of déjà vu here, not unlike what I  described in respect of leadership, in that there is a proliferation of ‘cosmopolitanisms’ – even including

Academic Leadership and its Discontents

25

‘banal cosmopolitanism’ (Beck, 2006). Let us contemplate for a moment the meaning of cosmopolitanism before turning to how this critical turn might inform academic leadership. Beck (2002) likened trying to define ‘cosmopolitanism’ (and ‘globalization’) as being akin to ‘attempting to nail a pudding to the wall’ (p.  17). Under the rubric of what he termed the ‘second modernity’, Beck (2002) argued that the ‘cosmopolitan thesis’ is a way of thinking and acting that seeks to overcome ‘methodological nationalism . . . [by] build[ing] a frame of reference to analyse new social conflicts, dynamics and structures’ (p.  18). As such, a ‘cosmopolitan imagination’ is committed to transcending a ‘monological imagination’ by positing ‘alternative ways of life and rationalities . . . [that] put the negotiation of contradictory cultural experiences into the centre of activities: the political, the economic, the scientific and the social’ (Beck, 2002, p. 18). In other words, ‘The central defining characteristic of a cosmopolitan perspective is the ‘dialogic imagination’ (p. 18, emphasis in original). I want to turn now to the way in which the term ‘critical cosmopolitanism’ (Delanty, 2009)  is employed, but first I  need to explain what I  take the term ‘critical’ to mean. The way I use the term ‘critical’ is not just in a negative sense, but in a way that highlights ‘positive and constructive’ (Mendieta, 2009, p. 25) possibilities, or as Cox (1980) put it: It is critical in the sense that it stands apart from the prevailing order of the world and asks how that order came to be . . . [U]nlike problem-solving [approaches it] does not take institutions and social power relations for granted but calls them into question by concerning itself with their origins and whether they might be in the process of changing. (p. 129)

In other words, the critical is concerned not only with the world order, the historical and political processes by which it came to be that way, and the forces that sustain it that way, but also with how that order might be interrupted and become the basis of the construction of a more democratic and just alternative. This brings me to what Delanty (2006; 2009) calls ‘critical cosmopolitanism’, which he argues has three component dimensions that entail the ‘interplay of self, other and [the] world’ (Delanty, 2006, p. 41). First, there is a set of interrelations that he calls the ‘historical modernity dimension’ that constitutes ‘the selftransformative drive to re-make the world in the image of the self in the absence of absolute certainty’ (p.  41). We see this most evidently, for example, during periods of Europeanization and European imperialism, but even such a seemingly dominant approach brings with it a kind of societal ‘co-evolution’ reflected

26

John Smyth

in ‘transformation in self-understanding’ (p.  41). Second, there is a ‘macrosocietal’ dimension in which re-definition occurs as a consequence of ‘core/ periphery’ interactions (p. 42) in which the former assists in reshaping the latter. The defining hallmark here ‘entails world openness and self-transformation’ (p.  42). Third, there is a ‘micro-dimension’ in which ‘individual agency and social identities’ are ‘reflected in internal social change’ (p. 42) that has ‘a growing reflexivity’ (p.  42) to it within existing identities, and to that extent these identities are sustained rather than replaced. Within this context then, what might be some next steps towards critical academic leadership?

For starters, we might take Mignolo’s (2000) distinction between ‘globalization’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’ and problematize these terms. Mignolo (2000) sees globalization as ‘a set of designs to manage the world’, while he posits cosmopolitanism as a ‘counter’, not in the sense of ‘globalisation from below’, but more expansively as a ‘set of projects toward planetary conviviality’ (p. 721). His choice of the word ‘conviviality’ is interesting here. What he has in mind is an organizing principle that ‘yields generously . . . toward diversity . . . in which everyone participates instead of “being participated” ’ (p. 721). As applied to higher education, this precept of generosity or conviviality might take the form of internationalization not being an extractive neoliberal project of individualism, competition and exploitation, but rather a project of genuine planetary infusion of ideas that grow out of ‘local designs’ of higher education in a way that forms a more complex and generous mosaic of ‘border’ forms of thinking located within a democratic global design of higher education. That would be a radical departure from what currently exists! Such an orientation, if embodied in academic leadership, would also have as its central tenet the notion of higher education as a ‘public good’, thus rendering redundant the dominant colonial imperialist project that has hitherto constructed it as a ‘private good’ to be plundered by those who opportunistically have the resources with which to do it. What would be expunged is the crass notion of educational commodification currently at the heart of higher education. Envisaged as commodification, internationalization invariably means the global north exploiting, as it always does, the global south, as well as internally those students who have historically been ‘put at’ a disadvantage. Another way of regarding this is in terms of higher education being ‘attentive to the dangers and excesses of global designs’ (Mignolo, 2000, p. 723) that have ‘the global market as [their] final destination’ (p. 723). This would mean

Academic Leadership and its Discontents

27

puncturing and debunking the current infatuation of higher education with the marketization of itself in order to gouge market share through market exploitation, by the already advantaged. As Ninnes and Hellsten (2005) put it, this would necessitate ‘troubling unproblematised notions’ of higher education and supplanting them with more ‘critical readings’ (p. 1). Universities worldwide have been subjected to funding regimes that have forced them to ‘engage globally through off-shore programs and increased recruitment of international students’ (p. 3). An alternative orientation to this would require ‘the revival of cosmopolitan projects’ that have so demonstrably ‘failed to escape the ideological frame imposed by global designs themselves’ (p. 724). The animating unsettling question for academic leadership in all of this global (dis)entanglement would have to be: ‘whose interests are [really being] served by the processes of internationalization?’ (Ninnes and Hellsten, 2005, p. 4). Practically speaking, this would mean having a view of ‘exteriority of modernity’ in which the ‘outside is needed by the inside’, or where ‘the perspective of those “to be included” ’ (p. 724) is central to thinking. It would mean a wholesale international dismantling of the apparatus of fake performativity measures, facile institutional rankings and the jettisoning of invidious forms of punitive comparisons. On a day-to-day basis within higher education institutions, this would mean that managerialism would become redundant to more generous global designs of higher education based in local histories and constructed by those who are currently excluded because of hierarchical authoritarianism. The point is well captured by Ninnes and Hellsten (2005): At the unglamorous ground levels of office and classroom, it could be argued that internationalization of higher education is currently experiencing a moment of exhaustion brought on by increasing workload demands and seemingly insoluble pedagogic and ethical dilemmas. Many programs are simply being sustained by academics’ goodwill and passion for teaching. Thus there is great need for . . . critical insight into current practices of internationalization. (p. 4)

The kind of academic leadership re-positioning I  am arguing for here will require considerable courage to transcend what is currently in place. Senior leaders in universities have become what Bourdieu and Wacquant (2001) refer to as little more than ‘communication consultant[s] to the prince’ (p. 5, italics in original). They are in effect ‘defector[s] from the academic world [who have] entered into the service of the dominant’ through giving ‘an academic veneer to the political projects of the new state and business nobility’ (p.  5). These ‘defectors’, who are posing as academic leaders, constitute what Bourdieu and

28

John Smyth

Wacquant (2001) term the ‘new planetary vulgate’, by virtue of their collective failure to posit a critical alternative to the ‘imperialism of neoliberal reason’ (p. 5) that has come to grip higher education. In order to grapple with this surge of academic imposters, who have become deeply implicated in promulgating the neoliberal project of instrumentalism, commodification, managerialism, marketization, consumer exploitation and performativity, along with work intensification and casualization, we clearly need to embrace a different set of values and dispositions. Because of the complexity of this ensemble, I will limit myself to commenting briefly on one of these, because in many ways it is symptomatic and indicative of the others. I will focus on the leadership of academic work (Smyth, 1995), or what McFarlane (2012) calls ‘intellectual leadership’. An inescapable aspect of modern academic leadership is centrally concerned with how the occupants of this role handle what Winter (2009) refers to as the ‘identity schism’ – which is to say, the constructed tension between ‘academic manager, or managed academic?’ (p. 121). Winter (2009) says that most incumbents in academic leadership positions are in reality ‘academic managers [who] have internalised [the] values and constructed goals and working patterns that reflect the imperatives of a corporate management system, such as strong hierarchical management, budgetary control, income maximisation, commercialisation and performance management indicators’ (p. 121). On the other hand, ‘managed academics’, as he calls them, are committed to fashioning, promoting and defending ‘distinctive accounts of their own professional identity and that of their institution by invoking values of self-regulation, collegial practice and educational standards’ (p. 121). What gets ‘lost in this fractured work environment’, Winter (2009) argues, are the ‘values that broaden, transcend or unify disparate conceptions of what is central, distinctive and enduring about higher education’ (p. 121). Macfarlane (2012) highlights two key relays by which the schism in academic work is being advanced, sustained and maintained within the ‘entrepreneurial academy’ (p. 23). First, there has been the retreat from the ‘scholar leader’ idea to the ‘leader manager’ that has come with increasing demands for ‘continuous efficiency gains’ (p.  27) in which ‘governments expect universities to meet the needs of multiple stakeholders: students, parents, professional bodies, taxpayers, business and industry and their own social and economic objectives’ (p. 25). Macfarlane (2012) argues that the ‘academic identity crisis . . . [involving the] shift from a collegial to a corporate and entrepreneurial culture’ amounts to a form of

Academic Leadership and its Discontents

29

‘pragmatic disengagement’ (p.  32). In other words, the basis of this schism has been the rise of a professional managerial culture in universities brought about by the avoidance of what many academics regard as an anathema culture through their deliberate avoidance of ‘involvement in leadership and management’ (p. 33), along with the enthusiastic embrace of it by more opportunistic academics who see this form of leadership as a new career path. The net effect has been a bifurcation in which academics, in no small measure, have ‘contributed to the undermining of their own role and influence in the management of the university’ (p. 33). Second, and coupled with this, while remaining outside of the rise of the professional leadership culture, academics have still become caught up in the way universities have incorporated them into ‘tradeable value on the basis of intellectual metrics’ that underpin league tables and international rankings, in a process Macfarlane (2012) describes as being ‘enthusiastically’ embraced by feeding ‘personal egos’ that ‘fits the often thinly disguised competitive nature of academic life’ (p. 33). Under the rubric of terms like ‘knowledge exchange’ and ‘knowledge transfer’, universities have become swept up in what on the surface sounds like a process of making their intellectual assets more widely available ‘for social and economic benefit’ (Macfarlane, 2012, p. 37). Where the slippage has occurred is in the drift from what was presented as an altruistic motive to an instrumental one that has become closely ‘linked to the commercialization and corporatization of academic labour’ (p. 37). This has worked in a multi-layered way. For example, by ‘corralling academics into research “strands” [and] “clusters” ’ (p. 37) to present a more coherent picture of research strengths in addressing institutional, national and even global ‘challenges’, these approaches have invariably collapsed down to mechanisms with which to steer research in directions that are seen to be attractive and useful to industry – often to supplement and replace the withdrawal of public funding of research. In a sense, then, such emphasis on grouping for a critical mass becomes ‘a way for institutions to market themselves to the wider world and assert their role in society for public benefit’ (p. 39) – while ensuring institutional fiscal survival. Research is thus increasingly judged in terms of its supposed ‘commercial value and impact’, and to that extent, ‘academic inquiry is no longer disinterested’ (p. 41). What is valued is what attracts external funding, and academics who either refuse or are unable to participate are ‘ignored, [punished], marginalized or even fired’ (p.  41). What is propagated is a ‘market-driven’ (p.  42) environment of ‘short-termism’ (p. 42), where the overwhelming emphasis is on the ‘calculative’

30

John Smyth

(p. 42) that boosts some individual egos, to the overall detriment of the free pursuit of ideas. Some universities even ‘routinely agree to restrictions being placed [on them] by commercial sponsors’ (Macfarlane, 2012, p. 43). What then does an understanding of cosmopolitanism bring to the study of academic leadership in this kind of context? Several things, as a matter of fact. First, it enables us to think beyond forms of ‘domestication’, as Beck (2003) calls it, that would have us accept that higher education, and the sociological imagination that comes with it, ought to be subordinated to the interests of the state. Instead, this would mean going beyond the ‘national mystification of societies and [their] political order’ to a reality of ‘(re)attachment, multiple belongings, or belonging-at-a-distance’ (p. 454). Second, cosmopolitan thinking opens up space for ‘negotiation’ (p. 466) currently closed down when universities are conceived as being ‘annexes of the economy’ (Smyth, Down and McInerney, 2014, p. 2). This kind of ‘nation-state outlook’ produces a form of thinking in which social science becomes, in effect, ‘a prisoner of the nation-state’ (p. 454). Third, what has to be problematized within the ambit of university missions and objectives are a number of large ideas raised by Beck (2003): ●

●

‘the subordination of society to the state . . .’ (p.  454). What I  take Beck to be referring to is the systematic subjugation of the ‘sociological imagination’ as the ‘nation-state outlook on society’ is deemed of little importance in the context of an unfailing infatuation with science and technology to resolve the big social issues. As Australian historian Stuart MacIntyre (2010) argues in his Poor Relation: A History of Social Sciences in Australia, and this is by no means unique to Australia, governments have an unshakeable belief that ‘manag[ing] the national innovation system’ (p. 552) requires only the ‘corralling of science’ in a policy context of fiscally ‘picking winners’ (p. 522). What this impoverished view does is ‘stifle . . . the exploratory and speculative aspects of the research process’ (p.  522) and ‘subordinate creativity to conformity’ in a misguided pursuit of ‘narrowly instrumental expectations’ (p. 522). The consequence is that ‘much of social science is a prisoner of the nation-state’ (Beck, 2003, p. 454). ‘the territorial notion of societies within state-constructed boundaries . . .’ (p. 454). What Beck is arguing for here is a puncturing of what Giddens (1985) called ‘the state [as] power container’ (p. 172). In other words, when we acquiesce to a bounded or territorial view, usually in support of alleged manageability, then we put in place severe constraints by using this as an ‘instrument for securing a

Academic Leadership and its Discontents

●

●

31

particular outcome’ (Taylor, 1994, p. 151). It is a strategy for determining what is allowed to come into play, and what is deemed inappropriate, in social and political analysis. Taylor (1995) gives the example, at an individual level, that ‘the designation of a room as “my study” keeps the territory out of bounds to certain individuals and their inappropriate behaviours (children)’ (p. 151). This constructing of boundaries is a way of containing social relations, and hence domination, over how outcomes will be determined. the ‘circular determination’ of who is the ‘creator and guarantor of citizenship rights’ (p. 454). The circularity of legitimation is most evident when institutions of higher education ‘anoint’ academic leaders. Because these institutions are, in Beck’s (2003) terms, both ‘creator and guarantor’ of ‘citizen rights’, this means that the conferral of the so-called right to academic freedom, through those enacting academic leadership, brings with it an obligation to accept and pursue the missions and objectives of the institution. Academic worker/ followers are thus bound, in return, to legitimate institutional missions and objectives. the ‘dichotomy of national and international’ behind the dominant view of ‘politics and political theory’ (p. 454). This dichotomous view within higher education means that while those in positions of academic leadership can proselytize an international agenda allegedly around cultural diversification and inclusion, within a national context, they can reposition this as being responsible for economic action contributing significantly to the national economic effort by attracting full fee-paying students. They are able to have it both ways.

Conclusion By way of rounding out my argument and towards something of a conclusion, I have put the case that academic leadership is a concept in need of some considerable rehabilitation. I have posited that such a route might start with the notion of critical cosmopolitanism. I  concur with Beck (2003) in his claim for ‘new critical theory with a cosmopolitan intent’. What makes it especially pertinent in thinking about academic leadership is that he goes beyond extant approaches that silence inequalities, or that relegate them to minor status. As Beck puts it, approaches that ‘make global inequalities invisible’ (p. 466), or that treat them as ‘just decorative motifs which adorn the borders’ (p. 466), fail to see them as being constitutive of the way we create and live our social structures – higher

32

John Smyth

education being a classic one. The consequence, and he puts it rather too directly and presciently in the context of contemporary international terrorism, which has as its core rampant inequalities of all kinds, is that continuing to ‘separate small inequalities from larger ones can resemble a look into the barrel of a gun’ (p. 466). Such a new critical theory of academic leadership, which is informed by cosmopolitanism, would have centrally embedded within it a capacity to ‘investigate the contradictions, dilemmas, and unseen and unintended side-effects of a modernity which is becoming increasingly cosmopolitan and draws its critical power from the tension between political self-description and the observation of the social sciences’ (p. 466, italics in original). Anything that stops short of this kind of reconstruction is likely to have disastrous consequences.

References Allen, A. (2014), ‘In praise of the “economically illiterate” academic’, OpenDemocrayUK, 4 April. Available online: https://opendemocracy,net/ourkingdom/ansgar-allen/inpraise-of-economically-illiterate-academic (accessed 4 November 2015). Allen, R. and S. Gupta (2016), ‘ “Academic leadership” and the conditions of academic work’, in S. Gupta, J. Habjan and H. Tutek (eds), Academic Labour, Unemployment and Global Higher Education: Neoliberal Policies of Funding and Management, 81–102, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Ball, S. (2015), ‘Accounting for a sociological life: influences and experiences on the road from welfarism to neoliberalism’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 36 (6): 817–51. Beck, U. (2002), ‘The cosmopolitan society and its enemies’, Theory, Culture & Society, 19 (1–2): 17–44. Beck, U. (2003), ‘Toward a new critical theory with a cosmopolitan intent’, Constellations, 10 (4): 453–68. Beck, U. (2006), Cosmopolitan Vision, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bennis, W. (1959), ‘Leadership theory and administrative behavior: The problem of authority’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 4 (3): 259–301. Bennis, W. and B. Nanus (1985), Leaders: the Strategies for Taking Charge, New York: Harper Row. Bolden, R., G, Petrov and J. Gosling (2008), ‘Tensions in higher education leadership: Towards a multi-level model of leadership practice’, Higher Education Quarterly, 62 (4): 358–76. Bourdieu, P. and L. Wacquant (2001), ‘NewLiberal speak: Notes on the new planetary vulgate’, Radical Philosophy, 105: 2–5.

Academic Leadership and its Discontents

33

Burns, J. (1978), Leadership, New York: Harper Row. Cox, R. (1980), ‘Social forces, states and world orders: Beyond industrial relations theory’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 10 (2): 126–55. Currie, G., I. Boyett and O. Suhomlinova (2005), ‘Transformational leadership within secondary schools in England: A panacea for organizational ills?’ Public Administration, 83 (2): 265–96. Delanty, G. (2006), ‘The cosmopolitan imagination: Critical cosmopolitanism and social theory’, British Journal of Sociology, 57 (1): 25–47. Delanty, G. (2009), The Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Renewal of Critical Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eagleton, T. (2015), ‘The slow death of the university’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 April. Available online: http://chronicleofhighered.tumblr.com/post/ 115762659868/the-slow-death-of-the-university-by-terry-eagleton (accessed 2 November 2015). Giddens, A. (1985), The Nation-state and Violence, vol. two, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Grint, K. (2005), Leadership; Limits and Possibilities, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gunter, H. (2001), Leaders and Leadership in Education, London: Paul Chapman Publishing. Lynch, K., B. Grummell and D. Devine (2012), New Managerialism in Education: Commercialization, Carelessness and Gender, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Macfarlane, B. (2012), Intellectual Leadership in Higher Education: Renewing the Role of the University Professor, London: Routledge. MacIntyre, S. (2010), The Poor Relation: the History of the Social Sciences in Australia, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. McCall, M. (1976), ‘Leadership research: Choosing gods and devils on the run’, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 49 (3): 139–53. Mendieta, E. (2009), ‘From imperial to dialogical cosmopolitanism’, Ethics and Global Politics, 2 (3): 241–58. Mignolo, W. (2000), ‘The many faces of cosmo-polis: Border thinking and critical cosmopolitanism’, Public Culture, 12 (3): 721–48. Naidoo, R. (2003), ‘Repositioning higher education as a global commodity: Opportunities and challenges for future sociology of education work’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24 (2): 249–59. Naidoo, R. and I. Jamieson (2005), ‘Knowledge in the marketplace: The global commodification of teaching and learning in higher education’, in P. Ninnes and M. Hellsten (eds), Internationalizing Higher Education: Critical Explorations of Pedagogy and Policy, 37–51, Dordrecht: Springer. Ninnes, P. and M. Hellsten (2005), ‘Introduction: Critical engagements with the internationalization of higher education’, in P. Ninnes and M. Hellsten (eds), Internationalizing Higher Education: Critical Explorations of Pedagogy and Policy, 1–8, Dordrecht: Springer.

34

John Smyth

Pondy, L. (1978), ‘Leadership is a language game’, in M. McCall and M. Lombardo (eds), Leadership: Where Else Can We Go?, 87–99, Durham: Duke University Press. Semuels, A. (2015), ‘Are public universities going to disappear?’ The Atlantic, 21 October. Available online: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/ are-public-universities-going-to-disappear/411685/ (accessed 2 November 2015). Shore, C. and L. McLauchlan (2012), ‘ “Third mission” activities, commercialisation and academic entrepreneurs’, Social Anthropology, 20 (3): 267–86. Smyth, J., ed. (1989), Critical Perspectives on Educational Leadership, London: Falmer Press. Smyth, J. (ed.) (1995), Academic Work: the Changing Labour Process in Higher Education, Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Smyth, J. (2016), ‘Critical perspectives on educational leadership in the context of the march of neoliberalism’, in E. Samier (ed.), Ideologies in Educational Administration and Management, 147–58, London and New York: Routledge. Smyth, J., B. Down and P. McInerney (2014), The Socially Just School: Making Space for Youth to Speak Back, Dordrecht: Springer. Taylor, P. (1994), ‘The state as container: Territoriality in the modern world-system’, Progress in Human Geography, 18 (2): 151–62. Taylor, Y. (2014). The Entrepreneurial University: Engaging Publics, Intersecting Impacts, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Trow, M. (1985), ‘Comparative reflections on leadership in higher education’, European Journal of Education, 20 (2/3): 143–59. Winter, R. (2009), ‘Academic manager or managed academic? Academic identity schisms in higher education’, Journal of Higher Education and Policy Management, 31 (2): 121–31. Wittgenstein, L. (1974), Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Zaharia, S. and E. Gibert (2005), ‘The entrepreneurial university in the knowledge society’, Higher Education in Europe, 30 (1): 31–40.

2

Everyday Cosmopolitanism: The Challenges of Academic Leadership Fazal Rizvi and Jason Beech

The idea of a university has always implied the need to understand the complexities of the universe, in ways that are both critical and open-minded. Indeed, the concept of ‘universe’ is embedded within the idea of a university. A university is expected to ‘reach out’ to the world, to understand how it is constituted and how it can be imagined differently. It is often believed that this is best done through an engagement with different epistemic and cultural traditions. Indeed, it was in search of new knowledge about other traditions that scholars travelled long distances to attend ancient sites of learning such as Nalanda in India, Alexandria in Egypt and Bologna in Italy. In this sense, it can be argued that an implicit sense of cosmopolitanism has always underpinned the very idea of a university, even if cosmopolitan aspirations are only articulated and promoted in the contexts of rapid economic, political and social change. In the context today of rapid and intense global shifts, the idea of cosmopolitanism has once again been revived. In higher education, it is most explicitly articulated around a discourse of internationalization, which attaches great importance to an understanding of the processes of globalization. This has led to transnational mobility of students and scholars to levels that are unprecedented. More than 3.5  million students are now enrolled in universities beyond their national borders (Open Doors, 2014). This number is expected to double within the next two decades. The economic benefits of this global mobility are now widely recognized, with international education regarded as an industry (Davis and Macintosh, 2011). Equally significant, however, are the cultural benefits of global mobility and the internationalization of higher education. Yet as campuses become increasingly diverse – partly as a result of the global mobility of students  – universities face a range of new organizational and

36

Fazal Rizvi and Jason Beech

pedagogic challenges of managing this diversity (Marginson and Sawir, 2011). Equally, however, this diversity provides them with new opportunities for rethinking the curriculum as a site of cultural exchange and intercultural learning. Increasingly, university leaders are expected to negotiate the terrain across these challenges and opportunities, to which they have responded in a wide variety of ways, from attempts to develop global links to initiatives aimed at internationalizing the curriculum (Leask 2015). Programmes designed to develop intercultural sensitivity, intercultural understanding and global citizenship have now become common. The challenges of campus diversity have thus been converted into opportunities for instilling in students a positive disposition towards global connectivities, cultural exchange and global learning. It is in deliberations over curriculum and pedagogy that the ancient idea of cosmopolitanism has been invoked (Richardson, 2015). Over its long history, the idea of cosmopolitanism has variously been promoted as a political philosophy, a moral theory, a cultural disposition and an educational orientation (Vertovec and Cohen, 2002). As a moral doctrine, cosmopolitanism suggests a duty of all human beings to help each other, or at least be respectful of each other’s values and ways of life regardless of their national borders and cultural differences. In the current era, however, the renewed interest in cosmopolitanism is driven by not only such moral sentiments but also the growing realization that the world is becoming interconnected and interdependent and that most of its problems are global in nature, requiring global solutions. In higher education policy, cosmopolitanism is widely presented as a normative goal, necessary for preparing students for an increasingly globalized world. In this chapter, we want to argue that while such a normative agenda for cosmopolitanism represents a laudable aspiration, we nonetheless need to acknowledge that the contemporary processes of globalization are already giving rise to an ‘actual existing cosmopolitanism’ (Robbins, 1998) and that many young people, in particular, are already developing an incipient organic sense of cosmopolitanism with which to engage the world of cultural difference. Skrbis and Woodward (2013) use the term ‘everyday cosmopolitanism’ to refer to those practices of cosmopolitanism that are now routine, becoming part of an emerging ‘global consciousness’ (Robertson, 1992). They suggest the need to take instances of ‘everyday cosmopolitanism’ more seriously, not least because they have profound consequences for the social constitution of our discourses, relations and institutions. They insist on the need to engage empirically with the ways in which everyday cosmopolitan encounters have begun to produce social

Everyday Cosmopolitanism

37

meaning and how they increasingly affect many of our dispositions, experiences and aspirations. This chapter seeks to extend Skrbis and Woodward’s thinking to a discussion of the challenges of academic leadership in higher education, where notions associated with cosmopolitanism, such as global citizenship, inter-culturalism, international understanding and so on, have acquired considerable saliency. However, in higher education policy, the notion of cosmopolitanism is largely conceptualized in highly abstract normative terms. In contrast, we argue that a more productive way of approaching cosmopolitanism is to understand first the ‘everyday’ experiences, encounters and aspirations of cosmopolitanism through which people now engage with the multiple and diverse processes of economic and cultural globalization on a daily basis, and to base our normative deliberations on this understanding. In examining the profound implications that this argument has for higher education leadership, this chapter explores how an understanding of everyday cosmopolitanism can thus be utilized to steer academic practices towards more morally productive directions.

Traditions of cosmopolitanism As we have already noted, the idea of cosmopolitanism has a long history. In a highly influential paper, Martha Nussbaum (2002) shows, for example, how the ancient Greek philosophers interpreted the idea of cosmopolitanism in terms of a globally integrated moral order. The Stoic philosophers viewed themselves as ‘citizens of the world’: they regarded their moral universe to be the whole world and not simply their own community. While obligations to their own family, community and nation were still important to the Stoics, they thought of them as secondary. As Nussbaum (2002, p. 11) notes, the Stoic philosophers believed that any attempt to accord one’s own traditions ‘special salience in moral and political deliberations’ was ‘both morally dangerous and, ultimately, subversive of some of the worthy goals patriotism sets out to serve’:  morally dangerous because it reinforced the unexamined belief that one’s own preferences and ways of acting were somehow culturally superior, perfectly rational and universalizable, and subversive because it overlooked the fact that, in the longer term, even our most local of interests are tied to the broader concerns of others. For the Stoics, this did not, however, mean abandoning local affiliations in order to be a ‘citizen of the world’. Rather they insisted that while local traditions

38

Fazal Rizvi and Jason Beech

can be a source of great richness in our lives, some of these traditions also had considerable potential to produce conflict, especially if they were celebrated in an uncritically partisan fashion. For the Stoics, education was fundamental in promoting cosmopolitanism through the inculcation of a belief in a universal moral order that transcended differences across cultural and political traditions. For them, the idea of cosmopolitanism was thus closely linked to the virtues of critical dialogue across difference. It should be noted, however, that the Stoics developed their view of cosmopolitanism against a particular historical backdrop of regular wars and ongoing tensions among the communities with which they were familiar. While their philosophical deliberations generated their moral principles, their views were based equally on a particular understanding of how the interests of individuals and communities across the world were interconnected. In this way, their moral principles evolved out of an empirical account about the nature and causes of political disputes, as well as the possibilities of transcending them. In the nineteenth century, the appeal of cosmopolitanism was similarly located within a historical context of wars and political conflict. Kant’s famous essay Perpetual Peace (1991, originally published in 1795), for example, was written during a period of considerable interstate turmoil in Europe. It is against his understanding of this turmoil that Kant regarded the attainment of a cosmopolitan order as the greatest challenge facing humanity. He insisted that as ‘fantastical’ as the notion was, a cosmopolitan order was essential if the human race were not to consume itself in wars between nations and if the power of the nation state were not to overwhelm the freedom of individuals. As a rationalist philosopher, Kant defined his concept of cosmopolitanism in terms of a range of universal moral precepts. He viewed the world within a metaphysics of an integrated moral order. This led him to treat moral principles as universal, applicable to the entire world. Kant’s concept of cosmopolitan order was thus based on his ‘formula of universal law’, the highest of moral principles – the categorical imperatives. His account of politico-legal order consisted of rules that he derived from these imperatives. This order prescribed ‘a lawful external relation among states’ and a ‘universal civil society’, articulated in a language of morality in order to constrain the power of the state and enhance the freedom of individuals. These rules were designed to guarantee the right of ‘hospitality’, a universal right of ‘humanity’ applicable equally to all individuals. Kant’s view of cosmopolitanism thus implied a particular form of moral education, intended to teach students the universalism of his moral theory, together with an understanding

Everyday Cosmopolitanism

39

of the formal codification of the fundamental rights of individuals irrespective of their nationality, ethnicity, race, social status or religious beliefs. The recognition of these rights, he maintained, would necessarily generate a moral disposition to act in demonstration of respect for human dignity and universal rights (Kant, 1991). In the late eighteenth century, the idea of cosmopolitanism enjoyed much popularity, even if the transcendentalism associated with the Kantian view was not always embraced. Indeed, during Kant’s own times, many German philosophers favoured contrasting conceptions of cosmopolitanism. Pauline Kleingeld (1999) notes, for example, that there were a number of different versions of cosmopolitanism in the late eighteenth-century Germany. She lists these as: . . . moral cosmopolitanism; proposals for reform of the international political and legal order; cultural cosmopolitanism, which emphasizes the value of global cultural pluralism; economic cosmopolitanism, which aims at establishing a global free market where all human are equal potential trading partners; and the romantic cosmopolitan ideal of humanity as united by faith and love. (Kleingeld, 1999, p. 506)

What Kleingeld’s analysis shows is that the idea of cosmopolitanism is a contested one and that it has been interpreted in a wide variety of different ways. What is also clear is that each understanding of cosmopolitanism is grounded in a different empirical account of the ways in which the world is interconnected, with each account foregrounding different aspects of connectivity. Furthermore, as social and political conditions change, new ways of thinking about cosmopolitanism emerge, as it becomes important to reconcile the moral demands of cosmopolitanism with the emerging historical realities. For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the support for cosmopolitanism in Europe thus had to come to terms with developments surrounding capitalism and colonialism. Under colonialism, for example, the idea of cosmopolitanism had to be taken beyond its abstractions into the more substantive realms of social, economic and political practice. During the late nineteenth century when it became possible for people to remain in touch with each other using new technologies, such as the railways and the telegraph, new ways of thinking about the world – and cosmopolitanism – became possible, perhaps even necessary. As Scholte (2000, p. 70) observes, while the incipient global communications and markets in the late nineteenth century led to the formation of a new global economic order, they were also responsible for the development of

40

Fazal Rizvi and Jason Beech

a new popular consciousness, as people wished to find out more about the countries with whom they traded, as well as the peoples and lands they colonized. Hence, European cosmopolitanism had to be aligned to the broader project of colonialism. As Edward Said (1985) points out, the colonial discourse was above all a mode of thinking, a system of knowledge with which to exercise power over colonized people, which contradicted many of the key tenets of Kantian universal cosmopolitanism. A particular way of describing and interpreting global connectivity thus had to be invented based on calculations that were able to justify colonial expansion and exploitation, without abandoning a sense that the colonizers had of themselves as morally superior. In this hegemonic view of cosmopolitanism, education played a major role in the dissemination of colonial ideas, designed not only to buttress the exercise of power but also to make its celebratory sentiments appear legitimate to the colonized and colonizing populations alike (Willinsky, 1998). In the context of recent postcolonial theories (Young, 2003), the colonial construction of cosmopolitanism can clearly no longer be justified. Nor is it possible to uncritically accept the Kantian universalism, since arguably it is not only ethnocentric but also overlooks the fact that historically the idea of cosmopolitanism has never been restricted to Western traditions. Indeed, Buddhism can be shown to involve a moral order that encourages a global consciousness, a unity of purpose across all of humanity. Similarly, in Islam, the notion of ‘ummah’ seeks to capture an aspiration of a global community of the ‘believers in a monotheistic god’, united in their shared moral purpose (Zubaida, 2002).

Contemporary global connectivities What these brief historical observations indicate is that a generalized notion of cosmopolitanism can be found in most cultural and religious traditions, even if its meaning is vastly different, located within specific historical settings and shaped by particular political interests. This is true equally of our own age, in which global connectivity has become ubiquitous, driven largely by revolutionary advances in technology, which have enabled people living in different countries to not only become more interconnected than ever before but also develop a distinctive consciousness about the challenges and possibilities of transnational intercultural encounters.

Everyday Cosmopolitanism

41

People have now become much more mobile, with global mobility perhaps becoming one of the defining characteristics of our age (Urry, 2007). And even if many  – perhaps most  – people are unable to travel extensively, they can constantly be in touch with friends and family who live and work around the world. Our lives are increasingly shaped by social imaginaries circulating across transnational social media (Appadurai, 1996). No community is entirely unaffected by global processes. Even if people do not recognize the effects of these processes, it is hard to see how their subjectivities can now remain unaltered by the global shifts produced by increasing levels of international travel, access to global media and the globalizing nature of economic exchange and work. Moreover, while people often experience these transformations as social disruption, they do not always recognize how the sources of this disruption do not necessarily lie within their own communities but in the massive changes taking place in the wider world (Vertovec, 2009). Global developments are clearly shifting our sense of space and time, resulting in major changes in the ways in which we define our identities, sense of belonging and cultural relations. As communities become increasingly globally networked, localities are socially re-constituted, making problematic any clearcut distinction between ‘here’ and ‘there’ (Appadurai, 2013). In such shifting conditions, cultural difference is experienced not only locally but also transnationally. Furthermore, experience of cultural difference is no longer exceptional but has instead become a norm across most social settings. Cultural borders have become porous, as different cultural practices are increasingly rubbing up against each other. As Beck (2006, p. 153) argues: ‘the national doctrine of cultural homogeneity was a historical exception, which applied only to the first modernity for a brief period of world history’, and the notion of discrete national spaces with their own uniform language, identity and cultural experience has now, more so than ever before, become a piece of fiction. What was once defined as a national space has become ‘cosmopolitanized’, with co-existence of different lifestyles and cultural preferences becoming a global norm. As a result of these changes, in the contemporary era, global connectivity is now experienced in new ways, different, for example, from the ways in which colonialism connected people and countries across vast distances. Under colonialism, there was a political centre from which economic and political activity across diverse cultural traditions was controlled and coordinated. In contrast, economic and political power is now much more diffuse. As a result of time– space compression, Robertson (1992, p.  8) argues, ‘cultures and societies are being squeezed together and driven towards mutual interaction’, within various

42

Fazal Rizvi and Jason Beech

social, economic and political networks that no longer presuppose linearity and homogeneity. These global transformations suggest the need to consider new ways of thinking about cosmopolitanism, for the idea of cosmopolitanism is clearly linked, as we have already noted above, to dynamic historical conditions. Cosmopolitanism continues to be often defined in abstract normative terms, stipulating a set of universal moral principles. However, an adequate characterization of its challenges and possibilities requires its meaning to be located in terms of an understanding of the emerging empirical realities resulting from the ease with which goods, finance, people, ideas and media are now able to flow across the world. This has led people to interact with each other across cultural and political differences in ways that had never been possible (Hannerz, 2004). While recent globalization theories have sought to understand these new empirical realities (Kennedy, 2011), the idea of cosmopolitanism implies the need to examine issues of how best to interpret and engage with these realities in a morally coherent fashion. In this way, the notion of cosmopolitanism brings together questions of both facts and values associated with global connectivity and ubiquitous cultural differences to which it has given rise. While the facts of rapidly developing and ever-densening network of interconnections can no longer be denied, we need to appreciate how communities and people experience global connectivity differently: how they interpret its various expressions and utilize interconnectivities to forge their sense of belonging, as well as their social imagination. These are not, however, merely empirical questions; they are also normative. They relate to issues of how we might steer these global transformations to forge better futures. In higher education, this is a key challenge for academic leadership.

Everyday cosmopolitanism Skrbis and Woodward (2013) have underlined the ordinary everyday aspects of cosmopolitanism that are now driven by contemporary global processes. The notion of ordinariness, they argue, ‘reminds us that cosmopolitan acts are embedded in everyday routines of life and that there are cultural and social features of ordinary life which require no codebook to decipher the basic meaning’ (Skrbis and Woodward, 2013, p.  102). Cosmopolitan encounters are nothing unusual, nothing extraordinary. Rather they are often routine ways of engaging with the contemporary realities of everyday life: they produce meaning and have

Everyday Cosmopolitanism

43

deep impact on human practices, dispositions and experiences. They shape us even when we do not know how. In developing their argument, Skrbis and Woodward (2013) are careful, however, not to view cosmopolitanism as banal and mundane in ways that Beck (2006) has done. For Beck, in the contemporary era, cosmopolitanism has become a commodity, something that is now ‘globally cannibalized, staged and consumed as mass product for mass market’ (Beck, 2006, p. 41). He argues (2006) that there is a sense in which the contemporary ‘reality itself has become cosmopolitan’, shaped increasingly by a set of market ideologies. He writes that ‘from the very beginning the emerging global market required the mixing of people . . . what is new is not forced mixing but awareness of it, its self-conscious political awareness’ (Beck, 2006, p. 21). In this sense, Beck suggests that everyday cosmopolitanism has been corporatized. This ‘banal’ cosmopolitanism assumes global sociality to be a natural outcome of market economy in which national borders have become less significant. It suggests that in the long run markets will not only produce greater innovation but also engender greater cultural tolerance. This ‘corporatist’ view of cosmopolitanism is based on a ‘modern social imaginary’ (Taylor, 2003) that brings together, under a very broad conceptual umbrella, a range of economic, political and cultural ideas, which are widely referred to as ‘neoliberal’. Fundamental to neoliberalism is a concept of individual freedom. In economic terms, it implies the promotion of the instrumental values of free trade, competition and economic efficiency. It rests on a pervasive naturalization of market logic, justifying it on the grounds of efficiency and even ‘fairness’. It highlights the importance of global trade and modes of production, unconstrained by national regulatory regimes. Politically, neoliberalism involves an emphasis on the idea of a minimalist state, underscoring notions of ‘lean’ government, privatization and deregulation. Neoliberal ideas are not only economic and political, however. They also incorporate a moral vocabulary around the notion of individual choice, which is assumed to enable people to pursue their own interests, unconstrained by the dictates of the state as well as of regimes of national authority. In moral terms, the idea of cosmopolitanism based on these neoliberal premises suggests that the market, conceived as a single global sphere of free trade, has the potential to promote greater intercultural understanding and social cohesion. It presupposes the self-regulative capacity of the market in treating all human beings as potentially equal partners in economic and social exchange. Its ideals are couched in terms of ‘natural human rights’, expressed in terms of property rather than personal rights (Bowles and Gintis, 1985). Beck calls this

44

Fazal Rizvi and Jason Beech

view of cosmopolitanism ‘banal’ because it commodifies cultural difference and reduces political debates to only those deliberations that are concerned about conditions under which global economic exchange takes place. Banal cosmopolitanism promises a democratic means of dealing with the politics of difference and of resolving cultural conflict. Yet it couches global morality in purely individualistic terms. It shuts down the possibility of engaging critically with unequal structural arrangements, sidelining notions of community and social solidarity. It treats global markets as the key mechanism for cultural integration but appears to overlook the fact that markets do not operate in a politically neutral space. Ultimately, such a cosmopolitanism contributes only to extend the power of the transnational elite, reproducing asymmetries of power, both within and across national boundaries (Robinson, 2004). Indeed, banal cosmopolitanism is inherently contradictory since it pulls people in the direction of cultural flexibility on the one hand and cultural homogenization on the other. Its faith in the capacity of global processes to open up new emancipatory possibilities is hopelessly unrealistic, especially in view of the overwhelming evidence of persistent and even growing social inequalities (Ray, 2007). As Craig Calhoun (2002) puts it, this approach to cosmopolitanism undermines the possibilities of solidarity across cultural and national differences since it is deeply rooted in competitive relations in which all aspects of human conduct become subject to commercial exploitation. Skrbis and Woodward (2013) fully recognize the hegemonic dominance of this narrative of banal cosmopolitanism. However, their argument suggests that it is wrong to assume that this is the only way in which everyday cosmopolitan encounters can be imagined. Their argument is consistent with Stuart Hall’s (2002) view that neoliberalism is not the only possible shell for understanding cosmopolitan modernity. In thinking about cosmopolitanism, Hall objects to both Kantian universalism and its contemporary banal and corporatist expressions. Conceptually, he notes, a cosmopolitanism based on universal principles assumes a fixed notion of moral tradition as already constituted in authority, as well as a view of culture as static and not as something that is continuously changing, responding to the new circumstances in which it is embedded and negotiated. Such a view of culture also assumes a world that is segmented in terms of specific, well-bounded, tightly knit, organic communities. Hall insists, however, that this is not the world we live in anymore. In the current context of globalization, groups, while they are culturally marked, are not entirely separated from

Everyday Cosmopolitanism

45

each other and are constantly re-shaped by cross-cultural encounters. While cultural traditions might be important to them in terms of their self-understanding, most groups have wider lateral connections that are not only located within nation states but increasingly span the globe. Hall (2002, p. 30) suggests that the globally ‘open’ spaces in which we now live require a kind of cosmopolitanism that ‘is aware of the limitations of any one culture or any one identity and that is radically aware of its insufficiency in governing a wider society’. What this suggests is that while local and national attachments remain important in the new era, they are crucially dynamic, articulated in new ways, against conditions in which our problems and their solutions are interconnected and transcend national boundaries. In this context, the nature of the polity within which moral claims are best addressed is itself open to question and political elaboration. Skrbis and Woodward’s concept of everyday cosmopolitanism is aligned with these observations. They do not deny that the idea of cosmopolitanism has in recent decades been subsumed under market logic, becoming banal. But equally they insist this does not rule out the possibility of a more critical understanding of everyday cosmopolitanism based on a morally robust account of how we might live together under the contemporary conditions of global mobility and connectivity. Kwame Anthony Appiah (2006) has sought to provide such a normative account, out of our historical conditions. Appiah stresses that while individuals and communities can be different and have their foibles that shape interests and values, they can also learn from each other. In his view, it is possible to genuinely engage with ways of other societies without approving of each of their values. Appiah suggests that if people with vastly different religious and sexual and political attachments are to live together without violence then they must master the arts of conversation. If accounts of global connectivity are neither self-evident nor politically neutral, then an ethical understanding of everyday cosmopolitanism requires both an engagement with its hegemonic forms and an exploration of its alternative possibilities. In developing such an understanding, education has a major role to play in helping students to realize that each experience of connectivity has a specific history from which it has emerged and that global connectivity is a dynamic phenomenon, politically and historically changing. Such an education involves a critical hermeneutical politics, a particular way of learning about intercultural encounters and their sources of conflict – and to imagine alternative futures.

46

Fazal Rizvi and Jason Beech

Beyond universal and banal cosmopolitanism How then might we overcome some of the limitations of banal and corporatist ways of thinking about everyday cosmopolitanism in an era in which they have become ideologically dominant? As we have suggested already, banal cosmopolitanism is often presented as the only available alternative to its abstract normative forms. We argue for an ethical view that can construct an alternative cosmopolitan imaginary that transcends both consumer-based and universalistic cosmopolitanisms. It is not about finding a kind of ‘middle way’, but rather about approaching the problem from a different perspective, one that can lead to new conceptions and different practices. It is about taking everyday cosmopolitan experiences as a starting point and steering them, educationally, towards a morally productive cosmopolitanism that can overcome individualist marketoriented notions and strengthen social solidarity across space, without the need for total agreement on a set of universal values. If we take everyday experiences as a starting point, it is not so easy to judge abstractly what kind of moral effects a given type of cosmopolitan encounter (be it based on consumption of goods or humanitarian concerns) will have for an individual. We see cosmopolitanism as performative – a disposition, a way of seeing and acting upon the world that comes into play in everyday life. Bringing everyday experiences into focus implies an awareness of the messiness of human life. The consumption of exotic food can be banal, soft or superficial, but it can also be the starting point for a more profound and morally productive cosmopolitan conversation in and across difference. From this perspective ‘cosmopolitanism is a cultural discourse, underpinned by ideas about the good and the evil, sacred and profane . . . that is deployed intermittently’ (Skrbis and Woodward, 2013). It is something of this world that is performed in ordinary life and linked to power relations and political interests, and, therefore, cosmopolitan repertoires are dynamic, flexible, imperfect and sometimes contradictory. In this sense, there is no such thing as a perfectly good cosmopolitan individual or practice. Cosmopolitanism is not an outcome; it is not an individual attribute, but rather a practice, a disposition that is always in the process of changing as people interact across different contexts. Biesta and Lawy (2006, p. 72) note some of the problems of construing citizenship as an outcome. A similar point could be made for cosmopolitanism: The idea of citizenship as outcome is also problematic because it is fabricated on the assumption that citizenship is a status that is only achieved after one

Everyday Cosmopolitanism

47

has successfully traversed a specified trajectory. We suggest that citizenship is not so much a status, something which can be achieved and maintained, but that it should primarily be understood as something that people continuously do: citizenship as practice. Citizenship is, in other words, not an identity, something that someone can ‘have’, but a practice of identification, more specifically a practice of identification with public issues.

So, cosmopolitan is not something you are or you are not. Or, as Skrbis and Woodward (2013) put it, there is no such thing as an ‘end point’ in cosmopolitanism. It is an ongoing project, both at the social and the individual level. This aspect of cosmopolitanism highlights some of the problems with abstract, normative conceptualizations that tend to search for ideal and idealized states of being in the world that are unattainable in practice and which, therefore, even though they can help to guide academic aims, can also become disconnected from everyday life and from the possibilities of actual pedagogic practice. If everyday encounters with diversity are taken as a starting point for a cosmopolitan academic project, it is possible to make these experiences visible, and promote their moral evaluation in order to steer these experiences towards morally productive and reflexive cosmopolitan behaviour. An academic project aimed at steering accidental into reflexive cosmopolitanism does not necessarily imply a hierarchical, top-down evaluation of everyday practices based on abstract principles as a norm. It implies promoting a disposition towards deep, intelligent and curious reflexivity. This is a type of learning that is situated within the lives of young people, highlighting how their lives are part of wider social, political and economic relations: ‘It is ultimately this wider context which provides opportunities for young people to be democratic citizens and to learn democratic citizenship’ (Biesta and Lawy, 2006, p. 65). The same could be said of cosmopolitan learning, as a learning process that has to do with individuals in context (Biesta and Lawy, 2006) and is more meaningful for students than the discussion of abstract normative principles. Such a project is concerned with the ontological aims of education (Dewey, 1916; Quay, 2015), that is, it is linked to the students becoming, more than with them knowing. It is not about learning abstract and supposedly universal values, but about developing a series of cosmopolitan virtues that can be meaningful in their everyday cosmopolitan experiences. Our view of cosmopolitan learning is in line with what Appiah (1997) calls ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’. From this perspective cosmopolitanism does not contradict patriotism or other allegiances; neither does it need to be equated

48

Fazal Rizvi and Jason Beech

with universalisms. Appiah (2006) stresses that cosmopolitanism is not about a search for universal values – a quest that he deems to be very difficult, if not impossible. He notes that there are some values that are universal, just like there are others that are local, but that it is not realistic to think that a final consensus on how to evaluate and rank them can be reached. Furthermore, in his vision of cosmopolitanism, the search for universal values could easily fall into global homogeneity and uniformity. On the contrary, he argues for a type of cosmopolitan ideal that promotes and celebrates the fact that different cultures and human ways of being exist side by side. As we have already noted, for Appiah (2006, p. 78), the cosmopolitan project is about opening up possibilities for conversation. I am urging that we should learn about people in other places, take an interest in their civilizations, their arguments, their errors, their achievements, not because that will bring us to agreement, but because it will help us get used to one another. If that is the aim, then the fact that we have all these opportunities for disagreement about values need not put us off. Understanding one another might be hard; it can certainly be interesting. But it doesn’t require that we come to agreement.

Thus, cosmopolitanism is based on the capacity to participate in open-ended conversations with others without necessarily reaching an agreement or defining universal maxims. Appiah (2006) uses the notion of conversation, both in its habitual meaning and also ‘as a metaphor for engagement with the experience and the ideas of others’ (p. 85). From this perspective, a reflexive cosmopolitanism is about developing awareness of the complexity of life decisions, the value of considering other points of view and the consequences of our everyday decisions and actions for those that are close, but also for those that are far away in space and time.

Challenges of academic leadership In developing such a disposition, which underlines the importance of conversations with others, the role of academic leadership in higher education is highly significant but also poses a range of challenges. As we mentioned earlier, the call for an ‘internationalization of universities’ has been omnipresent in global, state and institutional definitions about the challenges of higher education over the last few decades. This notion can be linked to efforts to attract international

Everyday Cosmopolitanism

49

students and their talents and fees, to educate students with intercultural skills that would give them advantages in the global labour market, or to other type of instrumental aims. Yet, in a context of increasing global challenges and cultural connections, the internationalization of universities can also be associated with the need for academic leadership to educate individuals with cosmopolitan dispositions towards diversity and otherness for more morally productive reasons. This distinction between an instrumental approach to cosmopolitanism as opposed to a more morally productive approach should not, however, be seen in terms of a binary. The basic challenge facing academic leaders in higher education is in defining the purpose or rationale for promoting cosmopolitan dispositions within the context of the historical realities faced by their institutions. Without necessarily discarding certain instrumental benefits of cosmopolitan learning, most leaders in higher education would agree on the need to promote in their institutions an emphasis on openness towards diversity, intercultural dialogue and global understanding. Of course, a wide-ranging discussion on the meaning of these concepts is necessary, and such discussions clearly should be promoted. Yet, as we have argued before, abstract normative debates can be useful to define aspirations, but they run the risk of being too distant from the real life of students if they are not linked to everyday experiences and anchored in actual pedagogic possibilities. Another challenge facing academic leaders is to define the strategies through which cosmopolitan dispositions are promoted across a wide range of institutional settings. As we have discussed, there is often an inclination to take abstract normative declarations as a starting point. Accordingly, the strategies do not only become disconnected from actual existing cosmopolitan encounters but also tend to be translated into top-down institutional practices, in which leaders (deans, professors or whoever takes that role in different circumstances) prescribe what good cosmopolitan behaviour looks like and how staff and students should act in line with their prescriptions. This approach does not build on actual experiences but directs people to cosmopolitanism’s prescribed forms. An alternative view is to take seriously the possibility of forging cosmopolitan values from below, based on distributive and transformational practices embedded in everyday experiences. The challenge is to steer everyday experiences towards a critical and reflexive cosmopolitanism, as part of a broader pedagogical project that works in between the messiness of the actual social, political and cultural life of students and cosmopolitan aspirations that institutions often profess. The focus should be on cosmopolitan learning.

50

Fazal Rizvi and Jason Beech

We do not however regard cosmopolitan learning as the acquisition of a fixed set of values and dispositions. It is necessarily participative since it implies making decisions about our actions – about what is good and bad, fair and unfair, in acting upon the world. This demands making everyday cosmopolitan experiences visible, open to scrutiny and competing interpretations. Experience is a transaction between the self and the environment or context (Biesta and Burbules, 2003). Thus, cosmopolitanism should not be understood as an attribute of the individual but has to do with individuals in context. When thinking about cosmopolitan experiences, we need to move into a notion of context (and thus experience) that considers space as relational, since mobilities, connectivities and diversity are distinctive characteristics of the context that is in transaction with the individual. Cosmopolitanism is a problem of social solidarity and cohesion. What cosmopolitanism questions is the spatial dimension of that solidarity. It is possible to start from a simple experience of consumption, tracing where the clothes, the coffee, computers and other goods that are present in the classroom come from, or from the histories of families of those who are present or from the daily news. From a simple reconstruction of the flows of people, objects and cultural artefacts that affect that experience, it is possible to go deeper into analysing the wider cultural, social, political and economic context of these encounters and exchanges. For example, we might ask:  how does coloniality influence our practices as consumers? How are global inequalities represented in our encounters with difference or in our own family histories? These types of issues make much more sense and affect the learning of students if they can be linked, and extracted from their own everyday experiences. And in this way, how our everyday practices potentially have cosmopolitan dimensions and are affected by and affect relations of power on a global scale becomes visible. Once our cosmopolitan encounters are made visible, the next step is to promote a critical and reflexive practice. How are our actions affecting global inequalities? How are they affecting the environment? What options do we have to act differently? Is it feasible to act differently? Which values are in conflict? With this kind of moral evaluation of everyday, existing cosmopolitan experience, it is possible to avoid binary thinking associated with an ethically good/ bad approach, and get deep into the messiness and complexities of moral everyday decisions in which different values and the rights of different groups are in conflict and overlap. Again, this type of collective discussion is not based on a top-down approach in which someone – the leader – has the right answer, but it is rather open-ended collective conversations that provide an opportunity to

Everyday Cosmopolitanism

51

discuss cosmopolitanism in relation to real lived experiences of the participants, reflecting about the complexities that are inherent to every decision, no matter how trivial or profound. These types of conversation should be aimed at overcoming purely individualistic notions of global responsibility, in which global problems are ‘couched in individualistic, psychological and moralistic terms  – the result of a lack of individual responsibility, rather than an outcome of more structural causes’ (Biesta and Lawy, 2006). On the contrary, global problems, inequalities, risks and challenges should be historicized, politicized and interpreted within a collective framework. We argue that through these steps, through identifying and morally evaluating everyday cosmopolitan experiences, it is possible to steer these experiences towards a morally productive cosmopolitanism. Instead of learning about cultures in an abstract manner, a critical approach must help students to explore the criss-crossing of transnational circuits of communication, the flows of global capital and the cross-cutting of local, translocal and transnational social practices, and their differential consequences for different people and communities. This criticality should be viewed not only as a way of contesting banal cosmopolitanism but also as a way of imagining a global society that is more just, democratic and humane. The current attempts at cosmopolitan learning highlight the importance of intercultural experiences, through such programmes as study abroad, but they do not seriously address the issues of how such experiences might produce effective learning about the shifting global configurations of economic and cultural exchange. If this is so, then one of the major goals of cosmopolitan learning should be the development of a critical global imagination based on a recognition that we all have an interest in imagining better global futures. In this sense, cosmopolitanism should demand the deparochialization of the processes of learning and teaching, highlighting the importance of ‘grassroots’ global networks capable of interrogating its dominant banal forms. In another paper, one of us (Rizvi, 2009, p. 210) has suggested a form of critical cosmopolitan learning based on the development of what was identified as ‘epistemic virtues’: I use the term epistemic virtues deliberately (as opposed to values) to highlight those habitual practices of learning that regard knowing as always tentative, involving critical exploration and imagination, an open-ended exercise in crosscultural deliberation designed to understand relationalities and imagine alternatives, but always from a position that is reflexive of its epistemic assumptions.

52

Fazal Rizvi and Jason Beech

The first of these virtues emphasizes the importance of historicizing current global configurations. Cosmopolitan learning requires an understanding of how cultural traditions and practices have been created through historical interactions which have taken place in the context of dynamic asymmetrical power relations. We need to recognize how our identities, allegiances and our understanding of sameness and difference have been forged through histories of contact between groups. This will help us understand the contingencies of our current representations of others and ourselves and open up the possibilities for alternative imagineries to arise. In other words, historicity is important to explore how the past is linked to the present and can play an important role in re-imagining the future. If we overcome the myth of pure cultures located within a given territory, then, the way to approach the study of culture is by focusing on relationality, exploring the ways in which flows of information, media symbols and images, goods, capital, ideas and ideologies are permanently creating new cultural formations that are never static and always in the state of ‘becoming’, as a consequence of these constant cultural exchanges. In this way, cultural formations can be understood as being historically forged and globally interconnected through process of mobility, exchange and hybridization (Rizvi, 2009). Thus, a focus on relationality can contribute to problematize cultural borders and reified notions of cultures as distinct separate homogeneous entities. Another important element for cosmopolitan learning is reflexivity. This implies becoming self-conscious of our own perspectives, capable of reflecting upon our own experiences in order to challenge our taken-for-granted cultural assumptions, beliefs and actions. A  reflexive attitude engages students with issues of power relations, with an assessment of inequalities and fairness, and with an evaluation of their own representations, political positions, imaginaries and desires. Eventually, reflexivity should contribute to open up possibilities for transformational practices in the everyday life of students. Finally, criticality is a fundamental virtue that should cut across the other epistemic virtues involved in cosmopolitan learning. It implies realizing that the epistemic position from which we look at cultural differences and similarities is not neutral. Our ways of understanding the world are always and inevitably influenced by asymmetrical power relations. This realization should help us to become aware of the need to be suspicious of the illusions of certainties and binary dualities. We should understand that cultural formations are in a constant state of flux and movement – always in the state of becoming. Alternative futures can thus be imagined and examined in conversations of the kind that

Everyday Cosmopolitanism

53

Appiah considers necessary for living in the era of ubiquitous global mobility and connectivity. These are conversations for which academic leaders could usefully assume a key responsibility.

References Appadurai, A. (1996), Modernity at Large: Cultural Dynamics of Globalization, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Appadurai, A. (2013), Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition, New York, NY: Routledge. Appiah, K. A. (1997), ‘Cosmopolitan patriots’, Critical Inquiry, 23 (3): 617–39. Appiah, K. A. (2006), Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, New York, NY: W.W. Norton. Beck, U. (2006), Cosmopolitan Vision, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Biesta. G. and N. Burbules (2003), Pragmatism and Educational Research, Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield. Biesta, G. and R. Lawy (2006), ‘From teaching citizenship to learning democracy: Overcoming individualism in research, policy and practice’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 36 (1): 63–79. Bowles, S. and H. Gintis (1985), Democracy and Capitalism: Property, Community and the Contradictions of Modern Social Thought, London: Routledge. Calhoun, C. J. (2002), ‘ The class consciousness of frequent travellers: Toward a critique of actually existing cosmopolitanism’, The South Atlantic Quarterly, 101 (4): 869–97. Davis, D. and B. MacIntosh, eds (2011), Making a Difference: Australian International Education, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Dewey, J. (1916), Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, New York: MacMillan. Hall, S. (2002), ‘Political Belonging in a World of Multiple Identities’, in S. Vertovec and R. Cohen (eds), Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context and Practice, 25–31, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Hannerz, U. (2004), ‘Cosmopolitanism’, in D. Nugent and J. Vincent (eds), A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics, 69–85, Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Kant, I. (1991), Kant: Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kennedy, P. (2011), Local Lives and Global Transformations: Towards a World Society. London, UK: Palgrave. Kleingeld, P. (1999), ‘Six varieties of cosmopolitanism in late eighteenth century Germany’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 67 (1): 505–24. Leask, B. (2015), Internationalizing the Curriculum, London: Routledge.

54

Fazal Rizvi and Jason Beech

Marginson, S. and E. Sawir (2011), Ideas for Intercultural Education, London: Palgrave MacMillan. Nussbaum, M. C. (2002), ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’, in J. Cohen (ed.), For Love of Country?, 3–17, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Open Doors, Institute of International Education (2014), ‘Fast Facts 2014’. Available online: http://www.iie.org/Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors/Data/Fast-Facts (accessed June 2015). Quay, J. (2015), Understanding Life in School: From Academic Classroom to Outdoor Education, London: Palgrave MacMillan. Ray, L. (2007), Globalization and Everyday Life, London: Routledge. Richardson, S. (2015), Cosmopolitan Learning for a Global Era: Higher Education in an Interconnected World, London: Routledge. Rizvi, F. (2009), ‘Towards cosmopolitan learning’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 30 (3): 253–68. Robbins, B. (1998), ‘Actual Existing Cosmopolitanism’, in B. Cheah and B. Robbins (eds), Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation, 1–19, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Robertson, R. (1992), Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, London: Sage. Robinson, W. (2004), A Theory of Global Capitalism: Class and State in a Transnational World, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Said, E. (1985), Orientalism, London: Penguin Press. Scholte, J. A. (2000), Globalization: A Critical View, London: St Martin’s Press. Skrbis. Z. and I. Woodward (2013), Cosmopolitanism: Uses of the Idea, London, UK: Sage. Taylor. C. (2003), Modern Social Imaginaries, Durham: Duke University Press. Urry, J. (2007), Mobilities, Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Vertovec, S. and Cohen, R. (eds) (2002), Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context and Practice, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Vertovec, S. (2009), Transnationalism, London, UK: Routledge. Willinsky, J. (1998), Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire’s End, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Young, R. (2003), Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zubaida, S. (2002), ‘Middle Eastern Experiences of Cosmopolitanism’, in S. Vertovec and R. Cohen (eds), Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context and Practice, 32–41, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Part Two

Cosmopolitan Narratives Part Two consists of autobiographical accounts of the experiences of academic leadership drawn from diverse settings. The chapter authors, Tamish, Nebres, Taylor and Stevenson, Holderness, Yamamoto and Duke, share insights into the ‘lived experiences’ of their development as academic leaders, and they explore how the settings and systems within which they have worked have influenced that development. While these are separate accounts drawn from different contexts, each contributes distinctive insights into some of the shared common themes. These themes, which are woven through the text, include academic leadership and social justice, social engagement in the everyday lives of others, gender, culture, politics and ethics.

3

Academic Leadership and Political Oppression in Palestine: Lessons to Be Learnt Rabab Tamish

Introduction Writing about academic leadership is a challenging task for two reasons. First, because, in my view, ‘leadership’ as a concept goes beyond what appears in most training programmes where it is presented as a package of traits and skills that leaders should demonstrate during their attempts to improve the quality of professional development programmes and student outcomes in academic institutions. I am not saying that these models are not useful to new leaders, but I do believe that the process of becoming an effective academic leader is a deeper, more complex one. It requires taking into consideration the sociopolitical contexts at play and their influence on academic life and professional relationships within an academic institution. Thus, before studying the practices of leaders, I argue there is a need to understand the wider context that can subtly, yet profoundly influence the way that academic leaders carry out their roles. Second, since I pay attention to the context and the internal political forces that shape leadership practices, I  find it difficult to see how reflecting on my own modest experience could be of any real value to readers from other contexts. However, since there are similar concerns among academic leaders elsewhere in the world, I hope that sharing my experience might provide readers with insights on issues they might consider (or avoid) when working in similar conditions or circumstances. This chapter is a personal reflection on the process of enhancing academic leadership at Bethlehem University (BU) in Palestine. It will discuss the intervention plan that was developed in order to achieve this enhancement in the sensitive political context of the Palestinian higher education system. The chapter

58

Rabab Tamish

starts with a discussion on the concept of leadership in academic contexts and the factors that influence its practice. My aim is to highlight the assumption that leadership cannot be detached from the context of the academic organization or from the wider political–social context which can sometimes limit opportunities among academic leaders to practise more progressive aspects of their role. I will then briefly describe the history of higher education in Palestine in order to provide the reader with a general picture of the wider political and social context and how it has shaped specific forms of academic leadership in Palestinian academic institutions. This discussion will be followed by a reflection on the leadership practices at BU and the process that my colleagues and I have developed during our attempts to challenge academic leaders’ perceptions of their roles as agents of change.

Contextualizing academic leadership Becoming an academic leader is perceived as a challenging role as a result of significant changes within higher education institutions and policies around the world, which have created new expectations of universities, such as responding to the new emerging needs of society or market labour (Newton, 2002). It has been argued that the use of the term ‘labour market’ has influenced the role of academic leaders in the process of supervising the quality of the academic programmes within their respective departments and led academic leaders to become immersed in administrative responsibilities (Bisbee, 2007; Davis, Hides and Casey, 2007). This has resulted in discussions about the ‘management’, ‘administrative’ and ‘leadership’ components that have characterized academic leadership (Avolio, Bass and Jung, 1999). Henkel (2002) argued that despite the fact that the complex world of academia requires leaders to go beyond their ‘management’ role (which includes administrative tasks), it is still unclear how the ‘leadership’ component (which refers to the ability to influence colleagues in the process of academic improvement and change) is practised in reality and in the context of changes that the academic world has witnessed in the last three decades. To address this issue the literature sheds light on the different characteristics that academics should demonstrate in order to practise the ‘leadership’ component, such as building rapport with colleagues, supporting collegial initiatives and creativity in bringing forward new ideas (Scott, Coates and Anderson, 2008). However, the debate failed to resolve the difficulties that leaders face in

Academic Leadership and Political Oppression in Palestine

59

practice or why the managerial and administrative burdens continue to leave little space for them to develop practices in the ‘leadership’ aspects of their work. Scott, Coates and Anderson (2008) have pointed to the fact that academic leaders are usually engaged in traditional training programmes on transformational leadership. These are often research-oriented and theoretical and as such do not provide novice academic leaders with concrete experiences to learn about the practice of transformational leadership within their departments. As a result, they tend to adopt similar leadership practices to those that they have experienced from their own former academic leaders, both in terms of managerial styles and in terms of adopting more general practices, such as showing respect to colleagues, encouraging research activities and maintaining a strong, professional academic environment within their departments. Middlehurst (2004) argues that some of the difficulties that have limited opportunities for leaders to practise the ‘leadership’ component of their role might be related to university’s promotion policies where criteria for effective leadership do not count as highly as research or teaching. As a result, academic leaders tend to balance their time between fulfilling the managerial duties of their work and their research activities. To achieve this, they see maintaining a professional environment within their departments as the best way to practise the ‘leadership’ element of their role. Becker and Trowler (2001) took the debate in a different direction by assuming that the difficulties in practising transformational leadership relate to the departmental context and the disciplines that leaders come from. They argued that academic leaders from purely knowledge-based disciplines tend to perceive transformational leadership as a matter of arriving at concrete products and practical decisions whereas leaders from ‘softer’ disciplines tend to be more process oriented (Bath and Smith 2004). Kekale (1999) provides such an example in his research on leadership in Finnish universities. Sociologists who have been influenced by critical theories and Marxism have tended to show high levels of sensitivity to power dynamics and democracy within their departments, to the extent that they have carried out their leadership role in a democratic manner. Here they engage their colleagues in philosophical discussions in order to arrive at a consensus and common decisions. In other words, they have worked as facilitators of decision-making compared with scientists who, on the other hand, have acted in a pragmatic manner, preferring to take decisions more straightforwardly, based on clear procedures and paying less attention to process or to divergent views about the goals or changes that should be achieved.

60

Rabab Tamish

Although these arguments have been well received by some researchers who assume that leaders cannot detach themselves from the epistemology of their discipline, it might constrain leadership practices to operate within narrow, even restrictive, frameworks of decision-making rather than to embrace what the concept of ‘leadership’ should mean more broadly, which surely has to address leading and developing academic, social and political change. Critical educators have paid much attention to this matter, raising questions about the hidden reasons that have led academics to become discipline oriented, or overwhelmed with administrative duties. Apple (1995, 2000), for instance, argues that the agenda of the government, sociopolitical parties and the economic interests of the private sector have led universities to focus their efforts on serving ‘the labour market’ and that this has resulted in academic leaders having to compromise former values in order to guarantee financial stability. These changes are reflected in the development of new academic programmes that offer work opportunities for young professionals and which sometimes marginalize the value of traditional programmes (such as philosophy or sociology) for not serving this purpose. Such changes in the mission of academic institutions would compromise the role of universities in preparing students to serve the community and developing their critical awareness of the world around them in order to increase their commitment to social issues and justice. Bourdieu’s (2006) concept of cultural capitalism suggests that these changes lead leaders of academic programmes (that are in high demand from the labour market) to adopt specific actions in order to ‘belong’ to the community of that discipline. In doing so, they adopt specific practices as they are and perceive them as indicators of improvement and change. Issues of social justice and equity are thus perceived as irrelevant to the profession, and accordingly academic leaders’ concerns might become engaged in academic programmes that are content oriented with less attention on wider global issues such as oppression or human rights. Bourdieu argues that such a reality services the agenda of the political powers by ‘moulding’ the identities of academic leaders to become ‘work oriented’ with little interest in community activism. On the basis of views like these, I believe that in order to develop influential academic leaders, there is a need to challenge academic leaders’ perceptions of their roles and increase their awareness of the impact of the wider political and social factors on their practices. In other words, ‘leadership’ cannot be discussed in a vacuum. It should be developed with the people who are engaged in change and within the sociopolitical context of the academic institution they are serving.

Academic Leadership and Political Oppression in Palestine

61

To what extent are such concerns reflected in Palestinian academic life? To what extent has the image of academic leaders been influenced by the factors that have been discussed above? How do academic leaders act in a context that has witnessed decades of political oppression? Before I  elaborate on the current practices at BU and the image of leadership that I have tried to enhance, it is worth providing some background on the history of higher education in Palestine. My purpose in doing this is to justify the initiatives that have been developed at BU with the aim of regaining the ‘image’ of academics as community and political leaders and the role of universities as serving the community rather than the private sector.

The history of higher education in the occupied Palestinian territory Academic leadership in Palestine has witnessed a different political and historical development in the field of higher education compared with that seen in the rest of the developed world. Historically, the education sector in Palestine has suffered from what I term a schizophrenic identity, responding to and coping with successive regimes of foreign control. After the British mandate, which started in 1922–23 and ended in 1948, the state of Israel was created on the land of the people of Palestine (Pappe, 2006). This led to the dispossession and exile of more than 700,000 Palestinians; more than 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed or depopulated (Khalidi, 2006), and this created the most enduring refugee crisis in modern history (UNHCR, 2006). This crisis increased after Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Since then, the Palestinian people have become geographically dispersed into four segments: Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem; Palestinian refugees living mostly in Arab countries; Palestinians within Israel; and Palestinians in the Diaspora across the globe. The educational systems of these separated groups of Palestinians within these demographic divisions (apart from those in the Diaspora) have been characterized by considerable deficiency in teaching skills (Saleh, 1982; Sfeir and Bertoni, 2003; Nicolai, 2007). Furthermore, in the West Bank and Gaza there were no Palestinian universities, only community colleges that offered two-year diploma certificates – mainly in teaching. During the British mandate, Palestinian students were only able to obtain higher education abroad, particularly in the Arab

62

Rabab Tamish

countries, and interest in establishing local universities was not a priority as a result of free accessibility to established universities in Arab countries, especially Egypt and Syria. After the war in 1967, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza lived under the military regime of the occupying Israeli army, and their physical movement was restricted. This situation raised concerns among community activists and organizations about the future of Palestinian education, which was considered to be a key tool for emancipation and resistance (Baramki, 2010). As a result, they called for the establishment of Palestinian universities and in the early 1970s, six universities were established. BU, for instance, was established in 1972 as a result of the visit of Pope Paul VI in 1963 after he met with Palestinians who expressed their need for a local university. Beirzet University, on the other hand, was established by political and community activists, who donated and used their family properties to provide physical spaces for teaching. Their views were based on Marxism and the emancipatory approach to education, which in turn formed the leadership style of the university and the structure of the academic programmes (Baramki, 2010). All Palestinian universities received funds from local families, from the Gulf States and from European countries, as well as charitable organizations and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Universities did not depend on students’ fees due to their difficult economic circumstances. In addition, universities were keen to offer education for all, irrespective of the economic background of their students. The Israeli security apparatus attempted to subjugate and domesticate Palestinians by denying them access to opportunities to develop independent and critical perspectives that could risk promoting demands for independence and freedom (Palestinian Ministry of Planning, 2004). They used a number of different means to control the educational system and Palestinian academic life, such as imposing taxes on imported books and resources, limiting the number of academics able to teach at Palestinian universities (especially those with foreign nationalities or Palestinians living abroad), as well as arresting students who were active in resistance movements (Alzaroo and Hunt, 2003). In many cases, the Israeli forces found any excuse to close the universities and to destabilize academic life (Alzaroo, 1989). However, since the purpose of establishing a Palestinian university was based on a patriotic vision (that of equipping the new generation with education for resistance and emancipation), academics were themselves active in political movements and described their roles as academics for emancipation (Assaf, 2004).

Academic Leadership and Political Oppression in Palestine

63

Furthermore, academic programmes were perceived as a means of enhancing students’ critical thinking and activism in order to prepare them for playing an active role in the resistance movement and as leaders in the enhancement of Palestinian civic society. Such a political leadership model became distinct in the late 1980s when the first intifada (Arabic name for uprising) started, during which Palestinians in these territories organized themselves into a civil resistance movement aimed at ending the military occupation. During this period (1987 to 1993) the education system was described as having severely been damaged by extensive closure of schools and universities, strikes and the arrests of hundreds of teachers and students (Mahshi and Bush, 1989). It was reported that universities were closed by order of the Israeli military for at least three consecutive years (Ministry of Education, 2007) and, according to Sfeir and Bertoni (2003), in the first four years of the intifada, Palestinian children and university students were deprived of between a third and half of their study days. This fact resulted in only the absolute minimum of required skills and knowledge being taught (RCHRS, 2008). This inconsistency and instability in education in both schools and universities created the ‘popular education movement’, in which different groups of academics decided to break the siege on university education. They started teaching within their own areas, meeting their students informally, often clandestinely, or through ‘home study’ (Alzaroo, 1989). Although this movement was suppressed in several areas by the Israeli occupation regime and hundreds of teachers and students were arrested (Mahshi and Bush, 1989), it emphasized two important values. The first value relates to the increased awareness among Palestinians of the importance of education, which came to be considered as a form of patriotic struggle for freedom (Lunat, 2009). The second value was linked to the status of academics as revolutionary community activists (Alzaroo and Hunt, 2003). This meant that academics were perceived as responsible for the education of Palestinian students, as well as enriching students’ patriotic knowledge and awareness (Assaf, 2004). Furthermore, the involvement of Palestinian academics under occupation in various forms of resistance has exposed them to social justice ideas (e.g. Marxism, socialism, left-wing and right-wing views), which in turn characterized universities as settings for providing students with opportunities for freedom and emancipation (Sfeir, 2006; Hiltermann, 1991). On the other hand, the price was paid in the quality of teaching. The limited opportunities for movement and the instability of teaching also limited the opportunities among Palestinian academics to enrich their subject knowledge

64

Rabab Tamish

and teaching skills or to engage in research activities. Research was not a priority at universities as financial resources hardly covered the teaching expenses. This factor has gradually formed the ‘image’ of academics as deliverers of knowledge with little engagement in research activities. The long-term impact of this was that the Palestinian value of ‘education as a tool for liberation’ became practised as ‘covering the required material’, irrespective of the quality of the teaching environment. When the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, it was the first time that Palestinians had the right to decide on almost all matters related to their own education. The new Ministry of Education had to deal with the severely damaged education system, a result of decades of Israeli occupation (UNESCO, 2002). The ministry’s priority was to improve access to education for all school-aged children and to retain access to higher education for all (Ministry of Education, 2008). Staff members in the district and central offices were unprepared to face the challenges of structuring the national system of education from scratch. As a result, the international community helped by building hundreds of schools and facilities for higher education to support the ministry’s mission. In addition, the European Union empowered the ministry by transferring funds to universities through its offices. In many cases, the European Union did not fulfil its commitment, and numerous universities had to compromise the quality of their programmes in order to overcome the resulting financial burden, such as an imbalance between the number of students and number of academics (Nakhleh, 2005). The need for external funding to cover the actual expenses of academia led universities to adopt specific programmes and to accept strict conditions from donors without carrying out any deep analysis of the long-term impact of these conditions on Palestinian higher education outcomes at the national level. In addition, engagement in exchange programmes with European universities on the one hand enriched the knowledge of academic leaders about changes with regard to programmes and departmental work, but on the other hand, it led some academic leaders to perceive them uncritically as ‘the model’ for development without considering the historical differences between these universities. These academic leaders also started to use donors’ terminologies in their plans and reports, such as ‘labour market’, ‘private sector’ and ‘technology’, without contextualizing them in the wider picture of Palestinian education or analysing whether they would result in any change. As a result, the whole vision of Palestinian education as a tool for emancipation has, in my view, been gradually replaced by one in which universities provide work opportunities and financial stability for the younger generation.

Academic Leadership and Political Oppression in Palestine

65

This has even begun to be viewed as the equivalent of achieving freedom and independence. Salameh (2011) criticized these changes and argued that the ‘industrialization’ of higher education in Palestine will limit opportunities for social and economic stability. He argues that simply following the agenda of external donors will ultimately distract Palestinian people from resisting Israeli occupation because their concern will shift towards ensuring financial stability. He argues that pushing universities into playing this role will result in an increase in poverty and oppression. Nakhleh (2005) accused the international community and the Palestinian Authority of being complicit in a hidden agenda that aims to deny Palestinians their rights of freedom and independence. Studies by Avenstrup and Patti (2004), Moghrabi (2001) and Nicolai (2007) reveal evidence of how the international community placed conditions on its funds in order to accommodate Israel’s concerns. Despite the critical issues that these views have raised with regard to the future of Palestinian social, political and cultural life, the Palestinian Authority and academic institutions in Palestine have little to show for the seriousness of their efforts. This is reflected in the ministry’s and in the universities’ official reports and strategic plans, which refer to quantitative indicators to provide evidence of the impact of the new academic changes on providing work opportunities for graduates. Furthermore, most of the ministry’s reports refer to the increased number of academics holding PhD degrees from different universities and others who are engaged in research activities, without analysing the quality of the teaching and their research. In summary, drastic changes in the function of universities within the wider political context have, in my view, created new forms of oppression of the capacity for academic leadership in Palestinian universities. First, the intensive expectations from universities have led academic leaders, who are expected to run programmes with limited financial and human resources, to be overwhelmed with [or by] managerial duties and responsibilities. To overcome these difficulties, they were asked to manage funded projects in order to reduce the financial burdens on their departments, which created further administrative work. Second, the ministry’s strategic plans that call for improvement are based on donors’ agendas and international standards, which have not taken into consideration the historical–political context of higher education. Accordingly, the purpose of Palestinian higher education as a tool for emancipation and freedom has been marginalized, and academics were asked to fulfil new, artificial, tasks to become part of the academic ‘culture’.

66

Rabab Tamish

Such a reality has led universities to show evidence of ‘improvement’ by adopting international academic programmes (as criteria for success) without providing research-oriented evidence about the methods that have been used to overcome the limited pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986)  among faculty within each department. Finally, the hierarchical structure of Palestinian universities in terms of decision-making has created a gap between academia and administrative bodies where the latter control the function of academia. Thus, academic leaders have simply become implementers of top-down regulations without taking an active role in the development of their university’s policies. My analysis of the political dynamics in academia led me to the conclusion that in order to break this image of academic life and leadership in Palestinian universities, there is a need to challenge the system itself and decision-making practices that are carried out in a non-democratic manner. In addition, I have concluded that this can only be brought about in an informed way if Palestinian academic leaders receive different forms of professional development that help them to rebuild the image that they have of themselves as leaders of change rather than as uncritical ‘observers’ or ‘implementers’ of that change. The following section describes a modest initiative at BU that aims to achieve this dream.

Institutionalizing progressive academic leadership BU was the first officially registered Palestinian university in the West Bank and Gaza. It is a Catholic university run by the De La Salle brothers. Compared with other Palestinian universities, BU has the smallest campus (around 3,500 students and around 100 full-time academics) and offers 22 undergraduate programmes and four master’s programmes. All master’s programmes are codirected by BU and international universities. Decision-making at BU is hierarchical where the vice-chancellor is the one who ultimately makes all decisions related to the function of BU. However, the academic council (which includes chairs, deans, the academic vice president, assistant academic vice president, Registrar, Dean of Student Affairs and Director of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, CETL) is responsible for issuing academic policies and regulations. All policies are submitted to the executive council (which in practice is a consultancy body for the vice-chancellor) for final approval. None of the administrative bodies at BU has student representation. None of the academic leaders at BU is elected or appointed democratically. The academic vice president, in consultation with the vice-chancellor, appoints

Academic Leadership and Political Oppression in Palestine

67

deans and chairs based on different considerations and in some cases after receiving recommendations from members of the university’s departments. In 2011, I was appointed to establish the CETL that aimed to enhance the quality of teaching and learning at BU. My main concern was how to engage academic leaders (deans and chairs) in the process, taking into account the historical background of higher education in the region and, added to this, operating within a Catholic organization where obedience (directly and indirectly) is part of the culture and decision-making process. I admit that the process has faced a lot of difficulties (and failures) that have led me to question whether they should be shared in this chapter. However, as real change needs time and cannot be achieved easily, I will nevertheless share at least the milestones in the process in the belief that they might provide a useful resource for leaders elsewhere in the world who live under similar circumstances to learn from if they hope to achieve progressive goals. Before being appointed to establish the CETL in 2011, I had spent some years as a member of the faculty of education at BU, which gave me the status of being an ‘insider’. However, this did not prevent me from facing a lot of resistance to my role at the outset for three reasons. The first reason related to suspicions held by the majority of the university’s academic leaders about the usefulness of the CETL and also about whether its real purpose might be to fulfil the hidden agenda of the donors rather than to respond to genuine needs for development. This suspicion was reasonable as most of the earlier projects for development at the university and in the surrounding institutions had been based to a considerable extent on donors’ agendas as described earlier. Second, the concept of pedagogical knowledge was somehow underestimated by almost all academic leaders, who expressed frankly (in several face-to-face meetings and focus group discussions) that their priority was to invest in their disciplines and in research and so enhancing ‘teaching’ was perceived as irrelevant to university life. Finally, some academic leaders were fully convinced that as long as decision-making at the university continues to take place in a nondemocratic manner, then the opportunities for achieving real change are at best limited and at worst do not exist. These obstacles did not surprise me as I had learnt that when communities witness decades of different forms of oppression they somehow create what Freire (1974) described ‘the culture of silence’ in which people feel passive about the changes that surround them, and they lose their belief in their ability to make a difference. They become dependent on others, and they feel more confident to follow things rather than to take the risk of making a difference. Those

68

Rabab Tamish

who have critical awareness of these forms of oppression either isolate themselves and do the minimum work that should be done or resist any potential for change, simply because experience has taught them that real change can never happen without changing the whole institution. Personally, I  was convinced that progressive changes could not be achieved within the current social, political and economic context of the region, as well as within the structure and politics of BU as described earlier. At the same time, I was wondering about the role of the individual and whether he or she can influence the culture of an institution. I was aware that there is a limit to the influence of individuals, but I had never known or experienced the ‘limits’ of their influence. In other words, I felt that an individual who works in a challenging context might plant some seeds that would one day grow when the ground is ready to nourish them. Furthermore, I was wondering about the interrelationship between the individual and the institution and how a system could be changed if people cannot see its limitations or their abilities in challenging it. This was when I decided to read a lot about different programmes in order to develop a clear vision in myself about how I perceive development and how to communicate this to colleagues. My long-term interest in community activism led me to adopt theoretical principles that came from the Freirian approach to professional development (Freire, 1974, 1996). These were (a) to develop plans with leaders, not on behalf of them; (b) to start with leaders’ strengths in order to overcome weaknesses; (c) to institutionalize together the progressive approach to education based on historical and contextual reality. To realize these principles in practice, I  was aware that I would have to build rapport with academic leaders (which cannot be achieved easily), that I would need to be sensitive to their different thinking styles and also that I would have to learn how to confront views that were in contradiction with progressive approaches to higher education. Therefore, my first step was to do a needs assessment study in which I initiated open discussions with academic leaders and later on within their departments on (a)  the expectations from CETL and its programmes; (b)  how they perceived their role in enhancing the quality of teaching and learning at BU; and (c) their views on what the characteristics of a rich culture of teaching and learning might look like. These discussions created an opportunity to share my views on change, as well as to clarify the misconceptions that could generate the forms of resistance described earlier. In these discussions, I noticed that novice and experienced academics shared common patriotic values about their roles as Palestinian academics, which entailed preparing the new generation to take an active role in the emancipation process and the enhancement of the civil

Academic Leadership and Political Oppression in Palestine

69

society. However, the implementation of this value was varied. Some believed that it could be achieved by offering students teaching experiences that are similar to those used in international academic programmes (such as technology, well-equipped laboratories, field visits, rich syllabi). Others highlighted the role of creating a classroom environment that encourages critical thinking and increased critical awareness among students about the political powers that aim to increase oppression. What was interesting here is that views on critical awareness came from academic leaders, from both ‘soft’ and ‘pure’ disciplines, who were engaged in community projects and political activities. These discussions helped me to identify academic leaders who could be active in the change process. I am aware of the fact that I have never been neutral in my approach to highlighting the type of change that we need for BU. I was clear that I wanted to regain the image of academics as leaders for change as had been the practice during the history of Palestinian academic movement, but at the same time, I wanted to overcome the weaknesses that had resulted with regard to content and pedagogical knowledge. In other words, my aim was to lead academic leaders to identify the weaknesses of the teaching environment within their departments and to suggest plans to improve it. In presenting my ideas, I always made reference to the image of Palestinian academics in the early stages of establishing Palestinian universities. I did this in order to show evidence of a successful, concrete experience in the history of Palestinian higher education where academics had led real change (and when I did this, many colleagues who had witnessed this period supported my argument). In other words, my attempt here was to gain their ownership of the idea that academics can lead change. Furthermore, I needed to avoid the misconceptions of some academic leaders who were very cautious, thinking of change as something that had to be based on ‘imported’ ideas. Here I used al-Jabri’s (2006) distinction between ‘cultural exchange’ (that refers to the need to learn from the international community) and ‘cultural invasion’ (where we adopt practices as they are). Referring to the history of the academic movement was an opportunity to discuss the type of change that we need and how ‘education as a tool for emancipation’ should be practised within the professional, political, social and institutional circumstances of our work as academics. Based on these discussions, I provided different types of support for each academic leader in order to achieve this goal, such as organizing a series of training opportunities on topics of interest to them. My awareness of the limited impact of such type of training led me to develop a follow-up plan in which I contacted participants and academic leaders to receive their feedback on the training and

70

Rabab Tamish

to discuss possibilities for its implementation within their respective departments. By doing so, academic leaders were indirectly involved in the process of sharing practices and difficulties, which opened the gates for further debate, discussions and new action on issues related to teaching and learning in higher education. During the intervention plan, I was aware that some departments were finding it difficult to share their weaknesses or needs for improvements. In order to address this, I invested in developing a rapport with most of the academic leaders, which helped us to work together on empowering their abilities to lead the work independently within their departments. For instance, some leaders worked with me to analyse the quality of assessment tasks across their courses and to align them to the learning outcomes of their academic programme. While working together on this task, leaders were indirectly receiving training on pedagogy and after four years of such support, a few of them expressed their self-confidence at leading plans within their departments with only minor support from me. Furthermore, I  learned through the process that all academics are different and that reaching the majority of them meant varying and tailoring the approach that was needed. For instance, experienced academics shared their concerns about the lack of debates on ‘hot’ topics in higher education and their implementation in the Palestinian context. Accordingly, I worked with a group of interested academic leaders to organize monthly debates on issues that concern them. The main purpose of these debates was to create a forum for faculty members to discuss and share ideas and to establish a community of practice. In some cases, these sessions were opened up to other Palestinian universities in order to enrich the discussion and to create common use of terminology in the Palestinian context. None of these individual initiatives to enhance leaders’ roles in leading a change within their departments could become fully effective if these efforts were not also institutionalized by the university itself. For this reason, I worked closely with the academic vice president in engaging academic leaders in the process of developing policies on teaching and learning. The process took two years of intensive meetings and workshops to develop genuine and authentic policies. In some of these workshops I  invited international consultants who followed the same progressive approach to share their experience at developing similar policies within their respective institutions. Again, at each stage of writing the policies, academic leaders conducted discussions within their departments to receive feedback and new inputs. By doing so, I assumed that we could

Academic Leadership and Political Oppression in Palestine

71

break the ‘top-down’ approach to leading change believing that when people ‘own’ the ideas and feel part of the process, the potential for resistance is minimized. On the other hand, this milestone in the process helped me to build a rapport with senior leaders who started to see the effectiveness of engaging ‘middle’ leaders in the process. The process was built on a high level of trust and engagement that increased the level of motivation and critical awareness among the majority of academic leaders of the potential for leading real change in the quality of teaching and learning at university level. This ‘seed of progress’ moved us all into a further stage in which crucial questions were raised about ‘change’, which could not be limited to departments or individuals, but which concerned matters at the institutional level. The questions concerned the decision-making hierarchy as well as some policies and regulations that were felt to limit opportunities for progressive changes in academia. New conflicts emerged between progressive and extremely conservative leaders and non-academic administrative leaders, who perhaps felt threatened by a potential loss of ‘authority’ if more democratic and progressive views about change were to breach ‘taboos’ in the structure of the institution. While writing this chapter, this conflict (which is always to be expected when such change processes begin) has created a new challenge at the institutional level concerning the ‘boundaries’ of change that the university will support and whether the process that has developed so far will be enhanced or oppressed.

Conclusion What lessons can be learned from all this? For me, the challenge of a leader who holds emancipatory views about educational change is to learn how to work with all groups of academics. In my modest experience, I have learned that I cannot be ‘neutral’. Sometimes I have had to be ‘liberal’ (by negotiating or compromising) and in other cases, I have had to confront and resist. So I have learned that leaders should learn to seize the appropriate opportunities to share practices and views about change because this might help all sides to see things differently and perhaps learn more about the similarities and differences in their views. By doing this, more progressive leaders might also modify their plans, based on their assessment of the level of ‘readiness’ of their colleagues to be exposed to new challenges.

72

Rabab Tamish

Furthermore, my experience enhanced my belief that individuals cannot lead change easily, especially in a context that has witnessed different forms of political oppression. This is because passivity and lack of motivation caused by this experience can affect the majority of the participants in that context. It needs time to ‘break’ this situation. What leaders could do in the early stages of such a change process is to provide opportunities for people to become critically aware of the realities of their situations and to take actions to change them. The process of developing critical consciousness is long and complicated. Leaders should learn how to ‘read’ the context and the internal political dynamics in order to learn about the ‘strengths and limitations of the people they work with, as well as the resources (physical and human) that the institution could offer’. Leaders also need to understand that rapport and respect are not easily developed and in some cases are not possible. There is no simple recipe to follow, and what works with one person may not be successful with others. In my intervention plan, I learned that academics’ teaching experience, socio economic background, character, beliefs (and gender) could help to determine the ‘level’ of trust and readiness to work together. Finally, and most importantly, I learnt that ‘resistance’ to change has different faces, and that they vary according to the type of ‘change’ that is required. The literature suggests that resistance to change often comes about as a result of ‘fear of the unknown’ and that leaders do not feel confident to bring new values and practices into their work until they are familiar with them themselves. I agree with this analysis, but I would also argue that ‘change’ which leads to transformation (as opposed to mere reform) might put the authority and interests of specific leaders at risk, in particular those who most wish to conserve the status quo. Their resistance will therefore be stronger, not because of a fear of the unknown, but because they become aware that such change will challenge their authority and demand them to demonstrate different forms of leadership that they themselves might not understand or even believe in.

References al-Jabri, M. (2006), The Construction of the Arab Mind [in Arabic], 9th edn, Beirut: CAUS. Alzaroo, S. (1989), Higher Education in the Occupied Territories [in Arabic], Hebron: University Graduates Union.

Academic Leadership and Political Oppression in Palestine

73

Alzaroo, S. and G. L. Hunt (2003), ‘Education in the context of conflict and instability: The Palestinian case’, Social Policy and Administration, 37 (2): 165–180. Apple, M. W. (1995), Education and Power, 2nd edn, New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (2000), Official Knowledge: Democratic Education in a Conservative Age, 2nd edn, New York: Routledge. Assaf, S. (2004), The Palestinian Public Teachers’ Movement in the West Bank [in Arabic], Ramallah: Muwatin (Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy). Avenstrup, R. and S. Patti (2004), Peace is our Dream: An Impact Study of the Palestinian Curriculum, Ramallah: Belgian Technical Cooperation. Avolio, B., B. M. Bass and D. Jung (1999), ‘Re-examining the components of transformational and transactional leadership using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire’, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 72: 441–61. Baramki, G. (2010), Peaceful Resistance: Building a Palestinian University Under Occupation, London: Plauto Press. Bath D. and C. Smith (2004), ‘Academic developers: An academic tribe claiming their territory in higher education’, International Journal for Academic Development, 9 (1): 9–27. Becker, T. and P. R. Trowler (2001), Academic Tribes and Territories, 2nd edn, Buckingham: Open University Press. Bisbee, D. C. (2007), ‘Looking for leaders: Current practices in leadership identification in higher education’, Planning and Changing, 38 (1–2): 77–88. Bourdieu, P. (2006), ‘The forms of capital’, in H. Lauder, P. Brown, J. A. Dillabough and A. H. Halsey (eds), Education, Globalization and Social Change, 105–118, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davis, J., M. T. Hides and S. Casey (2007), ‘Leadership in higher education’, Total Quality Management, 12 (7–8): 1025–1030. Freire, P. (1974), Education for Critical Consciousness, London: Sheed and Ward. Freire, P. (1996), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, new edn, London: Penguin Books. Henkel, M. (2002), ‘Emerging concepts of academic leadership and their implications for intra-institutional roles and relationships in higher education’, European Journal of Education, 31 (1): 29–41. Hiltermann, J. R. (1991), ‘The women’s movement during the uprising’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 20: 48–57. Kekale, J. (1999), ‘ “Preferred” patterns of academic leadership in different disciplinary (sub)cultures, Higher Education, 37 (3): 217–38. Khalidi, W. (2006), All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies. Lunat, Z. (2009), ‘The Palestinian hidden transcript: domination, resistance and the role of ICTs in achieving freedoms’, The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 37(1): 1–22. Mahshi, K. and K. Bush (1989), ‘The Palestinian uprising and education for the future’, Harvard Educational Review, 59 (4): 470–83.

74

Rabab Tamish

Middlehurst, R. (2004), ‘Changing internal governance: A discussion of leadership roles and management structures in UK universities’, Higher Education Quarterly, 58 (4): 258–79. Moughrabi, F. (2001), ‘The politics of Palestinian textbooks’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 31 (1): 5–19. Nakhleh, K. (2005), The Strategic Plan for Enhancing Higher Education in Palestine [in Arabic]. Ramallah: (n.p). Newton, J. (2002), ‘Barriers to effective quality management and leadership: Case study of two academic departments’, Higher Education, 44 (2): 185–212. Nicolai, S. (2007), Fragmented Foundations: Education and Chronic Crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Paris: IIEP-UNESCO. Palestinian Ministry of Education (2007), Assessment of the Educational Reality [in Arabic], Ramallah, Palestinian Territories: Ministry of Education. Palestinian Ministry of Education (2008), Education Development Strategic Plan 2008–2012: Towards Quality Education for Development, Ramallah, Palestinian Territories: Ministry of Education. Palestinian Ministry of Planning (2004), A National Plan of Action for Palestinian Children 2004–2010, Ramallah, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian Ministry of Planning. Pappe, I. (2006), The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies (RCHRS) (2008), Educational Rights and Academic Freedoms in the Palestinian Authority Territories, Ramallah: RCHRS. Salameh, R. (2011), Industrialization of Higher Education [in Arabic], Almarsad Tnmawi, 4: 7–24. Scott, G., H. Coates and M. Anderson (2008), Learning Leaders in Times of Change, Sydney: University of Western Sydney and Australian Council for Educational Research. Saleh, A. J. (1982), Indigenous Problems of Institutions of Higher Education in the Occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem: Alquds Center for Research. Sfeir, J. (2006), Developing Basic Education in Palestine: A Holistic Integrated Perspective, Jerusalem: Maddad & Itailan Cooperation. Sfeir, J. and S. Bertoni (2003), The Challenge of Education in Palestine: The Second Intifada, Bethlehem: Faculty of Education, BU. Shulman L.S. (1986), ‘Those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching’, Educational Researcher, 15 (2): 4–14. UNESCO (2002), Developing Education in Palestine: A Continuing Challenge. Available online: http://www.unesco.org/education/news_en/131101_palestine.shtml (accessed 1 August 2008). UNHCR (2006), The State of the World’s Refugees 2006 – Human Displacement in the New Millennium, Geneva. Available online: http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/ page?page=49e486826 (accessed 6 August 2008).

4

Political Extremes in the Philippines: Academic Leadership and Social Engagement Bienvenido F. Nebres

My years of university leadership divide into two periods:  1973–1980, when I  was dean of the Ateneo College, and 1993–2011, when I  was president of Ateneo de Manila University. In both periods, I faced the academic challenge of raising the quality of teaching, learning and scholarship in a country with a young intellectual culture. Beyond the academic, however, Ateneo de Manila had always defined itself in terms of its contribution to the Philippine nation. Thus, leadership also demanded engagement, often intense, with the social and political challenges facing the country.

My early years’ education and career I grew up in the Northern Philippines in what is a largely farming and fishing region. My father was a medical doctor and served in the military before and during World War II. He was in Bataan and in the Death March, but was able to escape.1 My mother was a schoolteacher. I had my elementary schooling first in my hometown public school and then in a small Catholic school in a nearby town. My high school was in a Catholic seminary. I joined the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) right after high school and followed the usual Jesuit spiritual and academic formation. Jesuit studies at that time were in the Humanities, especially Greek and Latin classics, and in Scholastic Philosophy. However, I became interested in mathematics and was able to study, on my own, enough mathematics to be accepted at Stanford University and finish my PhD in mathematics there. Growing up and studying in a small town of farmers and fishermen, then following a long and rigorous spiritual and academic Jesuit formation and then doing

76

Bienvenido F. Nebres

a PhD at Stanford from 1965 to 1970 in Northern California of intense activism and change, all had a deep influence on my view of the world and of leadership.

Leadership in turbulent times: 1970s and 1980s I returned from my PhD studies in 1970 in the midst of political turmoil. The deep problem of the Philippines has always been the immense gap between the rich and poor.2 Communist and socialist movements among workers and farmers had developed since the early 1900s and periodically erupted in peasant revolts. These movements emerged with new strength in the late 1960s. There were calls for revolution and violent confrontation with the government. In September 1972, President Marcos declared martial law. The president ruled by decree, and rival politicians, businessmen in the opposition and student leaders were arrested, and many were tortured. We lived under constant surveillance and threat of arrest. In 1973 I was appointed dean of the Ateneo de Manila School of Arts and Sciences (better known then as Ateneo College), partly because, I believe, I could work with the activist students. I had always been interested in the socialist movements in the country and sympathized with their cause, if not with their proposed solutions. My tasks and challenges as dean in the period 1973–1980 can be divided into three: helping the college engage the polarized political situation in a constructive way; continuing to strengthen academics; and managing administration and finances in turbulent political and economic times. My first year as dean was a time of adjusting to a new situation. We welcomed our first coeds, as coeducation had just been approved by the Faculty Senate. We had to adjust to the realities of martial law, like restrictions on publications and assemblies and risk of arrest. After a year, I turned to the challenge of engaging our traditional mindset as a Liberal Arts College towards our role of leadership in a nation in crisis. I addressed this challenge in a talk to the faculty in September 1974. The talk was entitled: ‘The Ateneo in the Service of the Nation’. Because of the calls for revolution and a demand that we go to the poor, many Catholic and Jesuit schools were in crisis. Some, in fact, responded by closing. I thus said that we were facing ‘the diminution or outright rejection of the value of education . . . the talk of not just the irrelevance, but the perniciousness of formal education’ (Nebres [1975] 2005, pp. 290–1). How were we to continue our academic mission as a university and at the same time contribute to the needed social reform?

Political Extremes in the Philippines

77

Moreover, how could we participate actively in the process of social and political transformation, which meant treading a path between the martial law government on the right and the communist movement on the left? In that 1974 Faculty Address, I addressed in particular our vision of the student we sought to form:  ‘In the past the Ateneo has seen the ideal student it wished to train as the Christian gentleman, the man with sapientia et eloquentia’ (2005, p. 297). Today our vision of an ideal student should be that of a man and woman for others, as presented by the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Pedro Arrupe: ‘Today our prime educational objectives must be to form men and women for others, . . . who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors’ (Arrupe, [1973] 2005, pp. 273–4). Fr Arrupe also asked for academic excellence, saying that a university ‘that could not maintain excellence in standards is a waste of personnel and resources’ (Magadia, 2005, pp. 235–6). My address was well received. It assured faculty that our mission of teaching and research would continue. But I also outlined the transformation we had to undergo. The most important and transformative initiative that we undertook was to set up the Office of Social Concern and Involvement (OSCI) and offices for work with farmers and workers, which eventually became the Center for Community Services. Through these offices, we led students and faculty through a process of personal and social transformation. Among the programmes were: (1) General Orientation Seminars, where we addressed the roots of injustice and social inequality in the country and presented to students and faculty our moral responsibility to make a difference. (2) Immersion and Exposure programmes with the rural and urban poor, where we placed students with individual farmers or poor urban families so they could form friendships and see and feel how the world looked from below. We also had summer workcamps3 for a month or so in the rural areas with faculty and students. (3) Through seminars and publications, we engaged the community in continuing reflection on their experiences and on national events. (4) Faculty members included work with the poor and reflection on the experience in their coursework (Evangelista, 2005, pp. 186–89). We had to face challenges and take risks. I had sleepless nights worrying that something would happen to the students in the field. I had to take time to reassure parents that we were in control of the situation. Several students and young

78

Bienvenido F. Nebres

alumni became more engaged in the lives of farmers and workers. We then faced the situation of the Left trying to recruit them to the communist movement or accusing them of being with the CIA. Or, the military would suspect them of being leftists. In fact, in 1980 the OSCI was raided by the military, and several staff were arrested and detained for some months. There were times, as well, when I would call in students and tell them to take time off from their social involvement as their studies were being jeopardized. Faculty and students who became more involved in the struggle against the martial law regime chose one of two paths:  some joined underground movements mainly affiliated or associated with the Social Democratic Left (Tolosa, 2011, pp.  261–4); others became active in political opposition organizations, which became more tolerated by the government as Mr Marcos started to hold heavily controlled elections and plebiscites, beginning in 1978. We also moved forward to introduce reforms in the College curriculum to make it more relevant to the changed social context. Ateneo had traditionally been an English-medium school. While English continues to be very important, it was clear that faculty and students had to be more proficient in the national language, Filipino. We established the Department of Filipino in 1974 and required bilingual proficiency (in English and Filipino) for our students. I wrote: ‘I am convinced that it is very crucial for the country to have a common language. It should not be a foreign language. The Atenean of the future should be very competent in Filipino’ (Magadia, 2005, p. 236). Social science subjects  – psychology, sociology, political science, history  – were introduced or updated to enable students to reflect about the social realities and theories relevant to these. The university already had a strong tradition of graduate education and research in the social sciences, notably psychology and sociology, and this became stronger in the context of the times. Academic tradition in mathematics and the natural sciences was weak in the country as a whole. In a 1979 paper, ‘The Task of a Jesuit University in the Philippines’, I wrote: ‘The tradition of scholarship and the life of the mind is the heart and pride of all institutions of higher learning in the older countries. In the Philippines, the difference is that this tradition is lacking or at best weak’ (Nebres, 1979, p. 82). I thus led the formation of a consortium among the three leading universities in Metro-Manila, the University of the Philippines, the Ateneo de Manila and De La Salle University, to develop PhD programmes and research in mathematics, physics and chemistry (Garcia, 2011, pp. 134ff.). What was achieved by the Ateneo’s move towards social transformation? Most relevant is the role that the Jesuits and the Ateneo de Manila played in

Political Extremes in the Philippines

79

the period 1983–1986, which was the transition from martial law to democracy. By that time my leadership role was not confined to the Ateneo de Manila University, but to all the Jesuit institutions in the country as Jesuit Provincial Superior (1983–1989). The book 150 Years of Engaging the Nation describes the role as follows: The involvement of the Ateneo in political events from 1983 to 1986 was essentially characterized by the coming together of two distinct generations of Ateneans who were influenced by two different traditions of social action, both rooted in Catholic Social Thought. (Hofileña, 2010, p. 187)

The book then explains that the older generation was grounded in the Catholic Social Teaching of the 1930s and had formed labour, farmer and political organizations following these lines. The younger generation was influenced by “Vatican II, in particular, the new papal social encyclicals, the Jesuit Thirtysecond General Congregation . . . and Medellin and Puebla and liberation theology” (Hofileña, 2010, pp. 187–8). I ran seminars to bring these two generations together and help them understand each other. The merging of the older and younger generation became part of the leadership for a middle path between the communist Left and the martial law Right. When Mr Marcos in late 1985 called for ‘snap elections’ to be held in February 1986, the Left opted to boycott, as they said elections would be a sham. Thus, much of the organized leadership in support of Mrs Corazon Aquino came from this middle group and the Church (Hofileña, 2010, pp. 188ff.). In terms of longer term impact, one of the key student leaders of the 1970s and now Congresswoman Dina Abad said in 2002: When one scans the people’s organizations . . . in various advocacies – you can trace their roots to . . . the Center for Community Services and the Office of Social Concern and Involvement. . . . What was most important was these organizations presented the praxis of “being a person for others” and the link between the university as a source of knowledge and the struggle of communities for their right to life and development. (Evangelista, 2005, p. 188)

On my own role, an article in the book Down from the Hill: Ateneo de Manila in the First Ten Years of Martial Law, 1972–1982 says: ‘Father Nebres was perhaps the main architect of the Ateneo’s proactive response to martial law conditions as he, working with Fr. Noel Vasquez, played a major role in instigating the social action groups and organizations with which the Ateneo met the challenges of social justice during the seventies and eighties’ (Evangelista, 2005, p. 202).

80

Bienvenido F. Nebres

Leadership in times of change: 1993–2011 I returned to the Ateneo de Manila University as president in June 1993. I realized that a major task was to help the university get to know and engage a much changed world. The world of the 1990s was a world of globalization and competitiveness, dominated by business and technology. It was very different from the world of the 1970s, where martial law isolated us and politics and ideology were dominant.4 Because of my leadership role in improving mathematics and science education in the country, I  had extensive links with universities in Southeast Asia, Japan, China, Australia and Europe. I saw that the Ateneo and other Philippine universities would have to undergo transformation in structure and culture if we were to catch up with the world around us. However, universities also have a Maslow hierarchy of needs. Thus, in my first year I attended to physical and financial needs (water, electricity, salaries) and social needs (rebuilding broken relationships in some departments and schools). Beginning in my second year, 1994–1995, I engaged the university community in getting to know our new world of globalization, technology and competitiveness (Office of the President, 1995, p. 14). At that time, Ateneo de Manila University was the School of Arts and Sciences and two Professional Schools: Law and Business. The most important was the School of Arts and Sciences, or the Ateneo College. It had the longest history, the most influential faculty and the most distinguished alumni. It had a unitary system of over 30 departments (Humanities, Science and Technology, Social Science, Management) under a single dean. It was clear that structurally it was not ready to engage a world more competitive and more specialized. No single dean, I explained, can lead in the different worlds of the Humanities, the Social Sciences, Science and Technology, and Management. It was also a very successful college, attracting very bright students and with alumni who were leaders in the country. Thus, there was no great incentive to change. My challenge was how to lead a process that would open up mindsets and self-concept to the reality of a much changed world. At the same time, I wanted to make sure the school kept its very strong culture, which had been the key to its past successes. The key ‘battle lines’ were: ‘should it remain a unitary college under one dean or should it divide into four or more Schools?’ If it divided, how would it keep its strong culture, a unity in ‘essentials’, in particular a core curriculum, which students and alumni always said was the most important part of their education?

Political Extremes in the Philippines

81

The process I led over almost two years was a series of back-and-forth meetings and discussions between the president, Board of Trustees, faculty, students and alumni (Hechanova, 2012, pp.  95–114). The first question we engaged was: ‘What kind of institution do we want to be in the new world of globalization and greater professional specialization?’ (1) Do we want to remain a Liberal Arts college, with some graduate and professional programmes? (2) Or do we want to be a national university, with leadership in selected academic and professional fields? The Board of Trustees said that the Ateneo had always seen itself as a school for leaders of the country, and thus we should aim for the latter. I  was asked then to engage the faculty in a process. The most challenging part was on the future of the Humanities-based core curriculum, in particular philosophy and theology, which students and alumni always regarded as the most influential of their courses. The faculty, notably in science and engineering, wanted more room for specialized courses. The Humanities felt that this was a diminution of their importance and role. We invited the faculty to look at the new world where our graduates would be going. Their report in 1996 said: Our graduates are entering a more complex world of globalization, competition and rapid advances in technology and information. This same world is in evergreater need of humanism, social concern and caring, and God’s transforming grace and presence. Ateneo graduates of this generation must be proactive in the national and global contexts, and at the same time, critically rooted in Philippine culture, professionally trained and imbued with the scientific spirit, and strongly rooted to faith and justice. (Core Curriculum, [1998] 2003)

This formulation captures the many goals we had to keep in balance. The detailed process towards a reformulation of the core curriculum that would achieve a better balance between core and specialized courses and would be accepted by all was led by the dean, Dr Mari-Jo Ruiz. Consultations were held with all sectors (faculty, students, alumni). Proposals went through many iterations. We had to ensure continuing communication and trust through the process. So we organized several weekend workshops, called ‘Softening Boundaries’, where faculty from different (and disagreeing) departments came together and established trust with each other (among other things, by playing mahjong or singing karaoke). The president and dean always attended.

82

Bienvenido F. Nebres

In a meeting of all the faculty in June 1996, we achieved final consensus on a new core curriculum. Equally important, the process, which engaged all sectors, brought us together. As the dean, Dr. Mari-Jo Ruiz, wrote later: As a result of the process, we grew as a community. We learned to appreciate what each had to offer. Because of the intense involvement of almost everyone in the process, we all owned the final product. We started as many voices. In the end, we spoke as one voice. (Ruiz, 2011, pp. 113–14)

The 1996 decision led to dividing the college into four schools, Humanities, Management, Science and Engineering, and Social Science, with their own deans under a vice president. At the same time, there would be offices under the vice president for what would be the ‘unity in essentials’:  committees on Curriculum, Standards, Discipline, Admissions and Financial Aid, Faculty Rank and Permanent Appointment. In 1998, we established the Office of Mission and Identity for the university. Its mandate has been to nurture and strengthen spirituality and culture. We then had to go through a process of choosing leadership teams and work on strategic planning for each of the schools. Then we had to construct new buildings and facilities and, along the way, we had to strengthen our Development Office. This latter work, while demanding, was not difficult. This was because of the wonderful energy and enthusiasm in the community that came with the process of change. Each of the new schools entered into vigorous strategic planning. We built new buildings and facilities, first for the School of Science and Engineering and the School of Management. We renovated the School of Humanities Building and that of the School of Social Sciences. Later we built a new Social Sciences Building, a new Student Center, Sports Center and Library. But our campus and buildings are only the physical embodiment of our aspirations. Their design, I believe, shows our aspirations for greater academic excellence and competitiveness, as well for a shared humanism, social concern and spirituality. Bringing the whole campus together is the Church of the Gesu, the University Church, on the highest hill, finished in 2002. The four schools, now known collectively as the Loyola Schools, grew in enrolment from 4,000 to 8,000 students. Quality has also gone up, as can be seen from almost 20,000 applicants for 2,000 freshman slots. The new School of Management received a major endowment and was renamed the John Gokongwei School of Management. It is recognized nationally as the best undergraduate school of management. The School of Humanities has moved beyond

Political Extremes in the Philippines

83

the traditional Humanities programmes to programmes in Fine Arts and has also grown in number and quality of students. The new energies have also led to stronger graduate and research programmes. All the four schools, in particular the School of Science and Engineering and the School of Social Sciences, have Centers of Excellence chosen by the Philippine Commission on Higher Education. This whole transformation to new levels of achievement was led by Dr.  Anna Miren Intal, the first vice president for the Loyola Schools (Intal, 2006). The two older professional schools, the Graduate School of Business and the School of Law, have also moved up both in academic ranking and in programmes of service to the community. The most recent developments in response to the university’s mission of service to a country are two professional schools: a School of Government focused on programmes for local governments, and a School of Medicine and Public Health that prepares graduates to be clinicians, as well as doctors in service of poor communities. In 1994, I invited Dr. Alfredo Bengzon, who had been Secretary of Health under President Corazon Aquino, to join the Ateneo de Manila as vice president. We had reflected on the fact that we had so many business schools. But we also realized that we had hardly any schools to educate and train public servants – the leaders who handle power over the country. In 1996, we started the Ateneo School of Government as a project. It became an independent school in 2001. It focuses on local government (governors and mayors and their staff ), because the task of uplifting the life of the poor begins at the local level. The school gives a Master’s in Public Management as well as Executive programmes to local government officials. The school’s metric for success is not academic, that is, publications, but successful reforms and innovations enabling local governments to create wealth and deliver basic services. Its goal is to help build the country, town by town, city by city, province by province, until the school establishes partnerships with 1,000 local government units (Office of the President, 2009, pp. 28–9 and Office of the President, 2011, pp. 60–1). Perhaps the school where our two goals of academic excellence and social relevance come closest together is in our newest school, the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health, the brainchild of our vice president, Dr Alfredo Bengzon. In our 1995 Strategic Planning Workshop, I  was asked whether the Ateneo would build a School of Medicine. My answer then was no. A School of Medicine, I  said at the time, is very expensive, and the country already

84

Bienvenido F. Nebres

had more than enough schools of medicine. However, in 1997 the proposal changed to a School of Medicine and Public Health. This clearly met a great national need, because the major health problems of the country are in the area of public health: tuberculosis, malaria, schistosomiasis, gastrointestinal diseases, bad sanitation and lack of clean drinking water. Having a School of Medicine and Public Health together would bridge the problematic divide in the country between the culture of the medical profession and that of public health. Because of various logistical roadblocks, the School only opened in 2007. But what became a ten-year process of planning and building led to the creation of a truly innovative school: combining clinical medicine and public health and also giving the new doctors an MBA in Health. The faculty were all deeply involved in the process of designing the curriculum and the modes of delivery. Many doubted that it would be possible to bring together all the different facets. But it has been wonderful seeing the faculty work together. The graduates have done very well in the medical boards. We have seen the number and quality of applicants grow over the years. I personally feel a great sense of fulfilment as I meet young clerks and interns making their rounds in tertiary hospitals and in health centres in the poor communities I also work with. Several graduates have opted to go into public health.5 The School of Management also moved forward to bring academic excellence and social relevance together. It developed an entrepreneurship track with social entrepreneurship as an option for the students. Those who opt for this track go through a one-year guided programme to develop a social enterprise for a poor community. This is done in partnership with Gawad Kalinga, an organization that builds homes and communities for the poor, and McKinsey. This has put the School of Management at the forefront of building social businesses for the poor. This also bridged the cultural divide between the students and graduates who were engaged in social programmes and those in the business tracks (Office of the President, 2005, p. 3).

Leadership in wider social engagements The write-up on the jacket of the book 150 Years of Engaging the Nation, published for the university’s 150th anniversary in 2009, says:  ‘These essays are reflections of how the Ateneo’s own history has been closely intertwined with that of the Filipino nation and how it has sought to engage the nation towards

Political Extremes in the Philippines

85

the creation of a more just and equitable society’ (Hofileña, 2010). In my years as president, the major challenges were poverty and inequality. Our usual analysis and solutions for poverty focus on economics. But the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen says that deeper than economic poverty is a poverty of capability. Capability, he says, comes from education and health. Thus, we established the Ateneo Center for Educational Development (ACED) in 1995 as the university arm to improve educational achievement in public schools, where 90 percent of Filipino children study. These schools are heavily under-resourced and academic achievement is low. A study Ateneo did for the Philippine Department of Education in 1994 showed that the two variables that differentiated a high-performing from a lowperforming elementary school, given the same socio-economic context, were the leadership of the principal and the support of the community. We were guided by this study and focused on bringing together the principal, teachers, parents, pupils and community leaders to work towards major academic improvement, beginning with four large and very poor schools in a nearby urban poor area. ACED provided teacher training and academic support based on the plans of the schools. The four schools all improved. In fact, one moved from being number 94 out of 96 schools to number 9 in three years. ACED now follows this strategy in a network of 400 public schools (Oracion, 2011, pp. 171–80). We continued to dialogue with the teachers and principals, and we found that we cannot separate education and poverty. Children who were considered non-readers actually could not see the blackboard. They needed eyeglasses. On another occasion, the teachers told us, ‘The children are hungry. They either do not come to school or they come and just fall asleep.’ Thus, we started a school lunch programme several years ago. This started with 400 pupils in one school. We then scaled up to 4,000 pupils in four schools, and then, with the support of the mayor, to 17,000 children in the day care centres and elementary schools in one city. ACED now provides school lunches for over 25,000 children every school day in the Metro-Manila area. One teacher described the change dramatically. ‘We were teaching ghosts’, she said, ‘their eyes were blank. Now they are alive and paying attention’. Poverty is also homelessness. Gawad Kalinga (GK) is an organization which started in 2003 to build homes and communities for the poorest of the poor. Unlike HABITAT which leaves after the homes are built, Gawad Kalinga stays with the families and communities. Ateneo de Manila was the first university partner of Gawad Kalinga. We set up our own Ateneo Gawad Kalinga Office and we built our first GK community, Payatas 13, in 2003. Over the

86

Bienvenido F. Nebres

years, Ateneo has built 10 GK communities with about 800 families. Many of our faculty and students continue to work with these communities, particularly in helping the children and youth finish school (Office of the President, 2011, pp. 38–49). Young social entrepreneurs are also creating businesses for the poor. Among the pioneers are two young women with whom I worked in Gawad Kalinga in their student days. Reese Fernandez is president of Rags2Riches, which has transformed the lives of up to 900 poor women. These women used to earn very little money from weaving foot-rugs from scrap cloth. Reese and her team came along and worked with them to create women’s bags and other accessories, which sell in high-end shops in the country and in Singapore and London (http://www.rags2riches.ph). Melissa Yeung founded Got Heart Foundation, which has developed an organic farm and supports organic farming for a network of farmers (http://www.gotheartfoundation. org). I believe that their success in developing businesses for the poor comes from their education and their deep immersion in Gawad Kalinga communities during their student days. In December 2004, the Philippines experienced one of what would be a continuing series of devastating typhoons. The Ateneo mobilized to gather and distribute relief goods to the typhoon victims and then to help rebuild homes. This experience of disaster response became institutionalized in the Ateneo DReaMTeam (Disaster Response and Management Team). It is a network across the university that can be mobilized within hours of a major disaster. The Ateneo DReaMTeam and Gawad Kalinga have played major roles in responding to recent disasters, such as Typhoon Haiyan (www.ateneo.edu/ disaster-response-and-management-dream-team).

Summing Up Finally, how can our academic pursuits and social engagement come together? In 2008, I provided research funds for a team of Ateneo social scientists to study the different engagements of the university on poverty and see ‘what works’, what really helps families and communities and what is the path out of poverty. The team has studied the work of Gawad Kalinga, several social enterprises and work in education and public health. In 2010, they presented a first draft of their work. The initial study showed that social change that can scale up is an outcome of two engagements:  making existing government institutions

Political Extremes in the Philippines

87

fulfil their functions and enabling different groups to interact with one another in new ways. In April 2015, we held a conference, ‘What Works:  Scaling up Social Change Initiatives’. The presentations in this conference showed that we have learned much about the nature of poverty, the culture of the poor and the qualities of effective social entrepreneurs. The social engagement in the field and in academic research continues to grow in depth as they go through new iterations. Many new insights have been gained and, in this way, the Ateneo’s direct engagement with poverty is providing a better empirical base for theory, and the emerging theoretical frameworks, in turn, provide guidance for future engagements.6

Personal reflections on my years of leadership Over the years I have come to understand my leadership as founded on knowledge of my institution, knowledge of the environment and knowledge of myself. I also keep in mind that these three realities interact and influence each other. Until I was appointed dean of Ateneo College in 1973, most of my life had been in academic studies and teaching. I did not think of myself as a leader. About myself, I  knew I  had natural intellectual gifts and a capacity for discipline and hard work. My Jesuit spiritual training also taught me to reflect regularly and learn from experience. In particular, it taught me to respond to criticism and opposition constructively. I  learned to see criticism as related to my role, and I would ask if there was something I should change or clarify. I learned to separate myself from my role. In terms of the context of the times, several experiences had prepared me. I had an interest in the social history of the Philippines and in socialist and communist movements, and so I understood where the student and faculty activists were coming from. As dean, I learned about my institution by meeting all the departments and faculty and preparing for each meeting carefully. When I became president in 1993, I spent my first year meeting with all the departments and faculty, as well as getting to know the staff. In the 1970s, there was little in the management literature that was helpful, except for Peter Drucker’s Effective Executive. My most useful leadership lessons came from studying strategy and tactics from great battles in history. There were better leadership books in the 1990s. Most valuable for me were the two books of Ronald Heifetz (Heifetz, 1994; Heifetz and Linsky, 2002).

88

Bienvenido F. Nebres

I think what helped me grow the most in leadership was a readiness to face difficult challenges, to go out of comfort zones and learn. I personally ran conscientization and leadership seminars for students, accompanied faculty and students in immersion programmes among the poor and led the community in activities against the martial law government. When faced with a difficult situation, I would spend time praying and running through all the possible scenarios over and over again until I felt emotionally ready to face any contingency. One of the skills which people have credited me with is an ability to choose the right people for a job or office. In particular, I  look for energy and drive. Much of what I have been able to accomplish is because of excellent co-workers. What helped prepare me for the new world of globalization in the 1990s was extensive international experience. Beginning in 1972, I  worked with fellow mathematicians to develop mathematics in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. I was president of the Southeast Asian Mathematical Society 1978–1979 and on the Executive Committee for about ten years. This brought me into regular contact with academics and universities in Southeast Asia, Japan, China, Australia, the United States and France. I  served on international committees in mathematics and mathematics education and worked on major science and technology projects with the Philippine government. I thus saw the changes occurring in universities around the world, and so when I spoke to the Ateneo de Manila faculty about the challenge of globalization, competitiveness and technology in the early 1990s, I did so from personal experience. My six years as Jesuit Provincial Superior, 1983–1989, taught me to be a better listener and to have more concern for individual persons. I think I was a better leader as president in 1993 than as dean in 1973 because of that experience.

Notes 1 The US-Philippine Army surrendered to the Japanese in Bataan in April 1942. They had to march with little food or water to the concentration camp ninety-seven kilometres away. 2 The Philippines has made little progress on Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1, cutting in half extreme poverty and hunger. Poverty remains at about 26 percent. As for MDG 2, Universal Primary Education, about 35 percent do not finish elementary education. 3 In the summer workcamps, faculty and students would help in farm or fishing work. Deeply transformative were the evening sessions, when we would exchange stories with the community.

Political Extremes in the Philippines

89

4 In the 1970s, I gave regular lectures on the so-called political spectrum, the different parties and organizations, from the extreme Left to the centre and to the right. In the 1990s, my talks were on coming to terms with globalization and a wired world. 5 Cf. the school website, http://www.admu.edu.ph/aps/asmph, where the dean and associate dean of the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health describe the goals and achievements of the school. 6 Cf. C. Saloma, M. Lao and L. Lopez (2010), ‘What Works: Nature and Trajectory of Social Change in the Philippines’, Quezon City: Institute of Philippine Culture and Office of the President, Ateneo de Manila University, 127 pp. This paper presents the results of the study as of 2010. The 2015 results, presented in the April conference, are in process.

References Arrupe, P. ([1973] 2005), ‘Men and Women for Others: Education for Social Justice and Action Today’, 1973 Address to alumni of Jesuit Schools, in C. Montiel and S. Evangelista (eds), Down from the Hill: Ateneo in the First Ten Years of Martial Law, 1972–1982, 273–89, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. ‘Core Curriculum and Restructuring Documents, School of Arts and Sciences, 1998’, in Paths Travelled and Paths Ahead, Ateneo de Manila President’s Report 2003, Office of the President. Evangelista, S. (2005), ‘Faculty, Administration and Social Development Professionals During Martial Law’, in C. Montiel and S. Evanglista (eds), Down from the Hill: Ateneo in the First Ten Years of Martial Law, 1972–1982, 145–204, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Garcia, E. (2011), ‘Building a Science Community’, in A. Cuyegkeng and A. PalmaAngeles (eds), Defining Filipino Leadership: A Festschrift in Honor of Fr. Bienvenido F. Nebres, S.J., 134–50, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press,. Hechanova, R. (2012), ‘Transforming Academe: The Ateneo Way’, in R. Hechanova and E. Franco (eds), Rebirth and Reinvention: Transforming Philippine Organizations, 95–114, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Heifetz, R. (1994), Leadership without Easy Answers, Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press. Heifetz, R. and Linsky, M. (2002), Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading, Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press. Hofileña, J. D., ed. (2010), The Ateneo de Manila University: 150 Years of Engaging the Nation, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Intal, Anna Miren (2006), ‘Six Remarkable Years of Institution Building’, Term Report 2000–2006: Initiatives and Achievements (Ateneo de Manila University Loyola Schools). Office of the Vice-President.

90

Bienvenido F. Nebres

Magadia, J. (2005), ‘The Political Landscape of the ‘70s and Some Jesuit Responses’, in C. Montiel and S. Evangelista (eds), Down from the Hill: Ateneo in the First Ten Years of Martial Law, 1972–1982, 205–50, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Nebres, B. F. ([1975] 2005), ‘The Ateneo in the Service of the Nation’, in C. Montiel and S. Evangelista (eds), Down from the Hill: Ateneo in the First Ten Years of Martial Law, 1972–1982, 290–307, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Nebres, B. F. (1979), ‘The Task of a Jesuit University in the Philippines’, Philippine Studies, 27 (1): 82–92. Office of the President (1995), Vision and Mission: Strategic Planning Workshop, 1995, Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University. Office of the President (2003), President’s Report 2003, Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University. Office of the President (2005) Commitment to Hope: President’s Report on Addressing Poverty, 2004–2005, Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University. Office of the President (2009), Sesquicentennial President’s Report 2009, Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University. Office of the President (2011), Commitment to Hope: President’s Report on Addressing Poverty, 2011, Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University. Oracion, C. (2011), ‘Improving Public Schools in the Philippines through the ADMU’, in A. Cuyegkeng and A. Angeles (eds), Defining Filipino Leadership: A Festschrift in Honor of Fr. Bienvenido F. Nebres, S.J., 171–180, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Ruiz, M. J. (2011), ‘The School of Arts and Sciences Core Curriculum Review: 1994–1998’, in A. Cuyegkeng and A. Angeles (eds), Defining Filipino Leadership: A Festschrift in Honor of Fr. Bienvenido F. Nebres, S.J., 108–14, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Saloma, C., M. Lao and L. Lopez (2010), ‘What Works: Nature and Trajectory of Social Change in the Philippines’, Quezon City: Institute of Philippine Culture and Office of the President, Ateneo de Manila University. Tolosa, B. (ed.) (2011), SOCDEM: Filipino Social Democracy in a Time of Turmoil and Transition 1965–1995, Manila: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

5

Leadership of Academic Writing Development in England: Narratives of Problems, Pragmatism and Possibility Carol A. Taylor and Jacqueline Stevenson

Introduction In this chapter, we use first-person narrative vignettes to illuminate some of the issues we have encountered in our respective research leadership roles tasked with developing writing for publication initiatives for staff. We propose a conception of leadership as a non-hierarchical, embodied practice and draw on these rich, personal accounts to illuminate how leadership is activated in webs of relations within institutional settings. This allows us to highlight the personal and the relational, and the values embedded in leadership practices. Our vignettes serve to highlight tensions in higher education between structures of accountability, national and international research imperatives, competition and league tables, as well as the personal and affective engagement with writing. The chapter records the problems encountered and how we have arrived at a position where, together, we are trying something new, based in values of collaboration, participation and transparency, which makes a difference to the institutional culture and to individuals engaged in writing. The chapter begins with six vignettes. Following this, we elaborate a theory of research leadership for writing as an embodied practice and trace this through in relation to identity, emotions and values, with reference to the vignettes. The third part of the chapter focuses on our joint writing initiatives to illuminate how we put our values into practice.

92

Carol A. Taylor and Jacqueline Stevenson

Carol’s vignettes Academics in UK post-1992 universities (former polytechnics or colleges given university status in 1992) face both institutional and personal challenges in writing academic outputs, particularly for refereed research journals. Historically, the post-1992 universities are teaching-led institutions. However, recent shifts in the allocation of research funding in UK higher education institutions, as a result of the new system for assessing the quality of research (the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014), as well as the policy shift towards increasing marketization within the higher education sector (BIS, 2011), have produced greater institutional competition and an increasing desire on the part of post-1992 universities to move into research terrain formerly occupied by ‘older’, pre-1992 research-led universities. In this new competitive landscape, written research outputs such as journal articles are being repositioned: they are increasingly valorized as vehicles for brand enhancement; they are seen as Unique Selling Point indicators within an increasingly competitive publishing culture; and they are markers of esteem for staff and their institutions in an increasingly differentiated and stratified higher education system. It is not surprising, then, that MacLeod, Steckley and Murray (2012, p. 642) think it ‘would be unethical’ not to address the concerns about writing for publication ‘given the serious consequences for academic careers of failing to publish’. The challenges facing individual academics in this context are also significant. Not only are staff increasingly required to produce academic outputs while managing heavy teaching loads (Clegg, 2008) but, in post-1992 universities, there is often a reluctance by staff to self-identify as ‘academic’, particularly among those lecturers recruited from ‘professional’ backgrounds (Moore, 2003). Our own work has evidenced how some staff may struggle to conceptualize themselves as ‘research active’ (Stevenson, Burke and Whelan, 2014), and many experience a lack of confidence in writing papers at the required ‘quality’ threshold. There is, however, good evidence that these challenges can be overcome if sufficient support is offered. Structured writing groups, with time and space defended for writing and clear plans for outputs, along with the development of a community of writers, have been proven to have a significant level of success (Lee and Boud, 2003; McGrail, Richard and Jones, 2006; Moore, Murphy and Murray, 2010; Murray et al., 2008). The activities we outline in our vignettes occurred when we were both Readers (a role offered to senior academics in the UK who have attained high standing in research). The Reader role is often positioned as a key resource,

Leadership of Academic Writing Development in England

93

although the distribution of Readers across the higher education sector is very uneven. In the universities in which we worked, it was used to establish a career route for research staff, as a stepping stone between senior lecturer and professor.

Vignette 1: ‘Just be quiet and listen’ After I was promoted to Reader, I was invited to the REF Reading Panel. The Panel had been in place for a number of years, and its purpose was to read and rate articles written by staff members in accordance with the UK Quality Assurance Agency ‘star rating’ criteria1 (HEFCE, 2014) in advance of determining which papers might be included in the University’s eventual REF submission. At my first Reading Panel I sat uncomfortably and listened to a colleague’s paper being dissected, filleted and laid bare on the table: its faults revealed (it was a ‘case study’ without a ‘robust enough’ empirical base), its ‘quality’ found wanting (it was, alas, only a two-star not a three- or four-star paper) and its argument judged as not substantial enough (many suggestions for additional theorizations that would have improved the paper’s ‘significance’ were made). I listened and was unable to say a word; I was invited to contribute but declined; I was silenced by the polite collegiality of this discourse that made my stomach queasy. The author, too, was polite. Yet I caught their desperate disappointment in their carefully worded thanks for our comments and the courtesy with which they noted that our feedback would be a help to their future writing development. This event took me back instantaneously to an experience I’d had as a PhD student where I’d presented a draft of only the second academic paper I’d written to a departmental research group for feedback and comments. I’d thought I was in a ‘safe’ and supportive space. I  saw this act of ‘going public’ as a necessary point in my academic journey. I thought I would be okay opening my writing to academic scrutiny from trusted colleagues. The Chair invited comments. One person immediately spoke at length about the paper’s ‘faults’, including its difficult terminology, the presumptuous use of postmodernist theory to critique radical pedagogy, and use of semicolons. Under the hot gaze of everyone, I listened politely and wrote some blurry comments down. The Chair then invited further comments, and four more people spoke negatively about the paper. It was clear that aspects of my paper had been misunderstood and misinterpreted, but on three occasions when I responded to clarify, the Chair first held up her hand to prevent me from speaking and then held up her finger to me and said

94

Carol A. Taylor and Jacqueline Stevenson

‘just be quiet and listen’. Two people then made short, positive comments but these were lost as the Chair decided it was time to move on. I felt devastated. I had sought and expected constructive critical appraisal; what came my way was negative public judgement and the lack of a ‘right to reply’.

Vignette 2: ‘What sort of guide will I be?’ Three years ago, I became a mentor to Miranda, a colleague who had recently joined the university. She was new to the university, having come here specifically to develop her research career. I was a new Reader, having been promoted only months previously. Together, we shaped a formal project, resourced by selfmanaged staff development time, with three aims:  first, that I  would support Miranda in the production of her first academic article; second, that I would feel my way into my Reader role through mentoring; and third, together we would explore the process of mentoring as a dialogic practice. We decided to do the latter by writing and sharing diary entries during the life of the project. At the end of the project we decided to write together to critically appraise our writing methodology in light of the practice of dialogic mentoring. Thinking about it now, what comes to me is the importance of talk and time in the process of writing and mentoring: talk initially about what we wanted to get out of the project; talk about our career histories; and then talk about our respective PhDs, our goals, motivations, values, beliefs and purposes. This talk led to more talk: about ourselves, our families, the animals we shared our lives with (Miranda loves cats, me dogs), our colleagues, our students, our courses, our fears, hopes and futures. The talk wove itself around and through our writing. The talk activated the writing together, and the writing was embodied in the talk, as we sat together at the computer and jointly composed sentences, brushing them up, sometimes painfully slowly, sometimes in a small rush of inspiration, until we were both happy with them. Talking together, we made the writing happen together: the words materialized on the page.

Vignette 3: Having a strategy Being strategic, and acting strategically, depends on having a strategy. When I joined my university seven years ago – a post-1992 in the North of England – I  wasn’t aware that we had a research strategy, or at least if we did it was so

Leadership of Academic Writing Development in England

95

submerged under other mission goals that it didn’t seem like we did. Then RAE money came our way in 2009 and bought those of us out of some teaching who could potentially contribute to the next REF by writing 2.5 star and above papers. After an internal wrangle involving the Unit of Assessment Coordinator, my line manager and the Head of Department, I was given some article writing time. Thereafter, my manager considered me a ‘special case’ – the rare research beast in a team of lecturers whose work was teaching. One of these opportunities led to a series of writing for publication events I  held with a colleague from the team, who also emerged as a rare research beast. We collaborated in planning and delivering two linked events:  Making the Most of It: How to Turn Your Everyday Research Problems Into Writing, followed by Getting It Out There: Writing for Publication. Both were incredibly well attended and led to a groundswell of enthusiasm for article writing. While we were amazed and spent a few weeks receiving emails from Heads of Department across the university asking us to repeat the ‘course’ with their staff, our new Head of Research was busy reshaping the research effort by allocating roles and jobs, forming new research groups and drafting a research strategy. My role was to write the writing strategy, in consultation with three others. I wrote it, circulated it to them, incorporated their comments, got it on the research leadership group meeting agenda, tabled it, waited for it to be modified, shaped further and adopted. Instead, it simply disappeared, occasionally referred to but never seen again. I lost heart in it as a strategy – a joined-up thing that could enable action and focus efforts – and instead spent my time doing some of the things that were in the strategy: running more writing events, informal mentoring, encouraging writing time to be built into things we did. Things moved on and the writing strategy quietly sailed into the sunset.

Jacqueline’s vignettes The context for these vignettes relates to my leadership and coordination of Unit 25 (Education), part of my (then) university’s overall submission to the 2014 REF. Nationally, the outputs from over 52,000 academic staff from 154 UK universities were submitted to the REF, comprising 191,150 journal papers, book chapters, books, reports or other artefacts, as well as 6,975 impact case studies describing how the research had benefited ‘the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia’ (HEFCE, 2012, p. 48). The amount of money to be distributed post-REF

96

Carol A. Taylor and Jacqueline Stevenson

is significant. In 2015–16, for example, the Higher Education Funding Council for England alone will distribute over £1 billion mainstream quality-related research funding to English higher education institutions. Thus, there is clearly much at stake financially for universities. However, although the REF is designed to assess an institution’s calibre of research, it also has potential, and real, implications for individual staff. For example, as reported by the Times Higher Education Supplement (Jump, 2013), the University of Leicester sent a memo to all academic staff in 2013 indicating that: the position of all staff eligible for the REF but not submitted will be reviewed. Those who cannot demonstrate extenuating circumstances will have two options. Where a vacancy exists and they can demonstrate ‘teaching excellence’, they will be able to transfer to a teaching-only contract. Alternatively, they may continue on a teaching and research contract subject to meeting ‘realistic’ performance targets within a year. If they fail to do so, ‘the normal consequence would be dismissal on the ground of unsatisfactory performance’. (Jump, 2013)

While no such suggestion was made by my own institution, such public discourses, nonetheless, led to a level of insecurity among staff, who regarded (non) inclusion in the REF submission as having potential consequences for their future employability, either internally or externally. Coordinating the Unit submission therefore required me to offer a leadership style which both ensured that institutional needs were met and was sensitive to the sensibilities of individual staff. Crucially, however, I  had no line management responsibility for any of the staff who might be included in the REF; nor was my own line manager involved in the REF submission process. This meant that there was no clear hierarchical structure to help me to achieve my goals. The position I took, therefore, was akin to that of a ‘servant leader’: a phrase first coined by Greenleaf (1970), denoting a theoretical leadership framework which advocates that a leader’s primary motivation and role should be to provide a service to others. Servant-leadership ‘manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served’ (Greenleaf, 1970, p. 6) and is, thus, rooted in the human desire to form relationships and bond with others for the betterment of the community and the wider society (Mittal and Dorfman, 2012). This is achieved through the use of personal, rather than positional, power to build group consensus (Greenleaf, 2002) and demonstrates appreciation of others. This was the approach I attempted to take. However, the REF preparations provoked, challenged and affected my academic colleagues, and consequently

Leadership of Academic Writing Development in England

97

my academic leadership, in different ways. For some fellow academics, it afforded an exciting platform to showcase the calibre of their writing; for others, it has shaken their confidence in themselves as academics undertaking practitionerrelated research and using their authorial voice to ‘make a difference’; and for a third group, the REF was little more than a slightly amusing distraction engaged with at a relatively superficial level and which has made little difference to them as academics. As the ‘gatekeeper’, I found it an uncomfortable experience, scrutinizing peoples’ often hard-wrought efforts, making judgements about the calibre of their publications and feeling like I  was holding an ever-present ‘sword of Damocles’ over their heads. As the person whose Unit of Assessment (UoA) submission would be made public post-REF, I felt like the same sword was constantly held over my own head. The following three vignettes highlight the problematic nature of working with other people’s writing.

Vignette 4: ‘I reject your views’ As the UoA coordinator for the Education submission, I was required to collate all possible outputs from academic staff working in our School of Education, arrange for them to be assessed by internal and external colleagues in terms of their potential star rating, support the writing of the impact case studies, and draft and edit the narratives for both the impact and environment sections of the overall submission. Both internally, and then eventually by the REF panel of experts, each submission would be scrutinized and judged to be either world leading (4*), internationally excellent (3*), internationally recognized (2*), locally recognized (1*) or ‘unclassified’ – either because the quality of the output was judged to fall below the standard of nationally recognized work or because it did not meet the published definition of research: that is, ‘a process of investigation leading to new insights, effectively shared’ (HEFCE, 2012, p. 48). While all outputs were assessed by me, a second internal and then an external reviewer before a decision was made as to whether they would be submitted, the final decision about whose outputs would be returned as part of our Education submission was mine. Maggie was one of the senior academics in the university hoping to have her work included. She offered four outputs. I arranged to have them reviewed and they were judged on average (by me and the two other reviewers) to be unclassified, 1* and 1.5* at a push, and thus not of a calibre suitable for inclusion in

98

Carol A. Taylor and Jacqueline Stevenson

our submission. I sent the reports to Maggie and then met with her to discuss. She flatly refused to accept the results, demanding to know who had reviewed them and then listing names of academics who she felt ‘would not understand her work’. She banged the table and shouted. I remained calm and explained the process I had followed. She banged the table again. I agreed to appoint a further external to look at her outputs. In the meantime Maggie sent them herself to a different external colleague. The results back, we met to discuss again. My results were more or less the same. Maggie’s external had classified them as either 3 or 4*. I  refused to accept these reviews. Maggie banged the table. I  stood my ground. We parted, her work was not included and she barely spoke to me again. I found the whole situation disturbing, not only because of the level of antagonism which it engendered (on her side at least) but also because although (most of) the other reviewers had agreed with my assessments I never felt completely on solid ground; rather, I  felt I  was walking a constant tightrope wondering when I might fall off.

Vignette 5: The ‘wrong writing’ The School of Education was staffed by academics who, almost invariably, had worked in professional settings for many years before coming to work at the university – as teachers, social workers, youth workers and so on. Marion was one of these: she had worked for many years in schools, was extremely well-networked with other professionals and contributed widely to both course books and practitioner journals. However, as with many of her peers, her journey into academia had not involved gaining a doctorate, and thus she had not published from a thesis by writing monographs or peer-reviewed academic papers; nor had she ever undertaken the sort of research which might result in papers with the sort of star ratings lauded by the REF panels. What Marion was doing, however, was work with teachers to undertake teacher-led enquiry in deprived inner-city schools, which was making a clear impact. The problem was that the research was largely a-theoretical and also, from an REF perspective, methodologically weak. Consequently, although her research might be delivering impact, the output itself (published in the ‘grey literature’) was judged (by me) to be ‘unclassified’. The meeting I  had with Marion to explain why her research could not be included was extremely difficult for both of us. Marion felt that in ‘rejecting’ her research I was not only devaluing the work she was doing but I was also stripping her of her identity as a researcher which, in a post-1992 university with a

Leadership of Academic Writing Development in England

99

historically teaching focus, made her ‘stand out’ from her peers. She was hurt, angry and resentful. She also retorted that she felt humiliated by my rejection of her work and that she would find it difficult to face her peers once they knew that I had done so. I tried to focus on relating her work to the REF definition of research and argued that not including it in the REF submission did not mean that the university didn’t value her work. However, my words sounded hollow to both of us and I struggled to answer when she asked me: ‘who are you to tell me my writing is the wrong sort of writing?’ In ‘rejecting’ Marion’s writing I also felt I was being accused of a lack of both empathy and humility which I found highly troublesome.

Vignette 6: The hidden writing Contrary to how Maggie felt, constructing our REF submission allowed me to help other staff to see how their work was valorized by the institution and was a process of affirmation. For Martin, however, it was an exercise in meaninglessness. Like Maggie, Martin worked mainly with schools and teachers. He only occasionally wrote up his research as he was usually on to the next great idea as soon as one research project had completed. I spent much of my time trying to convince him of the value of writing for publication – both for his career and for the prestige of the university. He found both ideas hilarious as he didn’t want to progress any further academically and saw no reason why he should spend his time writing when he could be doing research. I cajoled, connived, tried to convince. He resisted and danced rings around me. I felt like I was trying to catch smoke between my fingers. He felt that he had better things to do with his life. When Martin did write, however, he wrote well and occasionally sent it to friends and colleagues who would in turn get it published in somewhat obscure publications. In the last few months before the REF submission had to be in, I spent even more time chasing Martin around trying to get his outputs from him. Three were eventually tracked down. The research support office drew a blank at the fourth (required as staff almost invariably need to return four outputs each). Finding Martin in his office one day, I pleaded with him to provide a copy of the fourth. The following day he turned up triumphant with the book in his hand, having dug it up out of a box he had put into the underground archive stores. ‘Happy now?’ he said. And the ridiculous thing is that I  was! Martin, however, had already wandered off again – on to the next project. The REF, and all its build-up as well as the trials and tribulations I was going through in order

100

Carol A. Taylor and Jacqueline Stevenson

to get the ‘right’ sort of writing from the ‘right’ sort of writers, meant absolutely nothing to him. Nor did any attempt I was making to ‘lead’ him through the REF process. Working with Martin really brought home to me the difficulties of trying to lead when someone doesn’t want to be led, or of serving when they don’t want to be served.

Research leadership as an embodied practice These six vignettes speak out from their specificities to illuminate some of the broader problems around writing for publication across institutions. The events they evoke have been instrumental for how each of us has developed our understanding, practices and values regarding what we consider constitutes ‘good’ research leadership. However, what they share is a vivid and tangible appreciation that research leadership is an embodied practice that happens in a material place and through relational acts. These acts are, for us at least, imbued with values which underpin our developing practices. Traditional theories of leadership ignore the body, focusing instead on leadership as a cognitive-rational act. In educational research leadership, this displacing of the body has been perhaps even more profound, given the Enlightenment focus on education as an act of internal intellection or cognitive self-improvement and development, literally as an act of mind over matter. In bringing the body into our understanding of research leadership for writing development we want to be clear that we are not interested in analyses of body language, or Gardner’s ‘bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence’, or embodied cognition. Rather, we propose a conception of research leadership as an embodied practice in the way that Kemmis et al. (2009, p. 2) speaks of practices as ‘sayings, doings and relatings’ that ‘hang together’ to give purpose and direction to actions and which shape intentions and commitments. Working with a notion of embodied leadership enables us to consider it as a three-dimensional practice taking into account its individual dimension (we all of us experience our lives in and through our own bodies and their affective capacities), its relational dimension (we always exist as bodies-in-relation) and its axiological dimension (our bodies enact our values by expressing what we mean, feel, think and care about). In what follows, we use embodied leadership as an analytical thread to unpack the vignettes in relation to two themes about supporting staff in writing for publication: research leadership, writing and identity, and research leadership and values.

Leadership of Academic Writing Development in England

101

Research leadership, writing and identity Writing is deeply tied to identity. Writing is a matter in which concerns about who we are, and how we matter to others, are entangled with what we write about. In other words, the ‘content’ of our writing is bound up with our perceptions and experiences of what we mean to ourselves and what we think we mean to others. The academic peer review process is often held up as the means by which we become ‘better’ writers principally because it is, in Delamont and Atkinson’s (2004, p.  15) words, ‘a task done by the intellectual elite’. Getting good feedback from knowledgeable peers is a vehicle for improving our ability to focus an article, shape an argument and say something worthwhile to our particular discourse community that pushes knowledge forward a little in our corner of the field. That is not in dispute. However, we suspect that most of us reading this will, at some time, have been crushed by receiving badly phrased, destructively critical and overly negative feedback that has blighted our enthusiasm for completing that paper. There is something about the anonymity of peer reviewing for journals that frees some people to be more critical than they might in the flesh. But what about when that negative criticism is done in public, in a research group you belong to? After the meeting recounted in Vignette 1, I (Carol) felt devastated. I felt a sense of injustice at having my paper destroyed and at being so peremptorily silenced. Maggie (Vignette 4) on the contrary felt angry, was given a right to reply and was given the ‘bad news’ privately. She then, as a senior academic, took guerrilla action to try to counter the judgements she didn’t agree with. Yet, undoubtedly, this didn’t lessen her hurt and she took refuge in silence and avoidance of contact. There are still those who think that such experiences are part of the ‘toughening up’ process endemic to academic life. They hold that it is good for you to be criticized because you stand a better chance of defending yourself (a) in your doctoral viva, (b) at a conference facing a hostile questioner, (c) in front of a funding panel, or (d) in the competitive academic promotions ‘race’. Likewise, being ‘in’ or ‘out’ of the REF is a boundary-making practice experienced differently by those whose bodies count and those whose bodies are (and have to be for matters of institutional integrity) excluded. What both vignettes indicate is that academic judgement of others is an embodied practice, in which external criteria, whether of REF quality thresholds or of academic writing generally, are not simply or only ‘intellectual standards’ but are enacted through bodily relations. Think of the words we use when our writing has been negatively evaluated: we’ve been ‘ripped to shreds’, we feel ‘bruised’,

102

Carol A. Taylor and Jacqueline Stevenson

it’s like we’ve been ‘kicked in the teeth’ and so on. These are not accidental phrases. Having each had these experiences (and Maggie’s response left Jacqueline feeling shaky, walking a tightrope, needing to breathe to balance), we want to contest the view that being an academic leader means that, however occasionally, we have to participate in acts of academic brutality. What we want to suggest is that we can, instead, choose to deploy embodied research leadership as a practice to create more supportive peer review cultures, whereby safe spaces are created for the public review of our writing, in which we as leaders bring our bodies into play in a participatory process that is a genuine and open but critically developmental process (Nahmad-Williams and Taylor, 2015). We discuss our joint efforts to do this later.

Research leadership, writing and values The practice of leadership in relation to writing for publication initiatives is imbued with values arising, in shared but different ways for each of us, from our longer educational histories. Our research has been shaped by our desires to give voice to the ‘view from below’, that is, to enable research to engage with voices not normally heard in the mainstream academy and those whose voices are undervalued or misrecognized and misreported (much of Carol’s research is with students, mature women and young women, for example, while Jacqueline’s is with refugees and students from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds). Carol’s Vignette  2 describes a mentoring project to support a colleague to produce publications from her doctoral thesis but, underneath this, two questions about research leadership thrum: one is: how do we learn how to mentor? The second is: how do we embody that learning in our own mentoring practices? And there is a third, more submerged, question: Why do we (want to) write? The answer to the first question is, for me (Carol) simple: we learn how to mentor from people we admire. For me, this was my main doctoral supervisor. She rarely told me what to do, but she often made suggestions as to what I may want to think about; she gave me the floor and made me talk and, in talking, I came to see what I knew and what I didn’t know; she listened, let me cry, gave me a hug and a tissue (when I told her about the incident in Vignette 1); when the time was right (and she knew it to the moment), she made me write a road map

Leadership of Academic Writing Development in England

103

to follow for producing the thesis; and she told me I  was ‘ready for the Viva’ when I wanted to delay it. For me (Jacqueline) it involved some deep thinking about my own values and how I could enshrine these in a leadership approach which would, I hoped, enable me ‘to weld a team of such people by lifting them up to grow taller than they would otherwise be’ (Greenleaf, 1970, p. 14). As my vignettes testify, I was not always successful in doing this. Thinking and doing mentoring as an embodied dialogic practice – which is what we recount in Vignette 2 – is a practice not to be rushed. Mentoring is, fundamentally, an embodied relational transaction. It is about knowing your mentee well, about finding out what sort of person she is and wants to become, and knowing how to gear your advice about her writing to her ends, not yours. It is as much about knowing how and when to direct as how and when to let go. This sort of mentoring takes time. Yes, mentoring is about passing on skills and experience, setting clear objectives and outcomes and a pathway to achieve them, and Miranda did produce one article after many drafts. But it is also about being alive to what emerges and being open to the unexpected (as when Miranda and I (Carol) discovered we’d both walked Hadrian’s Wall, or we teased each other about the use of theory in our article writing), as well as building confidence. This sort of mentoring inhabits slow time, time in which to notice things and to pay more attention to things (words on the page; the meaning of writing in our lives; the sense of listening). If the process began with the question: ‘what sort of mentor will I be?’ two years later, I now have some answers, but they are not the ones I thought they’d be. Jacqueline’s Vignette  6 foregrounds the affective dimension of embodied leadership and speaks to the following question:  how to develop noninstrumental relations in instrumental conditions in performative institutions? What comes through is the emotional labour involved in the day-to-day chasing, cajoling and commandeering of people when you as research leader want/ need them to achieve the ends (for you, for the institution) that they don’t personally buy into. Such emotional labour is often a key aspect of research leadership. In particular, as an REF coordinator, your individual body is the point of intersection of a large number of competing priorities, strategic objectives and institutional agendas (quite literally ‘a weight on your shoulders’). Perhaps what both these vignettes indicate is that research leadership is sometimes a rather canny combination of an ethic of care, collaboration and persistence, underpinned by open dialogue. We pick these points about values up again below.

104

Carol A. Taylor and Jacqueline Stevenson

Leading research writing together: write a paper in a year initiative Our experiences, both positive and negative, have directly informed our current approach to writing development activities. As referred to above, we know that enabling staff in post-1992 institutions to write for publication is possible if sufficient support is offered, and this is the basis on which we have implemented two ‘write a paper in a year’ initiatives, one of which is for staff in our own education institute and the other for staff across our university. These interventions comprise a structured programme of writing activities for staff with few or no academic outputs. By the end of the initiative, participants will have produced and presented a research poster at an academic conference, submitted a journal paper to a recognized refereed journal and produced a three-year plan for subsequent papers. The programme runs over twelve months, with sessions taking place for three hours once every month, enabling staff to use their ‘self-managed time’ (the institutional time given for research and scholarly activity). The approach we have developed draws on Mittal and Dorfman’s (2012) five dimensions of servant leadership  – egalitarianism, moral integrity, empowerment, empathy and humility. From the outset we have offered up space to listen to our participants’ concerns about writing, to support them in integrating writing into their complex lives as academics and to share their ongoing concerns and support needs. We have also been open and honest about the difficulties we face in writing for publication. In addition, we are acting as participants in the project, offering up and sharing our own writing attempts for comment and critique at the same time as the other participants are sharing theirs. Moreover, we have worked to develop and build group consensus for the programme through open, transparent dialogue with our participants. Finally, we are working to build a community both within and beyond the project through the development of support groups, run and developed not by us but by the participants via a positive open, transparent and supportive peer review process.

Conclusion We have both arrived at a point in our careers where we feel confident enough (or at least we can pretend to be confident enough!) to support other staff to

Leadership of Academic Writing Development in England

105

develop their writing. As our vignettes testify, our journeys have not always been smooth ones: they have been riddled with moments of self-doubt, rejection and self-censure as well as moments of genuine pleasure, and affirmation by others of our work as guides, mentors and leaders. We know that we have not always got it right, but we can at least claim that we have tried, and we are continuing to try. An acceptance of difference is one of the key prinicples of cosmopolitanism to be an acceptance of difference. In this chapter, we have aimed to show how we have put this commitment into practice through embodied, relational and accountable forms of leadership, which are sometimes in tension with institutional goals and prevailing cultural practices. The non-hierarchical modes of doing, thinking and being we have tried to enact have meant partaking in ongoing individual, reflexive, internal conversations and, as we’ve worked together, supplementing these with dialogic conversations. Our reflections continue to focus on how and whether, through our leadership practices, we are enshrining the values that we consider important  – that is, are those we are leading, through our writing development activities, able to grow as persons, benefit from our activities, and in the process become wiser, freer, [and] more autonomous (Greenleaf, 1970; 2002)? Our approach is not yet perfect and we still have much to learn, but we hope that we are moving towards, if not already at, a position where we can say ‘yes’.

Note 1 The star ratings are: 4 (world-leading quality); 3 (internationally excellent); 2 (internationally recognized); 1 (nationally recognized); or unclassified.

References Clegg, S. (2008), ‘Academic identities under threat?’, British Educational Research Journal, 34 (3): 329–45. Greenleaf, R. K. (1970), The Servant as Leader, Indianapolis: The Greenleaf Center. Greenleaf, R. K. (2002), Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness, 25th anniversary edn, New York: Paulist Press. HEFCE (2012), Assessment Framework and Guidance on Submissions, Bristol: HEFCE. HEFCE (2014), ‘Assessment criteria and level definitions’, REF 2014. Available online: http://www.ref.ac.uk/panels/assessmentcriteriaandleveldefinitions/ (accessed 12 April 2015).

106

Carol A. Taylor and Jacqueline Stevenson

HEFCE (2015), ‘Guide to funding 2015–16. How HEFCE allocates its funds’, March 2015/04. Available online: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/HEFCE,2014/Content/ Pubs/2015/201504/2015_04.pdf (accessed 12 April 2015). Jump, P. (2013), ‘REF non-submission may have consequences, Leicester warns’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 8 August 2013. Available online: http://www. timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/ref-non-submission-may-have-consequencesleicester-warns/2006343.article (accessed 12 April 2015). Kemmis, S., J. Wilkinson, I. Hardy and C. Edwards-Groves (2009), ‘Leading and learning; developing ecologies of educational practice’, Symposium: Ecologies of Practice. Charles Sturt University, School of Education, Wagga Wagga, NSW. Paper Code: WIL091156. Lee, A. and D. Boud (2003), ‘Writing groups, change and academic identity: Research development as local practice’, Studies in Higher Education, 28 (2): 187–200. MacLeod, I., L. Steckley and R. Murray (2012), ‘Time is not enough: Promoting strategic engagement with writing for publication’, Studies in Higher Education, 37 (6): 641–54. McGrail, M. R., C. M. Rickard and R. Jones (2006), ‘Publish or perish: A systematic review of interventions to increase academic publication rates’, Higher Education Research and Development, 25 (1): 19–35. Mittal, R. and P. W. Dorfman (2012), ‘Servant leadership across cultures’, Journal of World Business, 47 (4): 555–70. Moore, S. (2003), ‘Writers’ retreats for academics: Exploring and increasing the motivation to write’, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 27 (3): 333–42. Moore, S., M. Murphy and R. Murray (2010), ‘Increasing academic output and supporting equality of career opportunity in universities: Can writers’ retreats play a role?’, The Journal of Faculty Development, 24 (3): 21–30. Murray, R. (2012), ‘Developing a Community of Research Practice’, British Educational Research Journal, 38 (5): 783–800. Murray, R., M. Thow, S. Moore and M. Murphy (2008) ‘The writing consultation: Developing academic writing practices’, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 32 (2): 119–28. Nahmad-Williams, L. and C. A. Taylor (2015) ‘Experimenting with dialogic mentoring: a new model’, International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 4 (3): 184–99. Stevenson, J., P.-J Burke and P. Whelan (2014), Pedagogic Stratification and the Shifting Landscape of Higher Education, York: Higher Education Academy.

6

Socio-political Complexities in South Africa: Educational Opportunities, Academic Leadership and Social Justice Bill Holderness

How have I  become an academic leader? What has the journey entailed and what factors have contributed to my development? The narrative that follows addresses these questions. The context is South Africa with all its sociopolitical complexities. The period spans four decades, including the country’s move from minority to majority rule. South Africa is a federal state, comprising a national government and nine provincial governments. The cosmopolitan society of over 52  million has a rich diversity of cultures, religious beliefs and languages. As many as eleven languages enjoy official status. Before 1994, South Africa was notorious for its racial segregation policy of apartheid, which the white minority government argued would promote ‘separate development’ but which discriminated socially, politically and economically against the non-European majority in the country. With the advent of democracy, under the leadership of men such as former President Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu, the country managed to control centuries of pent-up racial anger by adopting a largely successful ‘truth and reconciliation’ approach. The peaceful transition from oppression to democracy is considered something of a sociopolitical miracle and has even inspired peace efforts in other countries. However, twenty-one years after the transition to democracy, the country’s schooling education system is seriously failing the majority of South Africa’s youth. ‘Most black children continue to receive an education which condemns them to the underclass of South African society, where poverty and unemployment are the norm, not the exception’ (Spaull, 2013, p.  8). Higher education is generally more vibrant  – there are nearly 900,000 students in the twentythree state-funded tertiary institutions:  eleven universities, six universities of

108

Bill Holderness

technology and six comprehensive universities. My higher education appointments were for (i)  five years in Johannesburg, Gauteng Province; (ii) sixteen years in Mmabatho, Mahikeng, Bophuthatswana, North West Province; and (iii) seventeen years in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape Province.

My early years, education and career I was born fifth in a family of five boys and a girl. My father was an Anglican missionary, priest, chaplain and teacher in Zimbabwe for over fifty years. My mother was a qualified secondary school teacher. As a young boy, I developed an embarrassing and inhibiting stutter. The state primary school I attended produced annual musicals; I used to admire fellow pupils as they sang, danced and acted on stage. One day, at the age of ten, I was watching a full-cast rehearsal. Suddenly, it came to a halt. The boy, who was meant to play the comic lead, had not arrived – yet again! The frustrated teacher-producer looked back into the hall and saw me seated there: ‘You’ve been watching the rehearsals. Please won’t you come onto the stage and stand in? I was terrified. ‘B-b-but s-s-sir, I have a s-s-stutter!’ ‘That doesn’t matter. It’s a comic role – so the more you stutter, the funnier it will be. We need someone so our rehearsal can continue.’

I had little option but to climb up onto the stage, in front of all the lead performers and chorus members. The music resumed and I began to fill the role – singing fluently, as one doesn’t stutter when singing. The following day, the absent boy indicated he would prefer to be relieved of his part. And so began my first lead performance! I had filled a gap when it was necessary – and this has led on to my playing a variety of lead roles in over twenty musical productions. In a comparable way, my various ‘career leadership’ roles have mostly developed from responding to educational needs, as they have arisen. I continued into secondary state schooling, but my final years were spent at a church school in a rural setting outside Marondera, Zimbabwe. There I had the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of sporting and cultural activities. As a pupil, I took the bold and unprecedented initiative of launching rehearsals for a full-scale musical production. Fortunately, two staff members eventually agreed to support the pupils in this undertaking, and the ambitious production proved to be a major success. The reason I could inspire other pupils was

Socio-political Complexities in South Africa

109

that I  had earlier, positive experiences to draw upon. Similarly, in my career, I have felt equipped to inspire and to provide leadership when I could draw on relevant academic or professional field experiences. My higher education began at a university in Grahamstown, South Africa. Just before I  graduated with a BA degree, I was offered a full-time teaching post at a secondary school in the same town. Because I was not yet a qualified teacher, I was allowed to continue studying (part-time) for a university teaching diploma – after which I completed a B. Ed. Honours degree while in my third and fourth years of teaching. During these years in Grahamstown, I married Rosalind (also a teacher) and later we raised three daughters – Claire (now a civil engineer), Julia (a physiotherapist) and Nina (a medical biochemist and Intervention Programme lecturer at the University of Cape Town). Rosalind subsequently taught for thirty-two years. Throughout my career she has been an invaluable source of sound common sense, insightful wisdom and creative teaching ideas. In my fifth year of teaching, I was awarded a Major Teacher Scholarship for Overseas Study. It enabled me to spend a year studying for an MA Education degree at London University’s Institute of Education. Through my interactions with international academics and students, I became increasingly ‘cosmopolitan’ in my thinking. Ironically, I also became more aware of the struggles and challenges that faced teachers and learners in my own country. Under South Africa’s discriminatory and politically oppressive system of apartheid (racial segregation), the black majority was disenfranchised, disadvantaged educationally and disempowered economically. Furthermore, only a minority spoke English as a mother tongue. With such issues in mind, the master’s dissertation I wrote was entitled ‘A study of language problems in South African education with special reference to the learning of English as a second language in black schools’. One condition attached to having accepted the teacher scholarship was that, on completion of the degree, I would return to work in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. In due course, I was appointed to my first higher education post – a lectureship at the Johannesburg College of Education (JCE). This was a large, English-medium teacher training institution, situated in pleasant surroundings near the centre of South Africa’s largest city. On reflection, I  realize how fortunate I was to have been a staff member at this stimulating institution. A colleague once remarked: ‘Teaching at this college prepares you to take on almost any educational job.’ Indeed, many of the staff moved on to occupy influential positions in schools and universities. One female lecturer became a respected young Minister of Education in the ‘new, democratic South Africa’. It was in this enabling environment that I  grew both academically and professionally.

110

Bill Holderness

The lecturing staff included well-qualified, experienced teachers who were concerned about the quality of education offered to the students. The college rector was a respected historian and educator with a passion for debating issues around teacher education, curriculum design and educational assessment and evaluation. Having previously been a secondary school teacher for five years, I  was now required to become acquainted with the curricula, methods, challenges and opportunities of both teacher education and primary schooling. Because JCE’s core business was to produce primary school teachers, I gained professional experience in evaluating students’ lessons in primary schools and even early learning centres. This exposure helped equip me to provide primary education leadership in subsequent appointments, in both the North West and Eastern Cape provinces. Each time I engaged in innovative curriculum planning and course development at the college, the better equipped I  became for future leadership roles in curriculum development. For example, I  accepted an invitation to serve as Honorary Secretary to the Joint Curriculum Committee of JCE and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). The role engaged me in fairly high-level academic debates and one of the fruits of our committee’s work was South Africa’s first academic-professional Bachelor degree programme in Primary Education (BPrimEd). This experience of curriculum planning across faculties and institutions stood me in good stead for later large-scale curriculum development and coordination in the North West Province with the affiliation of nine colleges to the university and primary schools countrywide. While at the College, I  obtained South African citizenship by naturalization and therefore could be promoted to a permanent position as senior lecturer. I was also Honorary National Organizing Secretary of the Association for the Study of Evaluation in Education in Southern Africa. In that capacity, I gained experience in organizing local and national conferences and started to debate evaluation issues. Thus, in my next higher education appointment, I could confidently and creatively plan and coordinate numerous in-service courses, workshops and conventions. I also developed a strong interest in programme evaluation.

Bophuthatswana and North West Province After five years I felt ready for a fresh challenge – to get involved where the need was greater and where our young children could grow up in a more racially

Socio-political Complexities in South Africa

111

integrated society. One reason for my ‘discontent’ was that, because JCE was owned by the white, minority South African government, it had to be an exclusively white institution. I was therefore excited, but apprehensive, when I received a letter from a leading educationist, Dr Ken Hartshorne, inviting me to consider the position of Rector of the Batswana College of Education. This rather remote college was some 360 kilometres west of Johannesburg and twenty-six kilometres south of the Botswana border. It was situated in Mmabatho, a small village/ town that served as the new ‘capital’ of Bophuthatswana  – one of four South African ‘bantustans’ or self-governing homelands that had been given ‘independent’ status by the white, minority government. My wife and I visited the area and liked the apparent challenges it presented; however, the predominantly administrative nature of the job did not appeal to me. Nevertheless, during our visit, we met a group of academics engaged in establishing the new University of Bophuthatswana (UNIBO), also in Mmabatho. I found these academics to be refreshingly cosmopolitan. For example, the professor of literature, Benjamin (Bob) Leshoai, was a well-known journalist, novelist and playwright who had taught in Zambia and Tanzania; he had written a number of plays on social themes, some of which were banned. Other colleagues included academics from Botswana, Lesotho, England, Ireland and the United States. I found the potential richness of their diverse backgrounds and experiences particularly appealing, and in stark contrast to the exclusively white, South African staff composition of my then workplace, JCE. Although UNIBO’s lecture rooms had not yet been built, the university’s administration and the three start-up faculties were each operating from a single, three-bedroom community house – with the walled-up garage serving as the lecture room. This appealed to us as ‘exciting and different’, since most other homeland universities opened only after erecting imposing buildings. UNIBO, on the other hand, argued that its spending was rather prioritized to attract good staff from local and international universities. Having had my interest in the area aroused, I applied for one of UNIBO’s new lecturing posts – in the School of Education. I was interviewed in Johannesburg at the Wits, a well-established, English-speaking institution with a predominantly liberal tradition and reputation. A number of Wits academics played an active role in ‘giving birth’ to UNIBO, regarding it as something of a special, ‘experimental’ project in multiracial, multicultural tertiary education. At that time, educational institutions in South Africa were racially segregated by the apartheid legislation. Therefore, ‘liberal’ aspirations at Wits were that, if a multiracial Bophuthatswana, and its multicultural university, could be ‘successful’ – this would demonstrate to the South African government that multiracialism and

112

Bill Holderness

integration were preferred and viable alternatives to segregation. It was hoped that the Bophuthatswana ‘socio-political experiment’ would show that discrimination and fragmentation along lines of race, language and culture were not only indefensible and abhorrent but were based on unfounded fear – as well as economic greed. In other words, ‘apartheid could be used to destroy apartheid’; the self-governing homeland could exercise its so-called ‘independence’ and ‘self-determination’ to introduce non-racial legislation, policies and practices that were not permitted by the white Nationalist government in South Africa. Shortly after the interview, I was appointed to UNIBO as a Senior Lecturer in English, rather than in Education, as the university’s need was greater in the area of language teaching. Thus began sixteen years of living and working in a South African ‘black independent state’. As my first year of lecturing ended, the government asked if I  would help with the coordination and evaluation of a small, but rapidly growing, Primary Education Upgrading Programme (PEUP). Believing that I could make more of an educational contribution in that role than in lecturing to small groups of relatively privileged, start-up black students, I agreed to be seconded to the project on an annually renewable basis. Once the arrangement was settled, I was invited to base myself in the university’s new institute while working as a researcher and adviser to the primary section of the government’s Education Department. This arrangement enabled me to enjoy the support of the university, participate in its activities and have access to its human and physical resources. I could also invite lecturers to present workshops at our project’s in-service courses and engage the services of UNIBO’s printing unit to produce handouts for the courses. Overall, the arrangement worked well for the PEUP and its participating parties – the university and its lecturers (who valued the field experiences); the department and its teachers (who appreciated the support they received).

Developing leadership through wider community engagement Because the brief of the university’s Institute of Education was to serve the broader education community, I was frequently made aware of specific needs and challenges – and took up leadership roles to meet those needs. I collaborated with other organizations and sometimes jointly led pioneering in-service teacher education initiatives. For example, I  actively supported the work of

Socio-political Complexities in South Africa

113

South Africa’s Molteno Project, READ Organisation and Science Education Project. With the National Parks Board, I served as Provincial Joint Chairman in establishing an in-service teacher education and community upliftment centre. Periodically, I provided academic leadership in the field of programme evaluation – nationally and regionally. For example, for seven years I served as Chief External Evaluator for the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa. I was also Regional Coordinator of both the computer-based ‘Writing to Read’ Evaluation Project and the North-West Project Evaluation Course. In addition, I was appointed on a two-year, part-time basis by Wits University to develop an Inter-University In-service Course for Training Project Evaluators. Thereafter, Rhodes University commissioned me to act as External Evaluator of its Community Interaction Programme. Through responding to such a range of needs, and interacting with such a variety of project personnel, my confidence and competencies as a programme evaluator steadily developed. From a leadership point of view, my most valuable and insightful experiences came from participating in the PEUP. Although it had humble origins, this community-based, self-help school improvement project became one of the largest and most sustained Africa has known (Holderness and Altman, 1992). The project began on a small scale – almost unnoticed. Basic physical improvements were made in the grade one classrooms of seven primary schools in two rural villages. The instigator, Mrs Christel Bodenstein, was a German-speaking South African who, at the time, was a Foundation Phase lecturer at the local, black teacher training college. Realizing how impoverished and under-resourced the local schools were, she literally ‘rolled up her sleeves’ and began working alongside the grade one teachers and local community members in making the classrooms more conducive for learning. Thereafter, more child-centred teaching was introduced and the stage was set for these to become model schools for others to emulate. Once Mrs Bodenstein was appointed as Education Officer for Elementary Education in Bophuthatswana, she decided to expand the project to other schools and regions. It was then she approached me at the university to assist her, especially in matters of curriculum development, material production and project evaluation – all areas in which I was developing some expertise through having responded to various expressed needs/requests for help. Initially I  had visited the PEUP as a curious observer, but it was not long before I became a ‘follower’ of the inspiring project leader and ‘admirer’ of her small, dedicated team of teachers. The project expansion was particularly rapid and thus I was soon seconded to assist. Initially I had to attend to urgent project administrative matters, such as producing and delivering in-service course

114

Bill Holderness

hand-outs to remote schools. However, in the process, relationships of trust and friendship were built and I became increasingly familiar with Batswana culture. Six schools from each of the seventeen circuits were invited to come and see the original schools in action. Having been inspired and encouraged by what they saw, the visiting principals and teachers returned to their local communities and collectively planned how they could emulate what they had seen. Thus the number of involved schools grew annually from seven to 114, 378, 625, 700 and 760. Ultimately, all 900 primary schools countrywide became at least nominally involved and the Department of Education declared the project an ‘institutionalized innovation’. From among the ranks of the local teachers we identified exemplary practitioners. They demonstrated new teaching strategies in their rural and township classrooms, while teachers from nearby schools observed. Immediately after these lessons, the observing teachers took turns practising the ‘new methods’ with small groups of children outside the classrooms  – and received ‘hands-on coaching’ from the demonstrating local teachers (Holderness, 2003, p. 8). After some years, given the expansion of the project, a growing number of the exemplary practitioners who had emerged as leaders were appointed as PEUP Organizers, to operate at local and regional levels in the seventeen circuits of Bophuthatswana. After the project leader retired, I agreed to take on the responsibility of National Coordinator of the PEUP for a period of seven years. However, there was already in place our team of seventeen in-service trainers (PEUP Organizers) who were well established in their own circuits. Therefore, I had much to learn from them; my role was primarily to support and facilitate in matters of coordination and curriculum development. Thus, the boundaries between ‘leadership’ and ‘followership’ had certainly become blurred (Morrison, 2002). In many respects, my involvement provided a win–win situation for both the university and the government. The university was pleased that I was running an independently funded Projects Centre, loosely connected and reporting to its Institute of Education. Any special education projects, such as the PEUP, could be based with us for networking assistance and a support structure – and the university received recognition for achievements. The government, on the other hand, was pleased that the Centre was overseeing certain projects that were benefiting their schools. In return, we were allowed to occupy some spacious, government-owned premises that were off-campus, rent-free and accessible to teachers. I was ably supported by a small team of young and committed project assistants who developed noticeably in meeting the diverse challenges. I was soon able to delegate and entrust major responsibilities to them for different

Socio-political Complexities in South Africa

115

aspects of the projects, such as finance and communication, and at times they became the leaders and I the follower. This was a particularly rewarding period in my career. PEUP’s self-help approach in township and remote-rural schools was bearing fruit: community members were painting schools, fixing toilets, building classroom lockers; teachers were making learning materials and improving their methods. Our decentralized leadership was also working, with project planning and decision-making increasingly devolving to the PEUP Organizers in the seventeen circuits. They, in turn, were assisted in running in-service courses and Open Days by circuit teams of volunteer teachers  – specific for each grade (e.g. Grade 2 Team, Ganyesa Circuit). On one occasion, a departmental colleague and I had attended a locally organized PEUP Feedback and Planning Open Day in a remote village, close to the Kalahari Desert. The community came to celebrate in the village hall; the children entertained with dramatized items depicting aspects of the PEUP and ‘its new teaching methods’. Finally, just before departing, we were presented with a live sheep to take home with us! We realized it would be inappropriate to refuse the gift, but equally we didn’t want it placed in the car boot for a 200 kilometre drive. Therefore, we arranged for it to travel in a bag, between two students, on the car’s back seat. On returning to Mmabatho, the students disembarked, and the sheep gave a pitiful bleat. In post-1994 South Africa, the Cape Town-based Independent Development Trust (IDT) decided to launch the national Thousand Schools Project (TSP). It identified in each of South Africa’s nine new provinces a leading educational organization to be its provincial representative and convenor of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Our Projects Centre, which incorporated the PEUP, was selected for the North West Province. One of our first tasks was to identify 1,000 of the neediest schools in the province and then to convene a meeting of all South African NGOs who wished to bring their services to those schools. I found this to be a challenging but stimulating task. Fortunately, the university continued to support my involvement in this new initiative. Once the necessary North West provincial structures were in place, and a TSP Project Coordinator appointed, I was invited by the IDT office to evaluate the progress of the TSP in three other provinces: Gauteng, Northern Cape and Kwa-Zulu Natal. The professional experiences I had gained while administering both the PEUP and the TSP in the North West equipped me to ask insightful questions and to draw appropriate academic comparisons between the various project manifestations. This wealth of practice-based findings fed into the

116

Bill Holderness

academic discussions with my co-evaluators and into our final Implementation Evaluation Report (Ashley, Holderness and Padayachee, 1996). In 1994, the first democratic elections were held in South Africa. At last, people of all ages, races, cultures, language groups and political–religious persuasions were able to stand together and place their votes in peaceful, secure settings. The election was judged to be ‘free and fair’ and the voting outcome gave Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress Party a strong return. Today, twenty-two years later, the ANC is still in power, but with a reduced majority. Other parties have emerged and are engaging the ANC in frequent and heated debates – an indication, many would argue, of a healthy democracy. For most of us living in Bophuthatswana, a logical and welcome anticipated outcome of a ‘new, democratic South Africa’, was that former, ethnically based ‘homelands’1 would soon cease to exist. All South Africans, irrespective of their race or language group, could now enjoy full citizenship of a unified country. Thinking a career move might be appropriate, I responded to an advertisement for Full Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE). As this was reputedly a conservative and mostly Afrikaans-speaking institution, I was surprised to be appointed to the position. Perhaps it was in my favour that I had been working at a predominantly black university and might bring some fresh, progressive thinking.

Contrasting environments – enabling/limiting leadership From my own career point of view, it was like going back in time. The Faculty of Education I joined was staffed almost entirely by mature, white, Afrikaansspeaking2 males. There was only one female lecturer; she, like many other members of the Faculty, had done all her studying and lecturing at UPE. Most staff had risen through the ranks of one institution; thus, maintaining the status quo seemed to be a high priority. Jansen (2009) recorded similar observations when he became the first black Dean of Education at the University of Pretoria: Everybody communicated in Afrikaans. . . . Men were promoted and women applauded. Men were professors and most women were secretaries and entrylevel ‘lecturers’. (p. 13) . . . black students and English whites were outsiders coming in, the place was not intended for them. As outsiders coming in, they had to come in on the terms of the original inhabitants: the Afrikaners. They had to accept the . . . leadership and instruction of Afrikaners. (p. 142)

Socio-political Complexities in South Africa

117

It soon became clear that my primary job was not to lead and innovate, but to teach and assess the rapidly growing numbers of registered on- and off-campus students. In total, over a fifteen-year period, I produced twenty-five new study guides and filled teaching gaps where suitable lecturers could not be found. I missed community-based field work and initially, like Jansen, I felt like an outsider in a system that was firmly established and strongly authoritarian. I had experienced various dynamic forms of shared and distributed leadership with flattish structures and relationships. However, when I moved into the traditional academic space of UPE’s Faculty of Education, I  found the ‘hierarchical and historical’ character of top-down leadership rather alien and inhibiting. During my sixteen years in the Faculty, eight Deans were appointed. Thus, on average, there was a new Dean every two years. It was as if the world had moved on, but the traditional style of leadership had not. Meanwhile I gave my best in trying to meet the relentless commitments of delivering both residential and distance education programmes (academic and professional) to a large, diverse and scattered student population. Jansen (2009, p. 224) draws a useful distinction between ‘administrative’ and ‘intellectual’ leadership. As a new black dean of a conservative faculty of education, he allocated the important task of ‘administrative leadership’ to the senior, traditional professor colleagues while the crucial task of ‘intellectual leadership’ was handed to the younger colleagues and professors hired from the broader university community. While at UPE, I  was not primarily an administrative manager; I  had no dedicated secretary nor a budget to manage. This was in contrast to my previous university employment where, as Associate Professor, I was also Head of the Projects Centre, Coordinator of the countrywide PEUP and Provincial Convenor of the TSP – and therefore responsible for overseeing large budgets. Now my administrative leadership was in coordinating academic programmes that I presented with on-campus lecturers and off-campus tutors to full-time residential and large numbers of part-time distance students. In this, I drew on my earlier acquired project coordination competencies to keep communication flowing and remote teams functioning effectively. My main fulfilment, however, came from presenting academic lectures and supervising research. I tried to develop modules and accompanying study guides that were stimulating, professionally relevant and helpful, yet academically rigorous. These modules were on a wide range of topics, including teaching and learning strategies, curriculum development, school management and improvement, HIV/AIDS education and research methods. The students (both pre- and inservice teachers) appreciated that I was familiar with the range of contexts in

118

Bill Holderness

which they were, or would be, teaching. My involvement in educational projects had taken me into i) sophisticated, well-resourced schools, ii) overcrowded, vandalized township classrooms and iii) many remote, marginalized rural schools with multigrade classrooms. Thus, my previous wider community engagement equipped me to provide challenging and relevant academic content. I was also able to provide some form of intellectual leadership through influencing the curricula and academic offerings of our faculty. In 2006, as part of a national rationalization process in South African higher education, the number of universities and colleges was reduced, usually through merging previously racially segregated institutions. UPE merged with two other tertiary institutions – the Port Elizabeth Technikon and Vista University (which had been primarily for black students) – to form a new, ‘comprehensive’ university: the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU). In helping to integrate the curricula of the three institutions, I was able to draw upon my now substantial experiences and expertise in curriculum development. While at NMMU, I experienced ‘crossing borders’ in a number of ways, and this helped me to develop more cosmopolitan perspectives, to confront my prejudices and to feel more at home ‘all over the world’. For five years, I jointly coordinated a ‘North-South co-operation’ project between NMMU and Oldenburg University in Germany. With the main emphasis on ‘in-service teacher education for teachers of disadvantaged learners and communities’, collaborative research was undertaken and reciprocal visits were organized for students, groups of teachers and even secondary schoolchildren. Arising out of this collaboration, I  co-edited a book, with two German professors, entitled Action Research in Germany and South Africa:  Concepts and Examples (Fichten, Holderness and Nitsch, 2008). Also, through participating in an innovative academic programme, organized collaboratively by InWent, Germany and the University of the Western Cape, I gained some cosmopolitan insights into the lives and concerns of counterpart teacher educators at colleges and universities in Southern and East African countries, such as Malawi and Zanzibar. This was achieved primarily through participating in, and later evaluating, a two-year residential and online, blended learning programme for teacher educators to help teachers ‘manage the HIV and AIDS pandemic’ in their schools. At the core of this programme was the practice of engaging in personal, ‘courageous conversations’ on such matters as sexuality, stigma, rejection, human suffering and death. Despite the wide range of our countries of origin and home circumstances, we soon came to recognize our common humanity. Arising out of these experiences and

Socio-political Complexities in South Africa

119

academic qualification, I subsequently presented and coordinated at our university an Advanced Certificate in HIV & AIDS for Teachers. One module I jointly developed, entitled Exposure to Reality, required the teacher-students to visit and interact regularly with young and old sufferers of the debilitating illness (Holderness, 2012). My interactions with those involved gave me intimate and empathetic insights into the struggles of daily township life and pain of family stigma and rejection, but also the impressive human capacity to show courage, sacrifice and compassion. Of the various study modules I  developed and presented at NMMU, one in particular adopted an innovative approach to promote initiative and leadership in remote schools. For its major assignment, the BEd Honours module on School Improvement required each student to plan, implement and evaluate a contextually appropriate school improvement project in their own schools – such as starting a food garden, fencing the grounds, refurbishing the toilets or even building an additional classroom. To achieve this, teachers had to inspire colleagues and community members to collaborate with them in identifying and addressing a particular need. A needs analysis, photographic evidence and reflections on the process of managing change all formed part of their actionresearch assignment. Because there were hundreds of registered on-campus and distance students in any one year tackling these assignments, there was the potential to have a small but widespread and sustained impact on the quality of schooling and leadership  – even in remote rural areas. Moreover, the process was ‘free’ and the teachers/principals remained on in their schools, ready to tackle another school improvement project. In a small way, this academic module helped to grow other leaders – and I could enjoy reading about the successes and challenges when I received their assignments from the different regions. On my retirement recently from NMMU, I was asked by an NGO to join its team of full-time teacher facilitators. Our business is to support, teach alongside and mentor teachers in numeracy, literacy and teaching techniques. I have always had a passion for promoting primary school literacy and have published a widely disseminated English Sentence Dictionary to help primary school learners who have to switch to English as their language of learning and teaching.

Reflection on leadership With hindsight, I recognize that various factors were involved in the development of my leadership capabilities on which I will now reflect. First of all, the process

120

Bill Holderness

of leadership growth took place over an extended period of time  – in all, over four decades, from 1975 to the present, during which time I developed certain institutional wisdom and flexibility ‘on the job’ by working in, and learning from, a diverse range of institutions and organizations. I learnt to recognize that each of these operated within a unique set of sociopolitical complexities. Furthermore, I was able to observe and draw upon various leadership role models, such as the Rector of the College of Education and the Project Leader of the PEUP. Conversely, I noted the traits and practices of leaders that were, in my opinion, counterproductive and disempowering. My own leadership competencies developed primarily in and through responding to specific needs. In a sense, it began when, as that young, stuttering schoolboy, I accepted the challenge to take a lead role. Later, at secondary school, I was able to inspire other schoolboys to fill roles in similar musical productions. Likewise, in my professional and academic career, I became incrementally better equipped to take leadership roles by responding to requests for assistance. From small beginnings at the JCE through to large-scale and nationwide undertakings at UNIBO, UPE and NMMU, my growing accumulation of experiences and interactions increasingly equipped me to provide academic leadership. It was in specific professional and academic fields, such as curriculum development, project management and evaluation, that my knowledge, leadership insights and skills developed experientially and incrementally through engaging in a number of large-scale projects in the wider community. At times, my roles have vacillated between being a follower, leader and a follower. This was particularly the case when I worked alongside the PEUP coordinator, who was an empowering team builder. Thus, when I later coordinated the team of seventeen experienced PEUP Organizers (in-service trainers), I had as much to learn from them as they had from me. Having participated in such a variety of community-based projects, my academic teaching and research supervision were enriched. I have found some institutional environments more enabling than others in developing my leadership. My first higher education appointment – at JCE – gave me a strong foundation, a store of creative ideas and a wealth of experience that served me well in later years. I also benefited from collaborating professionally with committed colleagues and from engaging in topical and progressive educational debates and initiatives. UNIBO was particularly supportive, allowing me to participate in a number of educational projects, while still maintaining my position and salary as a university employee. However, it was during my early years at UPE that I experienced how limiting a higher education environment and its expectations can be. As time passed, the staff became more diverse, the pressure to ‘conform to the norm’

Socio-political Complexities in South Africa

121

less pronounced and the need to engage with the broader community was increasingly acknowledged. I realize how fortunate I have been to maintain my higher education positions while assisting other sectors – both governmental and non-governmental. I  have a personal, spiritual conviction that I  have been ‘developed’ beyond my natural abilities and ‘used’ for specific purposes. Probably the most fulfilling aspect of my leadership experiences has been to grow other leaders. Fiorina (2014, p. 4) had this to say: Leadership is not about position, title, and power. It is not the same as management. Leadership is about changing the order of things. And in particular, the highest calling of leadership is to unlock the potential in others.

I was particularly rewarded in watching the growth of responsibility, initiative and professionalism in the seventeen PEUP Organizers, the UNIBO Projects Centre staff, my teams of NMMU off-campus tutors, the BEd Honours teaching students who implemented school improvement projects and the research students I supervised. In my lifetime, I have been fortunate and privileged to be exposed to a range of sociopolitical contexts, and to have interacted with individuals from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds. Thus, I have seen many educational needs  – and had opportunities to do something about meeting them (see Holderness, 2003, 2006, 2012). In developing a heart for the betterment of people, I increasingly care that marginalized and disadvantaged teachers teach well, students and learners realize their potential, and schools and classrooms are transformed. I also want primary schoolchildren to enjoy reading and communicating in English, as their first additional language and language of learning and teaching. Furthermore, I want schools to cope effectively with the HIV/AIDS pandemic and to treat with compassion those infected, or affected, by the virus. Lastly, I wish to see a narrowing of the digital divide that is currently widening rapidly between the rich and poor, haves and have-nots, in urban and rural African contexts. In short, I have developed a heart for social justice – and hope I have made a contribution towards its realization.

Notes 1 Areas of land, with limited degrees of self-government, set aside to be states/enclaves for particular language/ethnic groups. 2 A language that developed from seventeenth-century Dutch. It is the mother tongue of Afrikaners and an official language of South Africa.

122

Bill Holderness

References Ashley, M., W. Holderness and M. Padayachee (1996), The Implementation of the Thousand Schools Project during 1995: An Evaluation, Cape Town: Independent Development Trust. Fichten, W., W. Holderness and W. Nitsch, eds (2008), Action Research and Teacher Education in Germany and South Africa: Concepts and Examples, Oldenburg, Germany: Didaktisches Zentrum (diz). Fiorina, C. (2014), ‘Defining Leadership’, The Global Leadership Summit Team Edition DVD, Lecture Transcript, Johannesburg: Willow Creek Association of South Africa. Holderness, W. L. and Altman, M. (1992), ‘The PEUP: Factors contributing to sustainable innovation’, Journal of Educational Evaluation, 2 (1): 41–57. Holderness, B. (2003), ‘Transforming large-class teaching in South Africa’, in M. Cherian, and R. Y. Mau (eds), Teaching Large Classes: Usable Practices from Around the World, 1–13, Singapore: McGraw-Hill Education (Asia). Holderness, B. (2006), ‘Towards bridging digital divides in rural (South) Africa’, in D. Buckingham and R. Willett (eds), Digital Generations: Children, Young People and New Media, 251–70, London: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers. Holderness, B. (2012), ‘Equipping educators to address HIV and AIDS: A review of selected teacher education initiatives’, SAHARA-J: Journal of Social Aspects of HIV/ AIDS: An Open Access Journal, 9, sup. 1, S48–S55. Jansen, J. (2009), Knowledge in the Blood: Confronting Race and the Apartheid Past, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Morrison, K. R. B. (2002), School Leadership and Complexity Theory, London: Routledge Falmer. Spaull, N. (2013), South Africa’s Education Crisis: The Quality of Education in South Africa 1994–2011, Report Commissioned by Centre for Development and Enterprise.

7

Being a Woman Academic Leader in Japan: Intellectual Leadership and Culture Difference Beverley Yamamoto

The title of the late Beate Sirota Gordon’s memoirs, The Only Woman in the Room, floats into my mind as I  attend senior-level meetings where I  am perhaps not the only woman in the room, but often the only female academic. Any other women in the room at such meetings are likely to be in an administrative support role. At high-level meetings, I am frequently the only foreigner in the room. As a full professor, director of an undergraduate programme and deputy director of the International College at Osaka University, I have surprisingly reached a position that few Japanese women and still fewer foreign women reach. As a leading research university in Japan, the further you go up the hierarchy at Osaka University, the more the terrain is populated with men. Wherever you are in the hierarchy, there are very few non-Japanese. To my surprise I have somehow navigated myself (or been navigated) through the many barriers that women and foreigners face in academia here to reach a relatively senior leadership position. As a foreign, female professor and academic leader at one of Japan’s leading, national universities, my senior position is literally outstanding. With quotas recently set for female and foreign faculty, I am ‘doubly identified for my gender and ethnicity’ (Fitzgerald, 2014, p. 14). I joke with colleagues I am close to that I have a double ‘F’ status as foreign and female faculty. With both foreign and female faculty now sought after, I find myself a welcome woman in the room these days. Nevertheless, there are inevitable constraints and challenges that come with this double-minority identified status. This chapter attempts to locate my personal experiences in academic leadership in a leading Japanese research university within the broader context of an academic culture that seeks to be cosmopolitan and egalitarian but often cannot shake off nationalism, paternalism and parochialism.

124

Beverley Yamamoto

I hope to add to the small, but growing body of literature on women in academic leadership. As Tanya Fitzgerald notes, drawing on Virginia Woolf ’s metaphor of a Room of One’s Own: [W]omen leaders occupy rooms (offices) as leaders and managers in an institution (house) in which the majority of academic occupants are male. But it is in these spaces that women undertake a great deal of labour and emotional toil and, despite decades of affirmative action strategies and equity legislation, still struggle to claim a leadership space of their own. (Fitzgerald, 2014, p. 2)

Fitzgerald is referring to two different cultural spaces to the one I inhabit and ones that do considerably better than Japan on most international measures of gender equality: higher education in Australia and New Zealand. Nevertheless, I am struck by how women similarly face challenges as leaders due to the hitherto construction of leadership as a largely male domain. This suggests that my narrative may have relevance beyond Japan. Fitzgerald argues that, despite local variations, there are common themes for women in leadership across Western institutions of higher education, including ‘establishing boundaries around work-life balance, securing promotion and recognition, balancing career expectations and choices, negotiating high teaching and administrative loads, meeting demands of research audits . . . and negotiations in and around the gendered cultures of high education’ (Fitzgerald, 2014, p. 3). I would suggest that these themes are also pertinent in non-Western settings, but we can expect them to play out in different ways. In this chapter, I seek to draw out how some of the above themes operate in a particular non-Western cultural setting, a leading Japanese national university and where the leader is not only female but also foreign. This setting is one where there are reasonably strong cosmopolitan ideals in operation alongside an even stronger sense of insider, or uchi (referring here to Japanese, male and/ or educated at the home university), and outsider, or soto (foreign, female and/ or educated away from the home institution). These various constructions of insider and outsider are in operation in a myriad ways in daily life, drawing lines of difference that impact what it means to be a foreign, female leader in a Japanese university setting that are complex and sometimes often quite exciting. In terms of structure, the following section returns briefly to Beate Sirota Gordon to make two important points: first, that Japan has a progressive constitution that protects women and foreign nationals from discrimination; second, that it was a young woman of foreign background who ensured that the post-war constitution incorporated an inclusive and cosmopolitan vision. It is against this

Being a Woman Academic Leader in Japan

125

backdrop that my own story unfolds. From this platform, the chapter moves on to reflect on my personal experiences, exploring first my academic trajectory and the path trodden to reach a senior leadership position in a Japanese university. It will show how the institutional culture of several universities, both in the United Kingdom and Japan, served to initially hinder any forward movement to a tenured position with a career path, but subsequently, once I had reached a certain level at Osaka University, I found myself in a fast upward trajectory with very supportive colleagues. The remainder of the chapter reflects upon the challenges and rewards of being a female and foreign academic leader in a top research university in Japan. This exploration focuses on three areas: the challenges of finding a leadership style; managing the multiple demands of being a female and foreign academic leader and keeping good health; holding on to the vision and securing change.

Making a difference as the only woman in the room – my journey to becoming an academic leader The room that Gordon is referring to in her memoirs is the Daicihi Building in Tokyo in 1946, where at age 22 she helped put together a new draft constitution for Japan. As member of the Foreign Economic Administration working in the Government Section of the General Headquarters / The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP), Gordon is attributed with ensuring that women’s rights and the principle of non-discrimination were written into the Japanese constitution through the drafting of Articles 14 and 24 (Gordon, 1998, pp. 68–9). Despite Gordon’s efforts, seventy years on, women and foreigners in Japan are greatly under-represented in decision-making positions in public life. While women make up 42.3 per cent of the workforce, they account for only 11.1 percent of administrative and managerial workers (Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, 2013, Figure 1). Women are not any better represented in academic leadership. Only 13.4  percent of full professors, 8.7  percent of presidents and 7.2 percent of vice presidents are female in Japanese universities (MEXT, 2013). The more prestigious the institution, the fewer the women there are in leadership positions. At Osaka University, 13.9 percent of academic staff are female. This percentage decreases as you go up the hierarchy, with women making up only 7.3 percent of all the full professoriate (Osaka University, 2015).

126

Beverley Yamamoto

Foreign academics are under-represented to an even greater degree in Japanese universities. As of 2012, just 3.5 percent of all full-time academic staff in Japanese universities were non-Japanese nationals, and the majority of these were involved in language teaching (MEXT, 2013, p.  96; JPRI, 1996). Female academics are particularly under-represented, amounting to less than 1 percent of full-time academics (calculations based on MEXT, 2013, p. 96). As a Western, female academic in a tenured position, I  am a rarity. For better or worse, I find myself under the ‘institutional spotlight and the public gaze’ (Fitzgerald, 2014, p. 70). There are tenuous points of comparison between Gordon’s own trajectory and my own, yet her story is an inspiration. With many years separating our experiences of being the only woman in the room, I am a beneficiary of her legacy. Unlike Gordon, who was born in Vienna to Russian-Jewish parents and came to Japan at the age of six, I was born in London and came to Japan aged twenty-six. I did not have Gordon’s cosmopolitan background or linguistic abilities. I was the first in my wider family to acquire either a foreign language or a university degree. While not particularly impressive compared to Gordon, who had been fluent in six languages, I have gained a high level of Japanese language proficiency. When I  came to Japan, I  had no Japanese language proficiency and little intention of staying beyond the two years of my contract as a teacher at an English language school. I was partly motivated to come to Japan by the prospect of being able to earn enough money to continue studying at postgraduate level. At that time I did not have a special interest in Japan. With an undergraduate degree in Sociology and Social Policy and a Postgraduate Certificate in Education at that time, I had been working as an actor and writer in community theatre and Theatre-in-Education. I had expected to come back to the United Kingdom and take a master’s-level degree in theatre writing, but after two years in Japan, I  found myself pulled into Japanese Studies. I  signed up to take a Postgraduate Diploma in Japanese Language and Society at the University of Sheffield. A PhD had never been on my horizon. As the first person in my immediate and wider family to go to university, studying for a doctorate and still less following an academic career were not even on my radar. Yet, I had a passion for research and studying. The Chair of the School of East Asian Studies at that time, Dr. Martin Collick, must have recognized this and encouraged me to think about a PhD. He also helped me secure a full scholarship from the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee and an additional scholarship from St Catherine’s

Being a Woman Academic Leader in Japan

127

College, University of Oxford, to spend a year in Japan conducting field work. Without this support I would not be in an academic leadership position today. Once I  started doctoral-level studies, it felt so right and comfortable there was no question about where I  was heading; it had to be towards a career in academia. The question that haunted me, however, concerned my worthiness for such a career. I have since found that I am not alone in this concern, especially among those who had been raised without any sense of entitlement to higher education. I was one of the last of my generation in England to have to sit the 11 plus selection exam and, albeit probably as a result of family issues at the time rather than academic ability, ended up in a secondary modern rather than grammar school. Thus I sat Certificate of Secondary Education (CSEs) rather than General Certificate of Education (GCE) O levels. Fortunately, I  did very well in my CSEs and, after a brief spell working, was able to go on to GCE A levels, which in turn created a path to university. There are many people, largely teachers, who supported and believed in me at that time, otherwise I  would never have even gone on to university. From this background, the leap to imagining an academic career was huge. When many years later I was awarded a professorship and had to make a brief acceptance speech to the Faculty Senate, I attempted to explain that it would take a while for me to see myself as a ‘professor’ (kyōju in Japanese, which, if anything, carries even greater weight) because I had literally exceeded all expectations, both personal and familial. This acceptance speech received a huge round of applause and many kind comments afterwards, when such dynamism is generally lacking from Faculty meetings. Gaining a first degree, a PhD and finally a professorship represent ‘border crossing’ much more surprising sociologically and personally than my transition to Japan and becoming a female academic leader. The early part of my academic career was possibly too tiring and demanding for me to honestly say that it was satisfying. By the final stages of my PhD I had two very small children, a husband working gruelling Japanese hours and was stuck in what my supervisor, Dr. Michael Weiner, always jokingly referred to as the ‘boon docks’, in a rural area in Fukuoka prefecture. I was not very mobile with kids and we were not quite in the internet age. I could only attend a conference if I could sort out childcare and pay for myself. I had the triple burden of household and family responsibilities, part-time teaching and writing a doctoral thesis. I made some strategic decisions after I completed my PhD that ensured that life would not be easy. While I was based in Japan due to family and to some

128

Beverley Yamamoto

extent career reasons (what better base to research about Japan?), I decided very early on that I would not be drawn into the English teaching field. I had done some part-time university-level English teaching early on in my doctoral studies, but I had no fondness or patience for it. In contrast, I had a passion for teaching the social sciences. Without English teaching as a ready route into Japanese higher education, I had to travel more than I wanted to secure part-time teaching in my field. For example, I taught four classes at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU), a seven hour round trip that I made twice a week. I taught in both Japanese and English, which further increased the burden and time needed for preparation. The cost of before- and after-school childcare exceeded the income gained from teaching. I was the only female academic that I knew who was trying to raise children in Japan, build an academic career while staying out of English teaching. My main supports were my supervisor, my husband and some close friends. It was also fortuitous that as I was starting to shape my career, the University of Sheffield decided to create two master’s programmes in Japanese studies  – hybrid programmes delivered by distance learning and some in-house teaching. One started while I was a doctoral student in 1996 and the second a couple of years later. From the beginning, I  was able to contribute significantly to both programmes. I co-designed and co-taught the module Perspectives on Japanese Society and co-designed and taught the module Social Science Readings. In addition, I taught the introductory courses that led into the final master’s dissertation and annotated translation component of the degrees. In the sixteen years I was involved with the two programmes, I supervised the dissertations of well over a hundred students. As an early career academic this experience was rich and confidence building. It enabled me to return to the University of Sheffield every year to teach the summer residential programme and to work with colleagues here in Japan during the spring, summer and autumn residential sessions. The benefits of having these adjunct professor positions were that I  had a degree of flexibility while raising my two children and was able to continue living with my husband in Kitakyushu, where his work was based. I was engaged in teaching in three different Japanese universities and one British from which I gained the cultural navigation skills that were later regarded as attractive when I came to Osaka University. Not only did I understand the Japanese university cultural environment, but my UK experience was also highly valued. The negative aspects were that I had no career path, little research funding, was poorly placed to secure it and was paid pitifully for the incredible amount of

Being a Woman Academic Leader in Japan

129

time and effort I put into teaching and other academic work. This is not an unfamiliar story, especially for women trying to get into academia. Through pure determination, I managed to forward a modest research agenda, but I was hampered by my adjunct status and the very heavy teaching load that I had taken on. The teaching that cost me the most – financially and emotionally – were the four classes I taught at APU due to the very long hours of travelling, the preparation time and very large class sizes, which made grading extra-burdensome. In addition, while my teaching skills were highly evaluated by students, the Academic Office and the Dean, any attempt to get a full-time position was thwarted. I applied twice for positions within my field, but was not even shortlisted. I knew as a married, female adjunct professor with kids, it was going to be difficult to move on to a full-time tenure track position. As foreign academic labour was being increasingly casualized at that time at APU, I did not try a third time. Nevertheless, I stayed for three years, and it was directly through contacts at APU that I secured my first position at Osaka University, so I will be forever grateful for the opportunities that were offered me there. Another strategic decision I made was to accept some demanding academic translating work. Translating fitted more easily into my busy schedule than research, and I wanted to be able to hone further my Japanese language skills. I assumed correctly that this translation work would demonstrate that I had the language skills to support a career track position outside English teaching in Japan. I was privileged enough to translate feminist sociologist Ueno Chizuko’s highly acclaimed monograph Nationalism and Gender, with an opportunity to write an additional chapter and commentary (Ueno, 2004; Yamamoto, 2004). I later found out how important this translation had been in securing a position at Osaka University.1 Professor Ueno invited me as a foreign researcher to the University of Tokyo for two years, which helped me greatly as an early career academic. In January 2006, I  took up a contract position as full-time lecturer (senin kōshi) at Osaka University. Throughout 2005, I had sought a full-time faculty position. I had been shortlisted a number of times for positions overseas, but had little success trying to secure a position in Japan. It was getting to the point where an overseas post seemed the only way forward. However, I  needed to move from shortlist to job offer. I was in some ways hesitant to take a position outside Japan as I would have to live away from my husband with two young children. It never occurred to either of us that the kids could stay with him. Reluctantly, then, I increasingly put my energy into trying to secure a position outside Japan, yet while so doing, an offer came to me here in Japan.

130

Beverley Yamamoto

In November 2005, a friend and mentor at APU, Professor Jerry Eades, recommended me for a position that had come up at Osaka University in the Graduate School of Human Sciences. It required somebody with near-native English and Japanese language skills, and experience working with international students and faculty. In January 2006, my two children, both in primary school, and I moved up to Osaka. I was hired to run the Office of International Exchange (OIE) within the School of Human Sciences. I had a very light teaching load and was told that I should work out for myself exactly what my role should be. I did just that and enjoyed the creativity of making things happen. Within a few months of taking up the position, the Graduate School of Human Sciences secured Global Centre of Excellence Funding, and I  was involved in two different research projects. During my tenure as the person in charge of the OIE the office became a model for other schools and Faculties to emulate. We were even paid a visit by the Ministry of Education officials. In Osaka, I  was suddenly in a highly stimulating academic environment where my ideas were valued. The various projects I was involved in also provided me with support networks both in Japan and overseas. I truly felt blessed to be in such an exciting, cosmopolitan academic environment. In hindsight, I was in a position regarded as suitable for a woman and one that was quite separated from mainstream governance and decision-making. While I thought I had a career path, I found out later that I would need to push hard to make sure I did not hit a glass ceiling. The position I had in the OIE allowed for creativity and innovation. It was enormously empowering and helped me acquire skills and connections that I now draw on in a senior leadership position. Nevertheless, I was on a nonrenewable contract that would secure employment for me for five years at best. There was also no possibility of promotion beyond lecturer in this position. So although I enjoyed what I was doing, insecurity and also a sense of unfairness undermined my sense of satisfaction to an ever greater degree as each year passed. I was very aware I was in a post marked as ‘female’, and as a foreigner was very lucky to have got it, but I also knew I was making a valuable contribution to the university and engaging actively in research projects with my colleagues. Seeing men hired with less research output, sometimes without even a doctorate in-hand, into tenured posts was, I knew, part of the game – it was after all what I was teaching about in my gender studies classes – but at the same time it was emotionally disempowering. I also saw male foreign colleagues move up with

Being a Woman Academic Leader in Japan

131

relative ease on a glass escalator. I felt stung that the principles of equal worth and equal dignity were not in operation. Those most supportive colleagues were female colleagues, who were affronted that, given my contribution, I was left in a contract position, when the majority of staff were tenured in our school. I also received support from key senior-level academic leaders, who assured me that some route to securing me promotion and tenure would be found. While I believed them, I wondered many times if I was naïve to do so. In a different cultural setting this might be true, but in Japan a norm of reciprocity is still in operation. I had worked hard and contributed to the educational and research environment in the school and wider university; it would have reflected badly on all involved if there was no reward for this. The chance to move out of the OIE into a mainstream faculty position arose as a result of the Global 30 program funding. In 2009, Osaka University was one of 13 universities that secured large-scale, five-year funding to promote campus internationalization through the development of English-taught degree programmes. It was expected that by offering degree programmes in English, Japan could attract some of the world’s brightest, globally mobile students and would be able to provide a more international environment for Japanese students. Through participation in classes taught in English it was expected that the English language proficiency of local Japanese students would improve, and this would make overseas exchange more of a possibility (MEXT, 2008). Osaka University’s bid had included a commitment to develop two Englishtaught programmes (ETPs) at the undergraduate level. I was asked to develop one of these programmes, ostensibly within the School of Human Sciences, but with the support of academic staff from some other arts faculties. With Professor Yasumasa Hirasawa as the director, I  became associate director of the new programme. While I was still on a non-renewable contract, I was now in a mainstream faculty position. I  attended the Faculty Senate each month and sat on various committees connected with undergraduate education and internationalization. As associate director I was tasked with developing the programme (curriculum design), hiring foreign faculty to help deliver the programme, supervising this team, recruiting students and designing professional development activities to train up Japanese professors to teach some of the courses for our programme in English. The expectations were incredibly bloated and unrealistic. But I  took them on with one specially appointed administrative staff to support me. Although I was only associate director of the programme, I felt at first

132

Beverley Yamamoto

poorly prepared for the intensity of the work. The hard work also had a toll on my health and I was hospitalized several times. By far the hardest aspect of my new position was managing other people. In the OIE I had been responsible for multiple initiatives and worked with many Japanese colleagues. Now I  suddenly had a team of six foreign academics all hired as specially appointed assistant professors (tokunin jokyō) on short-term contracts to support an undergraduate programme. None were familiar with the bureaucratic culture of a Japanese national university. Teaching experience and interests varied greatly and to a much greater extent than I had realized when we interviewed for the post. Only one had a sufficient Japanese proficiency to be able to handle administrative matters without support. To make matters worse, they were all put in a single office where tensions quickly soared. Within a very short time of hiring, the triple disaster of the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster occurred. Although we were a long way from this in Osaka, some of the new staff were extremely anxious and wanted leave to go home. As we were well out of any official danger zone, the university would only allow unpaid leave. Understandably, it would not cover the costs of return travel. As I saw anxiety and tensions rise, I felt poorly trained to deal with the situation. Eventually, within a year, four of the team left and they were replaced. We currently have a team that works extremely well together and provides classes that are highly evaluated by the students. We have also found extra offices to accommodate them and things feel settled. I felt that the first year in my role as associate director was a baptism of fire. My instincts told me not to hire six staff all at once and all at entry level to support a new programme. Yet, when I took my anxieties to a more senior level, I was told that this was the budget we had and to hire as wisely as possible. In terms of curriculum design, admissions and student recruitment, often I have had to compromise my own vision and work with reality as it has been framed by those more senior than myself. What I have learned over the last few years is that there are things you can affect directly and things that with work you may also be able to affect. Nevertheless, there will always be areas of policy and practice that you have no control over at all, while having responsibility for implementation. Not wasting energy with the latter has been a hard lesson to learn, but a necessary one to survive emotionally. In April 2013, I  finally gained tenure and, at the same time, was promoted to full professor. As the director of the Human Sciences International Programme (HUS programme) was about to become Dean, I  took over his role. In addition, as director of the programme, I became deputy director of

Being a Woman Academic Leader in Japan

133

the International College. The International College was established in 2010 to oversee the delivery of ETPs in the university. I also automatically became the Chair of the Committee on the Promotion of the Internationalization of Education (CPIE), a high-level committee within the School of Human Sciences. Suddenly I was in a senior leadership position. While I still had full responsibility for running the HUS programme, there was no longer somebody above me to offer protection in this role. It was also decided for a variety of reasons not to appoint an associate director to the programme. At first I felt quite exposed and, even more significantly, without a role model or someone to share the load. A tangible example of my initial unease was the first time I chaired the CPIE meeting. As an important faculty-wide committee, the CPIE meetings are held in a conference room. Up until the time I  took over as chair, faculty members sat in the inner circle around a circular table, and administrative staff sat at tables on an outer circle. Uncomfortable with this, I had already asked the administrative staff to sit with us at the main table, making a break with tradition. When I arrived, only the chair’s seat at the head of the table and one other were free. I had never seen a female and/or foreign colleague sit in the chair’s seat before. I felt strongly compelled to avoid sitting in such an esteemed position, and deliberately disrupted all sense of what was natural and normal by sitting in the other seat. This left a specially appointed administrator, also female, to take the chair’s seat. Of course, I acted as chair, but from a different position. I could feel that I was not the only person deeply uncomfortable at that first meeting. It was not only the normative seating hierarchy that left me feeling uncomfortable but also the deeply engrained rituals that generally surround the starting and finishing meetings as well as the use of deferential language that is often used by the chair to his (I use this pronoun deliberately) committee. Any discussion generally goes from chair to floor and back to chair again. It is rare for spontaneous discussion to occur between members, and most high-level meetings that I have attended seem to amount to little more than the chair going down the agenda and quickly getting each item authorized. This level of formality and control was not how I saw myself as a leader. I literally felt as if I was in the wrong seat in the early days. I knew I had to change the style of the meeting to fit my leadership style. I have since managed to sit where expected, but changed the significance of this. Over time, the style of the meeting has changed. Having the administrative staff at the same table as faculty was one big change. I brought in some of

134

Beverley Yamamoto

the core international programme staff onto the committee as observers (specially appointed staff cannot sit as committee members). This has necessitated a bilingual meeting style. I have done away with the ritualized beginnings and endings. I am not sure what my Japanese colleagues think about this, but they are cooperative. I have noticed that some of my Japanese colleagues seem, somewhat paternalistically, to feel the need to look after me and tell me how things would normally be done. While I may on occasions find this endearing and at other times annoying, it serves to have a democratizing effect. It means that those located below the status of the chair are able to put their ideas forward. I could, of course, more cynically see it as male colleagues trying to claim back a part of the ‘natural’ status that they have been ‘deprived’ of by my presence, but I think that would be to impose an interpretation that is not there. The usual Japanese leadership style is to do all the negotiating outside the meeting room  – nemawashi it is called  – where agreement is reached before everyone sits down. In a culture where not losing face and reaching consensus are considered important, this process is important. However, lacking a refined proficiency to effectively engage in nemawashi, I rely instead on discussion to reach a consensus in the meeting. I like to think this leaves the committee members more informed about the programme and more engaged in procedures. However, to some, my way of getting things done must appear a little disorganized and last minute.

Managing the multiple demands of being a female and foreign academic leader At each stage in my academic career, to date, I have felt strongly that multiple demands make work–life balance near impossible to achieve. When I started at Osaka University my two kids were in elementary school, but now one has graduated from university and the other is just completing his first year. Work–life balance was somewhat easier to achieve when the kids were younger as I framed (limited) my academic work to fit my parenting role. Now that my kids are away from home there is no break to engage to stop me overworking. With three sources of competitive research funding, a large and diverse group of graduate students to supervise and a programme to run, I feel stretched much of the time. My conclusion as I worked on this chapter and a number of other publications

Being a Woman Academic Leader in Japan

135

over the past few weeks, and not for the first time, is that the mode of working is unhealthy and unsustainable. I do not have any role models of female academic leaders with children, whether Japanese or foreign, to look to. I feel I have had to find my own way and wish it could have been easier. With four out of six of the HUS programme team raising small children as well as pursuing careers, I try to offer as much support as possible, for example, scheduling meetings early on in the day and allowing for flexible working hours. My role models and supports in academia have been women academics without children, whether single or married. I have found enormous support and wisdom to nurture my own leadership style from female friends in academic leadership roles. I have also had close male friends and colleagues who have been incredibly supportive. At the end of a second year as director of programme and deputy director of the International College, I feel a lot more comfortable with where I am and how I manage these positions. Fitzgerald speaks of the ‘quadruple burden of expectations’ that women leaders in academia face: ‘their public image, job performance, household and family arrangements and as a path-breaker for their female colleagues’ (Fitzgerald, 2014, p.  75). Whatever I  do, I  know I  am being judged not only as Beverley Yamamato but also as a female academic and probably as a foreign academic. I am aware that I take on more than is necessary to fulfil expectations, but there is a drive that comes both from the satisfaction that I gain from my work and a desire to transcend expectations. It is the old adage that as a female academic leader you have to do 150 percent of what is expected of your male counterparts, and I feel that is true. I have not been good at establishing boundaries to ensure work–life balance, but I am slowly learning. I try to learn from colleagues who seem better at setting boundaries. I have learned for myself that certain activities should be avoided (reading work emails late at night; routinely scheduling weekends for intensive research and writing sessions; accepting too many speaking engagements in different locations too close together). I have explored more collaborative ways of working, especially creating social spaces for writing using structured writing retreat and structured writing day models. Through this I make time for writing, but also create a space for my graduate students to write (Murray, 2015; Murray and Yamamoto, 2013). Yet, I still have a long way to go before I gain something that might look like work–life balance. As I get older, the need to protect health becomes ever more important.

136

Beverley Yamamoto

Final thoughts on negotiations in and around the gendered cultures of higher education Fitzgerald notes that in Australian and New Zealand academic environments, in the context of ‘restructuring, redundancies and retirements, the unspoken expectation is that women will undertake a high degree of emotional labour to support their colleagues’ (Fitzgerald, 2014, p. 75). The fine detail may be different, but I have found the same to be true here in Japan. The few and limited avenues that women have into career positions in academia in the leading universities are posts where a high degree of emotional labour is seen to be required. That is how I gained my foothold into Osaka University, and I continue to engage in this kind of gendered labour even as programme director. While I spend a lot more time on emotional work (Fitzgerald, 2014, p. 78) than many of my Japanese male colleagues in a similar position, and I acknowledge that this eats greatly into my time, it also sustains me. It allows me to put into practice, on a daily basis, values that I regard as cosmopolitan and feminist. Caring is of course reciprocal. I am sustained in turn by those relationships that are around me, both physically and virtually. My graduate students are one source of sustenance; just as they also emotionally drain me and take up a lot of precious research time. There are also male colleagues, Japanese and foreign, who help and support me day-to-day. Yet, in terms of developing a leadership style and feeling comfortable with this, I have to point to the all-important role of some female colleagues both here in Japan and overseas. The recognition that what we are doing is important, worthy, but also tough forces us to find ways to bring a degree of sustainability to our practice as academic leaders. In particular, six women academic leaders have helped me and continue to help me grow as a leader. They are all working in leading research universities, but in different locations in the world. I  take inspiration and gain incredible support from these women. We share the same cosmopolitan values and experiences; and we have a shared orientation to our work that seeks excellence without being locked into current neoliberal definitions of this. We are all female leaders in academic locations where men continue to dominate. Despite working in different cultural locations, we share a vision of a caring and equitable society that we have a responsibility to realize not only through our research and teaching but also through our practice as leaders. We engage in self-conscious examination of our roles as women in academic leadership that cuts across border and traditional boundaries. From these women in particular, I gain inspiration and courage to face being the only woman in the room.

Being a Woman Academic Leader in Japan

137

Note 1 It is ironic as, when I started to look for a full-time position, the Chair of the School of East Asian studies suggested I was wasting my time doing academic translation since it would not count for the Research Assessment Exercise. Of course, he was right in the context of the United Kingdom, but not in the Japanese university environment, where my ability to understand Japan, Japanese and ‘the Japanese’ was a more important consideration, perhaps even more so because of expectations that also come with being female.

References Cabinet Office, Government of Japan (2013), Toward Active Participation of Women as the Core of Growth Strategies: From the White Paper on Gender Equality 2013: Summary, Tokyo: Cabinet Office, Government of Japan. Available from: http:// www.gender.go.jp/english_contents/about_danjo/whitepaper/pdf/2013-01.pdf (accessed 11 January 2016). Fitzgerald, T. (2014), Women Leaders in Higher Education: Shattering Myths, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Gordon, S. B. (1998), ‘Celebrating women’s rights in the Japanese constitution’, U.S.Japan Women’s Journal English Supplement, 14: 64–83. Includes comments by Susan J. Pharr and Barbara Molony. JPRI (Japan Policy Research Institute) (1996), ‘Foreign teachers in Japanese universities: Update’, JPRI Working Paper No.24, 24 September. Available online: http://www.jpri. org/publications/workingpapers/wp24.html (accessed 9 January 2016). MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) (2008), Ryugakusei 30 man nin keikaku no kosshi torimatome kangaekata ni motozuku gutaiteki hoshin [Concrete policies on 30,000 international student plan]. Available online: http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/chukyo/chukyo4/houkoku/1249702. htm (accessed 4 January 2016). MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) (2013), ‘1.9 Universities and Junior Colleges: Full-time teachers by type of position (university)’, Statistical Abstract 2012 Edition, Tokyo: MEXT. Available online: http://www.mext. go.jp/component/english/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2013/08/13/1302968_13.pdf (accessed 4 January, 2016). Murray, R. (2015), Writing in Social Spaces: a Social Processes Approach to Academic Writing, London: Routledge. Murray, R. and B. Yamamoto (2013), ‘Enabling PhD students to participate as writers in international debates’, Society for Research into Higher Education Annual Conference. Newport, UK, 12 December.

138

Beverley Yamamoto

Osaka University (2015), ‘Increasing number of female faculty’, Osaka University Webpage. Available online: http://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/guide/diversity/gender/ data_1/female (accessed 28 December 2015). Ueno, C. (2004), Nationalism and Gender, trans. B. A. Yamamoto, Melbourne, Victoria: Trans Pacific Press. Yamamoto, B. A. (2004), ‘A Translator’s Introduction’, in C. Ueno (ed.), Nationalism and Gender, trans. B. A. Yamamoto, Melbourne, Victoria: Trans Pacific Press.

8

Crossing Higher Education Borders: Academic Leadership in the Learning University Chris Duke

Introduction This chapter sets out to unpack notions of a career and of academic leadership, distinguishing leadership as a scholar from leadership in the higher education industry. It identifies leadership as something anchored in values and learned in early life rather than through leadership literature and training. It implies that some approaches to leadership derived from mainstream management thinking are not well adapted to the cosmopolitan realities and the many borders that criss-cross higher education today. The chapter begins with the past fifteen years and conventionally understood decline in leadership responsibilities, then follows an unvarnished, selective and reflective narrative for the four decades to 2000, before proceeding to an ‘afterlife’ of final regular salaried employment, albeit increasingly more in the patchwork career mode that has become common in the first years of the new century, from which the higher education labour force is not exempt.

‘Academic Leadership’? This term is used in the sense of senior management in the education industry, and as an eminent authority contributing by research and scholarship to what we like to call a discipline: for me, first history, then sociology, organization behaviour, development, higher education, adult education, lifelong learning and finally professing in community and regional partnership. The bounded

140

Chris Duke

academic disciplines dissolve as time passes. Merely writing these words suggests that such a claim to academic leadership might be hard to defend. I claim it across these later fields of academic and scholarly endeavour, however: from some sound early-career publications in the first two to many more in less traditional and bounded fields, including two books on the ‘learning university’ (Duke, 1996; 2002)1 and others on regional engagement and development as well as in adult, continuing and lifelong learning and education. Empirical research-based publication came earlier; integrative scholarship prevails in later years, partly from circumstance, more by inclination. For me, our problems in putting social science research to work stem less from lack of knowledge and research than from failure to listen and comprehend, connect and apply. Some of my work was published in and some translated into other languages. More rewarding, and at times startling for one without personal website, blog or tweeting, is meeting people new to me in different countries and world regions familiar with my work. There is a worldwide human community of emerging young scholar-activists. Their feedback is gratifying and heart-warmingly energized:  an optimistic antidote to any tendency to see the world as going to the dogs. I have had the good fortune, despite serving on early UK RAEs (research assessment exercises) and working under such regimes in two jurisdictions, always to have been able to ignore the demands of ‘REF-ability’ on my own work.2 As these paragraphs, however, suggest, my essential drive is as a leader in and of organized academe – individuals, departments, institutions, networks of endeavour – in a quest for relevance and utility: to humankind and to our ecological inheritance with its magically diverse shared users of which we alone are the great destroyers. Inevitably, leadership is recognized and recorded by titles of head of this or director of that, chair, vice-chancellor or president of one or other kind of college, network or association. Yet academic leadership extends beyond the walls of academe, as do the practice of scholarship and research, learning and teaching. Nonetheless, leadership thus recognized – and rewarded by status and remuneration – marks my own career as it does that of others. My periodic occupational pluralism straddled universities but includes civil society organizations and networks, national and global.

Biographical sketch – early years Did I have a career? Now age seventy-seven and retired, does academic leadership apply only in the past tense? By conventional standards, surely yes to the first question; to the second, yes again.

Crossing Higher Education Borders

141

A career in twenty-first-century modernity is a myth perpetrated on the young and the middle-aged:  post facto rationalization of a life story. No longer do the majority walk the well-trod paths of fathers and grandfathers before them. My late father-in-law called his autobiographical essay, written around age ninety, ‘another door opens’. Usually such doors are unknown and unexpected. In a neoliberal, post-religious, revised capitalist western world, building a ‘career’ takes the place of Christianity’s promised afterlife to keep us at the grindstone.3 I had a good paid working life and now enjoy a good unpaid working life. My earliest ambition was to be a bus conductor; in those days, each bus had a conductor who went round collecting fares and punching tickets. I reckoned this was a job that I could probably get to learn; it was one of the few that a 1940s country kid saw and could comprehend. Later, my mother having been first-in-school to get to college and become a primary school teacher, my ambition was to become a school teacher too. That didn’t happen either, despite a postgraduate certificate of education, qualified teacher status, a teaching practice (TP) term and spells of casual teaching. At the time I felt let down to miss out on the ‘top school’ posts to which my university pointed me: like the TP school where I was merely one of six Oxbridge first-class history honours to apply. Later I thought, what a relief: post facto rationalization and a first setback in my career myth. Instead I  became an academic  – just. I  was appointed to an associate lectureship in history at the local polytechnic that my mother had spotted in the local paper, to teach a potpourri of subjects, some of which I  scarcely knew existed. Later, we were all disappointed when Crosland clearly instated the higher education binary divide, while delivering a mid-1960s graduation day address at our Woolwich Polytechnic. Then, as always a workaholic, I  completed a London doctorate in four years while teaching full-time. My Head of Department, whom we arrogant young scholars thought looked and sounded like an East End bookie, acted out his ambitions in the swinging sixties through his bright young things. He reinforced in me a fierce competitive ambition: and a decision to channel this by crossing the new binary line. This was maybe the most obvious of many borders crossed in my academic career. I  moved from ancient Cambridge to pre-university Woolwich, on to Russell Group Leeds and prestigious Australian National University (ANU) and Warwick, back to lowstatus access new University of Western Sydney (UWS), high prestige again with Auckland, then the technological ‘people’s university’ of Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), prestigious despite being a tech. My working life divided almost exactly between England and Australia.

142

Chris Duke

When I moved to what we now call a Russell Group university, Leeds, it was not as the advertised historian’s post but as a sociologist, for which I was invited also to become literate. It could have been politics, philosophy, even Persian history, learning Farsee, for which I was considered at Oxford: another accident. I had applied for an extramural local history post that, it turned out, had been earmarked for a local WEA4 tutor. With historians ten-a-penny and newly fashionable sociologists scarce as hen’s teeth, I was thus sounded out and transformed. I favoured organization theory, social psychology and group dynamics over the social administration mildly expected of me. Thus did my ‘career’ begin to shape itself. At Leeds I created my own career rationale and narrative around an innate passion for equity and justice; my early hero outside novels and after Churchill the warlord was Nye (Aneurin) Bevan, who with Clem Attlee, Ernest Bevin and others built the Welfare State. I  took at face value our extramural rhetoric of horny-handed workers, linking my own less hardened hands with the WEA to find and develop participatory action research with the new outclass of black and Asian ghetto immigrants in Leeds Chapeltown.5 Whether as reward or to farewell a hyperactive unsettling Young Turk, S. G. Raybould, my second institutionally ambitious Head of Department and a man rough-hewn from Yorkshire gritstone, pointed me to the new Directorship at ANU – then the other side of the moon.6 Appointed at the age of twenty-nine as head of a new centre at an internationally prestigious university on a professor’s salary, I hit an early career peak, becoming a lifelong comparativist and international scholar-activist. I have visited or worked in both of my countries every year since, having taken Australian citizenship in the early 1970s,7 and spent working time in every other continent. In fact, my internationalization began earlier: not only with student adventures to scary USSR and militaristic Greece and Turkey before the Berlin Wall went up, but also at Woolwich and Leeds. Many of my second chance A level access and undergraduate students were from overseas:  southern Europeans, two of whom I later visited in their homes, others from the ‘third world’. The homespun were local and aspiring: second chance students who could not tolerate the secondary school regime of their day. Then, at Leeds, my mature age ‘sociology and immigration’ class was itself international. Most of its members had only recently crossed borders: from Caribbean small islands and the adjacent South American coast, from Africa and Asia, to a new world and culture. Early career experience partly explains my insider-outsider commitment to equity and international instinct. The roots were, however, deeper: early influences like befriending by German prisoners-of-war doing farm work in Kent

Crossing Higher Education Borders

143

shaped my beliefs and thence style of academic leadership throughout the lifelong process of growing up, changing and evolving.

Biographical sketch – ‘end of career’ years Auckland, RMIT and NIACE 2000–2005 Serious pluralism between employers (as distinct from multiple office-holding within one university) occurred only once, in a formal career-end flourish. I moved in 2002 from the first professorship and the directorship of Continuing Education at the University of Auckland to an 80% position at RMIT University in Melbourne, as professor and director of Community and Regional Partnership under an outstanding and undervalued vice-chancellor and president, Ruth Dunkin. I  was simultaneously appointed half-time director of Higher Education at the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education for England and Wales (NIACE). While there, I  was also in effect part-contracted out to serve as associate director for Adult Learning with the national government-funded Action on Access project: a manifestation not only of long-haul pluralism but also of directly cross-fertilizing the driving passions of my working life: adult learning for equity, and the extension of higher education to engage with communities and other partners beyond institutional borders. These three climactic years preceding transition from over-full- to part-time employment exemplify another dimension of academic leadership:  moving knowledge, understanding and where possible insight applied as good practice between countries and sectors to their mutual advantage. In later years, international partnership, networking and reciprocity became distinguishing features of my work, especially through extensive honorary civil society leadership. This reflected greater ease and speed of communication globally in the internet era but also my personal realization that joining efforts to generate good outcomes is essential in an interdependent world chronically hampered by living and working in boxes.

Biographical sketch – high career years The ANU, 1969–1985 Prior to 2002–5 my ‘high career’ fell into two long productive phases and one shorter and ultimately traumatic one. My appointment as director of the Centre

144

Chris Duke

for Continuing Education (CCE; the new term displaced ‘adult and extramural’) at the ANU took effect early in 1969. It lasted sixteen years until I returned to the by then also prestigious University of Warwick in 1985. At the ANU the first vice-chancellor, who for a still young scholar I was to come to know quite well (and whose partly disabled grown-up daughter I taught in an evening class), had a great vision for the ANU, shared with our Chancellor H. C. Coombs, to be the powerhouse of Australian society. It was a wonderful privilege to be recruited into such an endeavour. Sadly, Sir John Crawford, for me a model of leadership, retired not long after I started. Jack was small in stature (he and Nugget Coombs were among Australia’s ‘seven gnomes’ of post-war reconstruction) but no successor as vice-chancellor achieved his heights. My own university position survived, but the work that we did, sprawling and exciting as it was, soon became incidental to ANU’s now driving purpose. Before long, the powerful physicist deputy vice-chancellor confided to me that he really did not understand why CCE was part of the university; it might as well be an entirely independent enterprise. The contrast with my next long-running leadership role, at Warwick, was stark. So we rowed alone. Being in the federal capital with a boundlessly wide remit to match my own and my colleagues’ sometimes astounding ambition, the world was CCE’s oyster. A large Open Studies programme also built bridges into degree study at a time when adult undergraduates were a rarity. Large inclusive Public Affairs Conferences gave voice to the weak as well as the powerful while providing platforms for federal ministers to slip over the road and make policy statements in opening addresses. Smaller Search Conferences adopted other innovative formats to tackle pressing national problems, for example, bringing trade union bosses and senior industrialists together from across the nation in a closed two-day session. Early do-it-yourself printing technology allowed the centre to produce dozens of its own monographs and occasional papers alongside more conventional monograph and journal publications. The open systems social science group was an internationally connected national lighthouse that contributed to and occasionally scandalized the ANU academy. CCE itself was a non-stop hothouse, driven and riven by principle, passion and an urge to improve the world – a true child of the late 1960s that heralded its birth. All-embracing democratic staff meetings were creative and sometimes torrid affairs, the much-used beanbag room a symbol of the times. In a pre-risk assessment era things were done that no university would countenance today. There were casualties: one staff member and two partners of staff found early graves as alcoholics; another committed suicide, albeit not for work-related

Crossing Higher Education Borders

145

reasons. Brilliant maverick former communist open systems thinker Fred Emery was refused reappointment by the university after five years. As head of a productive, indeed as would now be said world-class, department I resented the refusal ever to recognize my own academic role by means of a chair: Continuing Education was surely not a ‘discipline’. The ample compensation was our capacity to generate and spend income largely at our discretion and to provide a large crevice within which many community endeavours could be pursued so long as the day job was done. My leadership confidence and style developed fast in line with our own ideology of participatory industrial democracy; I sought to maximize personal growth and risk-taking. This flowed into centre-wide staff assumption of responsibility and the release of creative energy, whether as scholars, entrepreneurs or project managers; cultivation of influential heads of ANU academic empires, especially the research school directors and key administrators, including the university secretary and the associate vice-chancellor, bought us the required independence of action. If we could not lead and change the National University, we could at any rate use it as a base to change the world – perhaps an easier ambition. As a workaholic and, I discovered, a capable entrepreneurial operator, I used the freedom of a productive self-directing department to become an influential international as well as national adult educator. I  led the national body then called AAAE (Australian Association of Adult Education, now ALA for Adult Learners’ Association); became for over twenty years the editor of the International Journal of University Adult Education for the Congress of the same name; assumed leadership as secretary general for eleven years of the previously moribund ASPBAE (Asian and South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education), taking it towards the powerful non-governmental organization that it became long before its fiftieth anniversary in 2014; and for six years served with salaried Canadian secretary general colleague Budd Hall as unpaid associate secretary general of the newly created International Council for Adult Education. This freedom to roam and to lead made me an early adopter among academics of a now common if uncommendable globe-trotting lifestyle. In summary, sixteen years of learning forged my leadership in a furnace, with some near escapes and a few burns.

The University of Warwick 1985–1996 I returned to England after sixteen years to another new, senior and much more central academic management position, at the University of Warwick: a pluralist within one institution. My anchor position was as founding professor and head

146

Chris Duke

of the new Department of Continuing Education (DCE),8 initially for seven years but renewed by staff election. My post carried ex officio membership of both Senate and Council, where I served throughout my eleven years. As director of Continuing Education for the University as well as a department head I was thus granted diverse central university governance and leadership roles, including ‘continuing education’ university wide. With my newly appointed colleagues I constructed a teaching and research programme recruiting nationally and internationally, in a very different kind of department within a Faculty of Education which had grown out of a former teachers’ college. The new and controversial Warwick appealed to me as a quiet maverick for its very unacceptability to my old extramural UK colleagues. In 1982 I enjoyed a short spell of study leave at the then national doyen adult education department at Nottingham, partly to check out opportunities to return to in Britain. It was suggested that my visits should include Warwick, not with a view to going there but to see how a new place could go astray. Happily I was later chosen there and not by my old more traditional university, Leeds, at about the time that Warwick morphed from the infamous business university (Thompson 1970), which it continued to be,9 to be acclaimed by Bertelsman as the best managed European university of the year. I  caught the final months of founding vice-chancellor ‘buccaneer’ Jack Butterworth’s reign. He introduced me to a large assembly as the man who would make Warwick a lot of money, something at which I failed miserably and without regret. George Bain and the formidable ‘Batman’ (now Lord) Kumar Bhattacharyya, head of the Manufacturing Systems Engineering Group, were indisputably better at that, as was another good colleague Andrew Paine, who ran the ever-expanding and lucrative conference business using our upmarket executive development residences. Non-flamboyant by nature, a somewhat introvert low-profile high achiever, I was also, astute not to say, cunningly adept at spotting and engaging where real power was located. At Warwick throughout my time this was with the dynamic Registrar Mike Shattock, a hard-headed champion of community as well as industrial engagement and so of DCE. We quickly became allies; early morning visits to his office would normally solve problems before ever they appeared. The good fortune and privilege of working at Warwick for its engagement stemmed from occupying a central role tied in to Chancellery and Council, yet with independence of academic action. My duty to rove and animate meant connecting and working with every department across the four Faculties, whether on CDP,10 for widening access and open studies, or to build up and have them take part in part-time and two-plus-two degree programmes.11 Few academic departments

Crossing Higher Education Borders

147

were involved in all modes, but all were engaged on something. We were allowed to build a fleet-foot department balancing administrative support with academic staff; recruit doctoral and research masters as well as taught masters’ programmes recruiting locally and globally; and play a national leadership role, which I led initially through involvement with NIACE, The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and other universities, and by leadership in the national Universities Council for Adult Continuing Education (UCACE). In 1991, I  was asked to consider taking up the Deanship of Education but chose instead to run as one of the three pro-vice-chancellors who at that time were joint deputies to the vice-chancellor. I was reappointed for a second twoyear term through to 1995, leaving the following year for another post back in Australia. No doubt the experience of senior management at Warwick was a main factoring gaining that was, despite my unhelpfully diffident style which limited my attainment,12 as then Warwick vice-chancellor Sir Brian Follett not unkindly remarked on one of a number of refereeing occasions, ‘ever the bridesmaid, never the bride’.

The UWS and Nepean 1996–2000 In 1996, I was appointed to the headship of the geographically central and largest ‘member’ of the three-part UWS system university, as president of UWS Nepean13 and one of three UWS deputy vice-chancellors. Earlier, I had achieved my by now familiar position of runner-up for vice-chancellor there, as also at the University of Auckland to which I next migrated. Again the bridesmaid, I stood for the headship of the UWS system when the vice-chancellor and by then good colleague and friend left to lead Group of Eight14 University of Western Australia. Any internal candidate stood a poor chance, given old inter-member rivalries. My handicap was exacerbated by the fact that UWS had been traumatized by a ‘UDI’ crisis that left the vacancy at Nepean which I filled. Yet again I came a very close second. Deryck Schreuder’s departure marked the end of what was to my mind a good Australian venture into a US-style higher education (HE) system, well fitted to a multi-campus institution in the huge sprawling Great Western Sydney region – the wrong side of the tracks, out beyond the Olympic site, populated by ‘new Australian’ immigrants and Westie battlers. With a strong lead from the chancellor, however,15 his successor quickly moved to amalgamate the three members. The resulting merged institution shed the former leadership, and for the only time in my life I  left a position not of my own volition. This is not

148

Chris Duke

the place to narrate that turbulent fin de siècle story (see however Hutchinson (2013) and my extended (2014) review of that book)16 Its relevance here is in its demands for bold and courageous leadership. I had been prepared for this, not only by challenge-full earlier employment but also by characteristics gained in childhood as the first born of four siblings:  living through the World War II bombings and the blitz, surviving among gypsy boys as my only childhood playmates, where membership was earned by bare-knuckle fighting and Tarzan games in the woods – not an obvious form of leadership training but good for resilience under stress. System-level politics aside, leading Nepean was exhilarating:  high energy, high risk, highly visible, by all normal criteria highly successful. Restructuring, by then becoming fashionable, regrettably proved essential given the anarchic condition of Nepean and its eight mostly independently-minded Deans. It was handled fast and democratically. Faculties were replaced by twenty (as it turned out to be) self-selecting schools in a flat structure. For ‘human resources’, I worked with the people whom I inherited, creating close administrative and academic teams and making very few new appointments other than as dictated by growth in scale. Empowering staff and involving local communities and partners to shape the institution were central, here, as in earlier paid and voluntary leadership positions, and subsequently in Auckland, Melbourne and internationally. At Nepean, productivity multiplied. Strong partnerships were developed with local and regional authorities, communities and industry: performing arts collaborated with local theatres and playhouses, with small business via the Chambers, and with the mighty Penrith Panthers Footie Club where students performed Shakespeare to a packed house. Strong access articulation was built with the regional TAFE Institute by an energetic Nepean Articulation Officer. The traditional examination-based school-leaving route to university was complemented by means of a Schools Compacts partnership with high schools in the region. This enabled HE taster experience in high schools and direct entry on interview based on the knowledge and advice of the schools about ‘underachievers’ and their potential. This high-profile innovation attracted hostility from traditional media and other sources, but won the public backing of the Minister for Education and was well validated by the results. The trust and support of vice-chancellor Deryck Schreuder were steadfast and essential to the rebirth of Nepean. Meanwhile the UWS staff and Nepean student unions became staunch and helpful partners and advisers, old stereotypes notwithstanding.

Crossing Higher Education Borders

149

Biographical sketch – a kind of afterlife? Is there leadership life after paid employment? I posed this question in starting the chapter, demurring at the assumption that it is all over when you retire. A former Leeds colleague remarked following retirement from a well-recognized professorship that the hardest thing was no longer being an important person. Recently, another retired emeritus in a different country feared that it was all over on reaching his seventieth birthday. The first has continued to write significant work, the latter likewise, and to play a vital income-free university– community leadership role where he still lives and works (Fieldhouse and Taylor, 2014; Postle, Burton and Danaher, 2014). As longevity has extended, pensions are deferred and compulsory retirement fades, attitudes and internalized identities are slower to change, for all that ‘sixty-five is the new fifty’, ‘eightyplus the new near-seventy’. The West is slow to learn the wisdom of the East and the South: that the old possess wisdom. They are, in contemporary language, a human resource, producers as well as consumers, of value not only because their numbers rise as conventional working age numbers fall. For me, the years since over-full-time paid employment have enabled the exercise of less obvious forms of academic leadership: not only in the form of advice, commendation and networking for others, and in writing, but also in working with universities to improve their own systems and practices, and helping civil society organizations to work better at fulfilling principled, worthwhile and robust missions. Looking back, I am amused to realize that for almost fifty years I was paid by universities in England, Australia and occasionally elsewhere to be a stern critic. I continue, more by way of books, journal and book reviews, to sustain this not always popular habit (Duke, Osborne and Wilson, 2013). Today, universities are deservedly criticized from within for authoritarian and managerialist ways said to be copied from business. Research selectivity is used to dismiss staff and reshape academe around strong profit centres; poor league table positioning may be used to remove university chief executives, as it is football managers. This world, like the culturally imperious global environment which we inhabit, makes critical inquiry by public intellectuals and courageous scholars the more essential and the more difficult. Being now an honorary insider–outsider has not altered my stance and conduct, but it makes it easier. Like my former RMIT vice-chancellor, I prefer instinctually to lead from the wings, to mobilize institutions – and their staff members – on the road to sustainable success through

150

Chris Duke

their own collective efforts.17 Culture, identity and self-concept are central to this. RMIT, for all the management challenges posed by myopic national leadership and huge size, remains truly ‘a university of the people’. Its success lies in embedding a culture that has survived leadership changes decade on decade.18

Reflections and conclusions Formative influences, philosophy and values as a basis for leading At Leeds and ANU, I experienced and then facilitated group dynamics (T-groups and L-groups) as a means of learning the dynamics underpinning leadership and organization behaviour. Later, I contributed on occasion to staff development programmes, including top leadership. My own academic leadership was otherwise learned through doing, erring, reflecting and trying again. ANU work helped shift my pedagogic focus from individual to group and community, a shift that survived rampant sometimes antisocial, almost anti-societal and certainly anti-communitarian individualism from the 1980s on. Recently my interest in traditional or indigenous knowledge and wisdom first found working with Aboriginal Australians has deepened, especially from experience in and of Asian and African religious practices and beliefs, and from living in still-traditional rural France. This is married to valuing people also in their individualism and diversity, and to faith in their potential to live and work well, with integrity, given even a little opportunity: not from greed but from love of a life of good. I came to realize only in recent times how powerful were formative years and influences in shaping my work and informing the way I practised ‘leadership’, which I prefer to test by the presence or absence of followership, conviviality and what we now call output. Self-reliant childhood on a remote yet near-London farm created a form of multiculturalism that was at times near-schizophrenic but later matured into professional internationalism. My home playmates were tough outsider and often outlaw gypsy kids. My school companions, a long walk and two bus-rides away, were mostly genteel lower middle class. A Puritan work ethic and driving ambition then took me to another world: Cambridge, where ‘real class’ mixed, if at arm’s length, with us others. My three early worlds never met, and I never revisited the first two. Today, I ‘network’ daily with individuals and organizations in cultures and places far distant and only a brief click apart. As an academic leader, conventionally speaking I am ever the reluctant showman, preferring seminar, search conference and other brainstorming meetings

Crossing Higher Education Borders

151

over keynoting. This has persisted despite learning to speak extempore very well, first in China in the early 1980s and then on the job at UWS, mixing quick wit with humour and connecting with those I address in their own space and mode. This meant learning extraversion to offset early-bred introversion. Selfeffacing diffidence, however, went with survival skills; both were acquired from my father and in the low Congregational Church of my youth. My family were all Pacifists, as unpopular in 1930s–1940s Britain as in World War I. We moved when I  was a very small child to my conscientious objector father’s new job and the tied farm cottage which became home. Farming was an essential occupation exempting from military service. My mother’s less compromising brother instead served time in two leading London gaols. In the Congregational Church, God spoke directly to the people. The minister was chosen not by God or a hierarchy but by the congregation:  no priestly gatekeeper but a leader by example, applying rather than mediating the Word. Only later did I recognize the source of my independence of spirit, dearth of respect for unreasoned authority and obstinacy of moral purpose – also what a less than friendly employer, misusing annual ‘appraisal’ to scheme my dismissal, called a deficit of gravitas.

Crossing which borders? From early years, I fastened onto the expression ‘only connect’ as a key to understanding better and more practically and to my own instinctual style. With everrising complexity amplified by ‘globalization’, the need to connect and to cross more kinds of borders becomes stronger. My chapter title initially proposed ‘the edge of the board’, referring to the university and echoing an ancient Chinese military strategist. The change to ‘crossing borders’ induced reflection on the many senses in which this applies. I experience many kinds of border crossings in my professional and intellectual work. Some are specific to universities’ internal and external life and governance, yet generic across other fields of endeavour. Others belong in similar measure to governance, management and self-management for individuals, communities, networks and more formal structures of all kinds. They include borders that often also serve as barriers between tertiary and higher education systems and sectors. These are there for political convenience, and to distinguish different functions and intended outcomes, between universities individually, and collectively between different kinds of universities. The distinctions are hierarchical as well as between different groups by function. Less

152

Chris Duke

kindly but fittingly, these groups that hunt in packs – the Australian Group of Eight, the UK Russell Group and others – are characterized as gangs.19 It is often easier to collaborate with institutions far removed in distance, and sometimes also in status, for instance for wider access provision, than with similar universities closer by. There may be a positive correlation between distance and capacity to collaborate, such that local collaborative arrangements (like Melbourne’s recent Office for Knowledge Capital) prove short-lived. An overwhelming, nearuniversal presumption of competition as a good and prime motivator permeates our world and impels the manning of borders and assertion of at times spurious distinctiveness. More familiar and traditional are the borders within an academic discipline field which protect sub-disciplines, identity, careers and the status quo, at the price of applying disciplinary knowledge in new combinations to solve society’s new maybe more pressing problems. Disciplinary and sub-disciplinary fields seem often no sooner to be opened up than they are re-fenced, although in a longer cycle whole subject fields do fall out of favour and disappear from university curricula and calendars. Sadly, another kind of distinction, not to say hard border, is found here: between short-term market-driven expediency and a more values-based judgement of long-term community and societal, including labour market, need. Here good leadership may mean being unpopularly unfashionable. Differences between universities in different social settings and environments are ignored when uniform policies are convenient to government. University engagement with community and regional development suffers a border, if not a gulf, between the world and language of the higher education sector and other worlds beyond. This is more marked, and at times grotesque, transnationally and globally between different countries, cultures and higher education systems where each different and unique university resides. There is also tension, and often a stark either–or choice, between global and local. My work has required transcending each of these ‘borders’. Leadership has meant persuading, cajoling and sometimes commanding others to follow: for example, in disbanding Faculties and generating self-created schools at UWS. In recent years I  have thought more about governance:  the way that as a species we manage or fail to manage our arrangements and affairs effectively to be sustainable, to enable long-term vision and planning, and to avoid or quickly mitigate unintended consequences. The lifelong learning of organizations and systems as well as individuals is central to these concepts, and unavoidably trans-border. Yet we coerce thought and deed into mental and

Crossing Higher Education Borders

153

departmental boxes20 in a vain effort to manage global and local complexity. Most recently, working with the PASCAL International Observatory,21 I have been nurturing a new website venture called OTB – Outside the Box. OTB is intended to foster fresh thinking and action about and arising from the daily fare of lifelong learning, learning cities and regions but from outside: from the perspectives and priorities of public, private and civil society parties whom we seek to work with and for, but who do not use our language to solve their problems.

Implications – Learning to lead In summary, my own experience suggests that leadership is not confined within salaried position, that it is not ended by ‘retirement’ and that a career in leadership is a chimera, a collective delusion to keep people at work. It is more often accidental than fully planned and equipped for; it is rationalized post facto. Political dynasties may emerge in countries as different as the United States and North Korea, India and the UK. Academic leadership is a more quirky affair. Leadership training may be a handy adjunct, another source of employment nourished by complex modernity. Global ratings and league tables with their paraphernalia of ever-new criteria, competitive ever-changing tables, books and conferences also keep folk in employment. They are now coming to be widely recognized as inimical to real leadership:  a roaring beckoning highway and a disincentive to treading what is fatuously called the road less trod. Here as with research assessment, leadership means confronting such phenomena, not winning in the wrong game. Leadership is about thoughtful reflection and when necessary the polite uninhibited telling of truth to power. There is a price: no emperor likes learning that he (or she) is without clothes. It is superficially easier to manage up than to share leadership and authority by spreading management down. The first achieves status; the second multiplies energy. Being a successful leader means being able to listen attentively, hear clearly and respond with courtesy and respect without self-censoring deference or fear of discomfort. Leading means going first, attempting what others are asked to attempt: more example, less command. These are things that I go on learning while carrying my own baggage along with the benefits of experience, albeit at the price of a less than triumphant ‘career’: occasionally by observing real leaders at first hand as well as more distant role models, more often by reflective self-review, while remaining ever the naïvely hopeful optimist.

154

Chris Duke

Notes 1 I do not list publications generally in this chapter. 2 The nearest was having a recent book delayed by a university publishing house with a backlog of ‘urgent REF-ables’. The11 December 2014 Times Higher Education devoted its leader and several other pieces to swelling discontent over the unintended consequences of research selectivity. I hope in time to see this and associated competitive global league tables abandoned for the collateral damage and abuse that they cause and allow. 3 For many now older women there was no well-trod path to walk, such is the rate of economic and labour market change. The new world of youth and not-so-young under- and unemployment may further erode this wobbly economic career base for civic conformity. 4 Workers’ Educational Association. 5 By chance – another accident – coming from rural Kent, I first lodged in Leeds Chapeltown and so discovered from within Britain’s early approximation to the ghetto. 6 Had my senior Leeds colleague and later Head of the Leeds Department not been a pacifist with teenage sons at the time of Australian conscription to Vietnam, the ANU job would have been his, a further example of career as accident. 7 A privilege shared by my Australian-born wife, five children and eight grandchildren but not my married Thai daughter-in-law and their child. Thus easily can inherited internationalism be reversed. 8 Simply ‘Continuing’; the proposed more old-fashioned prefix ‘Adult and’ was dropped on the motion at Advisory Committee of an early close colleague Head of Business School George Bain, who went on to become VC at Queens Belfast. 9 Warwick was later chosen by Burton Clark as one of his five European ‘entrepreneurial universities’. 10 Continuing Professional Development. 11 Warwick through DCE along with Salford initiated FE–HE partnership in the form of combining a preparatory and first undergraduate year in an FE college with the two later years of an honours degree taught on campus. 12 I interviewed so unpersuasively at Warwick (where I came on the back of being flown to England by the University of Leeds) that Warwick invited me back for a second interview. Tipped off not to hold back, I talked the Committee into the ground to the point that VC Butterworth eventually interjected, ‘ok, ok, you’ve persuaded us’! The same holding back without doubt limited my effectiveness in Senate and even the smaller weekly VC’s Monday morning meetings, though not in the same meetings at RMIT a decade later.

Crossing Higher Education Borders

155

13 The term ‘President’ was being widely adopted to facilitate standing, relations and student recruitment in Asia, where ‘Vice-Chancellor’ was thought to sound less authoritative. 14 In US Ivy League, in the UK Russell Group. 15 The Australian Chancellor plays a different role than in the UK tradition, although it is becoming commoner especially in ‘new’ universities there following the end of the binary division and heightened managerialism more generally. The Australian Chancellor chairs Council (Trustees at UWS) and is often present on campus, playing a role at times in competition with the vice-chancellor. 16 See, however, Hutchinson (2013) and my extended 2014 review of that book. 17 All this is, of course, anathema to modern management practices in which, in the delusional world of pure competition and market wisdom, motivation is ‘known’ to be for extrinsic reward and, in the words of the Lord Mayor of London, greed is a very good thing. 18 Warwick’s fiftieth anniversary celebration preparations for 2015 were preceded by several PR disasters – appearing to play the Home Secretary’s policy enforcer, suspending a senior professor for speaking openly, using the RAE to terminate staff, calling the police onto campus in a way reminiscent of the late 1960s. It will be interesting to see whether the once deep culture of community–regional partnership enshrined in annual mission statements can survive the pressure also to be ‘best globally’. 19 Initially, I believe, by recently deceased Sir David Watson, a great international academic leader and a worthy role model for myself as for others. 20 A colleague and doughty champion of university engagement, John Goddard at Newcastle in England’s once industrial North fittingly favours stovepipes over silos. 21 PASCAL, started in Melbourne following an international OECD conference in 2002 on regional development and universities, was led initially from RMIT. The acronym stands for Place (management), And Social Capital And Learning (lifelong, as in cities and regions etc.). The capitalized conjoining ‘A’s denote necessary and important connections between generating and using knowledge.

References Burton Clark, R. (1998), Creating Entrepreneurial Universities, Oxford: Pergamon. Duke, C. (1996), The Learning University, Buckingham: SRHE and OpenUP. Duke, C. (2002), Managing the Learning University, Buckingham: SRHE and OpenUP.

156

Chris Duke

Duke, C. (2014), ‘Extended Review. A University for the People’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 33 (6): 832–4. Duke, C., M. Osborne and B. Wilson (2013), A New Imperative: Regions and Higher Education in Difficult Times, Manchester: MUP. Fieldhouse, R. and R. Taylor (eds) (2014), E.P. Thompson and English Radicalism, Manchester: MUP. Hutchinson, M. (2013), A University of the People: A History of the University of Western Sydney, Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Postle, G., L. Burton and P. Danaher (2014), Community Capacity Building: Lessons from Adult Learning in Australia, Leicester: NIACE. Thompson, E. P. (ed.) (1970), Warwick University Limited, Harmondsworth: Pelican.

Part Three

Future Directions Part Three offers some directions for those concerned with developing the qualities necessary for cosmopolitan academic leadership. Layer in Chapter 9 examines the wider policy landscape of curriculum and pedagogic changes and the challenges for academic leaders in higher education. Cook-Sather and Felten in Chapter 10 argue for a new model of academic leadership that embraces an ethic of reciprocity and the practice of partnership in learning and teaching. They suggest that such an ethic and practice constitute a distinct form of academic leadership within a ‘rooted’ or ‘embodied’ cosmopolitanism and might serve as a bridge between the current reality and the utopian ideal. The two chapters offer critical explorations of university purposes, structures and practices of academic leadership for learning, teaching, and curriculum development. The importance of organizational culture is considered and a concern of Part Three is with styles and models that seek to enable and empower academic leadership in higher education.

9

Enabling Academic Leadership: Changing Academic Practice Geoff Layer

Reflecting on leadership styles within universities and how academic leadership can itself be developed necessarily involves reflection on what is meant by academic leadership. It also requires an exploration of the challenges faced by many such leaders, recognizing the differences in their environment and culture. Therefore, this chapter specifically explores leadership in the academic context of curriculum and pedagogical change. It is in this area of academic practice that we start to see the real impact of leadership styles, the role that it can have in securing change and the adjustments to those leadership styles that are often required. Attempting to change academic practice is often contested, and it is the area in which there are multiple approaches and arguments as to how to secure such change. The issue of academic leadership in respect of academic practice is one that comes with the shift towards mass higher education (Trow, 1989; Scott, 1998; Willetts, 2013) and the challenges such a mass system presents in terms of large classes, modularization and a more anonymous student experience. The context for this chapter is drawn from a UK experience, but the key issues might have relevance to other contexts.

Recent development in English higher education Universities have different histories and, while they undoubtedly have a high degree of commonality of purpose, there are stark differences in culture and governance between individual institutions. The original, or ancient, UK universities linked closely with the church base and focused on scholarship through the study of the existing texts of the time. This was a very different conception of the

160

Geoff Layer

university to that envisioned by Newman (1852), with his view of liberal education and developing the mind of the individual, and vastly different again to the red brick institutions of the Victorian era with their emphasis on the development of the workforce as the country moved from an agrarian to an industrial economy. Now, in the twenty-first century, there is a much greater emphasis on the role of the university within its community and a need to reflect, not only in the student base but also in the staff base, a greater appreciation of diversity or cosmopolitanism. Culture and governance structures have a major impact on leadership styles and the ability to influence change. Now, leadership is not just about managing change and includes many other aspects, but in this chapter the concept of leading change is explored. In the agenda for change, the performance of the university is a critical factor. In a high-performing university, the style of leadership may be less important as the drivers for change will not be as obvious and so attempts to introduce it may be frustrated by an ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ attitude among the staff base. A university that is not performing well, however, may present a clear need for change but will equally encounter resistance to proposed new approaches. When considering different approaches to leadership, it is often useful to observe the vocabulary that is used. Those leaders who most often use ‘we’ and ‘our’ are likely to have a very different style compared to those who use ‘I’ and ‘my’, the former reflecting an approach which focuses more on collegiality than the latter which is often referred to as creeping managerialism. In the United Kingdom, the governance of universities is determined by the vehicle used to establish the institution as an university. This could be by Royal Charter, Act of Parliament or delegated legislation. Prior to 1992, the charter was the primary mechanism used to both establish universities and grant them degree-awarding powers. The charters were often modelled using specific commitments and responsibilities for that institution. More recently, the Further and Higher Education Act (1992) has been used to grant institutions university title with the governance framework laid down within that Act of Parliament, and this has been developed further on a number of occasions. The articles and instruments of the legislative-derived university are significantly simpler than the bicameral system often found in chartered universities. However, it is not really the governance systems that inhibit or encourage change through leadership. If the leadership model is successful, the governance system will empower and legitimize change. The leadership challenge in English universities has been dramatically changed by the radical and far-reaching reforms to the funding and provision

Enabling Academic Leadership

161

of higher education introduced by the Coalition Government that was in power from 2010 to 2015. The government’s stated intention was to introduce a market in higher education in which the student had greater choice and in which the quality of information and teaching would rise dramatically in response to the market. This market approach led to a proliferation of private sector ‘forprofit’ and ‘not-for-profit’ organizations receiving public funding for teaching higher education with, at that time, few constraints on having to meet normal sectoral obligations around the student interest, such as compliance with the Office of the Independent Adjudicator over student complaints. The Coalition Government therefore introduced a rapid and radical policy shift for which it recognized the need to legislate in order to exercise control over the system. The Coalition Government published a White Paper, ‘Putting Students at Heart of the System (2011)’, but it could be argued that it ultimately failed to deliver the necessary legislation to deliver the required regulatory controls to fully protect both the system and students. Consequently, the changes to the higher education system were managed with real difficulty and the predictable lurches in policy began to appear to counter the unintended consequences of the policy changes that the planned legislation would have avoided. The White Paper had claimed to be a landmark in policy direction that would place much greater power in the hands of students, thereby driving up performance and quality as universities competed against existing and new competitors in the marketplace to attract the best students. Without the legislation to back up the White Paper, what we saw was a lot of work going into shoring up the existing regulatory regime with the new entrants to the sector and to protect the student interest as well as the development of mechanisms to control the financial exposure. The policy changes introduced by the Coalition Government were fast, furious and often amended without waiting for an evidence base to evaluate the policy or the change. For example, public block grant funding for teaching of undergraduate students was removed to be replaced by the trebling of tuition fees without any apparent thought given to the implications for postgraduate or part-time study. In terms of postgraduate study, the result was a one-year initiative to deliver financial support to postgraduate students for 2015–16 while government worked with the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to develop a longer term postgraduate loan system. Entrants to parttime study suddenly declined by 40% over two years between 2010 and 2012, most likely due to a combination of the new fees regime, austerity measures in the public sector from which most part-time students came and probably inappropriate curriculum models. The initial response to the dramatic decline in

162

Geoff Layer

part-time student numbers was one of concern across the sector, and work was immediately undertaken to better understand the downturn. However, analysis revealed that the bulk of the decline had occurred in what is known as ‘sub degree’ provision and short cycle part-time study. This in turn led to a perception of repositioning of part-time higher education study such that only study leading to a degree was deemed to be of value. This is in sharp contrast to the broader lifelong learning approach that the sector had adopted for many years and which was encapsulated in the Learning Age 1998. Furthermore, there were constant changes to the policy on full-time student numbers. First came a reduction in the number of students that universities were permitted to admit, and then rigid student number controls but with unfettered growth in the private sector, followed by limited expansion of student numbers and then no limits in the public sector but significant reduction in the private sector. All of this took place in a period of one government over five years and before any student graduated having paid the higher fees. All of these changes combined with the culture of a particular university have placed challenges on the role of the academic leader involved in managing academic practice. The market-led approach means that universities needed to review performance and outcomes with greater speed. The lurch towards seeking to set targets, reviewing performance against targets and measuring success may have focused minds, but it has also changed the practice of the academic leader. They are not only more focused, but their performance is measured against various indicators such as inclusivity, progression rates, student satisfaction and success in securing graduate employment, among others. In addition, the student body has become increasingly diverse, and this brings its own challenges in terms of different learning styles, educational background and knowledge of higher education that students bring. Consequently, the academic course leader has become the pivotal role and function for many universities.

Leadership in learning and teaching In the world of universities, the concept of leadership and titles such as ‘managers’ are fraught with tension as members of the academy bring very different perspectives about what they consider to be leadership, as opposed to managerialism, with managerialism often being seen as a challenge to the collegial nature of the university. The use of the ‘manager’ title can be interpreted as a part of a divisive approach, especially in a highly unionized setting, as it creates a culture

Enabling Academic Leadership

163

of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and it can be argued to fracture the notion of the unified academy. The notion of leadership for many years was seen to be the preserve of the institutional head and the immediate level below them. This then expanded to include the professoriate and heads of departments, who demonstrated leadership through the mastery of their subject. But the Crosland creation of the polytechnics in 1965, which Baker later enabled to become universities in 1992, brought a sharper focus on the nature of the ‘course’ by the then Council for National Academic Awards. This, coupled with the major expansion of participation, created a new breed of academic leaders. These were the course leaders who managed the delivery of a course, often without control over resources but with key public metrics used to measure their success. The incremental establishment of this new level of academic managers dramatically changed the leadership profile as it brought in a much more mixed staff base with different experiences. This had the greatest impact in shifting towards a more cosmopolitan and inclusive management group and indeed the sort of divergence in formal leadership roles as recognized by Lumby (2012). In the very early days of the academy, individual academics were recognized for their scholarship and knowledge. They would be experts in their fields, and their time was spent on developing that knowledge in others and pushing at the frontiers of knowledge and discovery. Not for them the modern academic frameworks and infrastructure that is often associated with neoliberal managerialism (Deem, Hillyard and Reed, 2007). Today, academics as leaders and managers are central aspects of the university. In some universities, these are roles for a fixed period of time before returning to an individual’s research career, in others they are the career role themselves. In a typical university there are leadership roles at different levels, and the concept of the corporate form is crucial to the definition of the roles that individuals perform. Institutions will sit somewhere along a continuum of different leadership models which has, at one extreme, the homogenous institution which has strong central leadership and control with the subject areas working within a unified academic structure. These are very tightly run organizations that require leadership with a high degree of authority, control and certainty. Clark (2004) would say these are run through ‘the strengthened steering core’. They will tend to be top-down in approach and serve a particular culture in which change can be rapid and decision-making clear, with excellent communication. These are typically to be found in the private sector, newer universities and further education colleges and have the significant advantage of being able to respond quickly to new developments. At the other end of the continuum are the universities

164

Geoff Layer

created to be a home of an academic community of scholars, identified as the academic heartland (Clark, 2004), with a tradition of the academic identifying more with their discipline than their institution. These universities are often held up to be slow to change, lacking in uniformity, with unclear decision-making and relatively poor communication channels. Of course, nothing simply falls into one of these models, and in all universities there will be aspects of both approaches and there will be examples of current or previous leaders trying to change both the approach and the culture. The senior team is there to lead the overall approach and to ensure that the university has the appropriate strategic plan, is meeting those objectives in the plan and is able to respond to changing circumstances. Increasingly, the boards of universities are looking at the progress and comparability of the institution nationally and globally. Much of this is fuelled by an obsession with league tables and the position of the institution in those league tables. This is an industry in itself and the number of such tables grows each year as commercial organizations seek to develop income streams from comparing universities using marginally different criteria. There are no official league tables, but university boards do take notice of them and probably more so than thorough examination of the university performance against the nationally produced and objective performance benchmarks and indicators (HESA, 2014). The leadership role of academics is dependent upon the organizational structure and the culture of the university. In the more centrally controlled approach, the number of leaders tends to be fewer, the culture is hierarchical and the message and approach is passed down the line (Denison et al., 2012). Whereas in the more traditional, old university structure, there is a greater need for local leadership as it requires a more distributed approach. In many ways universities have created a half-way house towards a holding company and subsidiary model, with deans of faculties operating the trading subsidiaries within a university framework. This analogy tends to fall down, though, as the faculties are generally not separate legal entities and governance is retained at university level. However, the faculty leadership is measured by its success against a range of indicators which will typically include research performance, student recruitment, student success and income generation. In essence, they have the responsibility of a subsidiary without some of the freedoms, although it is equally arguable that they do not have the ultimate accountability either. When we look at styles of leadership there are many examples of how those styles can be used to achieve the organizational goal. Much may depend on the type of journey the university is trying to make and the nature of the staff

Enabling Academic Leadership

165

base within it. One approach used is analogous to that of a Soviet-style planned economy in which there is macro-planning to determine the goal; this is then supported by micro-management and control to ensure that it is carried out. The command and control concept was clearly one favoured by Joseph Stalin, whose focus was predominantly a model in which authority emanates from the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party. An alternative approach to leadership is found with the model most clearly espoused through Gandhi, which is collectivism based upon the principles of engagement. Such a model requires considerable engagement across the institution, with the ability and the opportunity for staff to participate in the decisionmaking processes. Such an approach rarely leads to quick decisions. A  third approach is that of using influence and persuasion to engage individuals. This is often best portrayed by Shakespeare in King Henry V as he seeks to change what looks like imminent defeat at the Battle of Agincourt into a resounding victory. The speech at Agincourt demonstrates how he used the knowledge he had about the people he was seeking to lead and inspire: From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remembered – We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day. (Shakespeare, [1599] 1995, 4.3)

Henry could not rely on a command and control leadership style. He already had the authority, but his assessment was that his was a beaten army. He realized that he needed a different approach and one in which he could persuade the army to believe that they could win. This is the approach of ‘followers’ in which we see the inspiration shaping the belief and releasing the empowerment, innovation and entrepreneurship that becomes the game-changing momentum. The command and control model has the benefit of simplicity and clarity and delivers because of that control until there is a change of leader or a loosening of control. The critical elements that are missing in this model are the entrepreneurship, innovation and ownership that come from individuals believing in the

166

Geoff Layer

goal and the way forward. With the command and control model the innovation and entrepreneurship is with the leader, whereas with the followers model it is with the individuals and the collective of the army. The latter model delivers an embedded approach, whereas the former model relies on a particular command structure which makes any change vulnerable as that command structure weakens or changes. A feature of leadership styles in universities is not only their durability but also their flexibility. Therefore, a particular style of leadership may be required for one issue and then another for a different set of issues. This means that there will not necessarily be an all-embracing concept of leadership style, but more likely to be one of a number. These approaches will vary according to circumstances and perceived need. This in turn places a much bigger burden on leaders in some ways, as it requires a repertoire of leadership styles rather than the adoption of a fixed approach. Cultural development is often closely linked with, and nuanced by, particular aspects of the institutional history. This must be understood – and be seen to be understood – if you are to take a lead in institutional progress. Transformation is far from easy –it can be all-consuming and a long journey – one not to be taken on ‘lightly, wantonly or inadvisedly’. (Garrett and Davies, 2010, p. 19)

Changing academic practice A key component of any university is the approach it has to the nature of the curriculum and the pedagogical approaches utilized. Curriculum approaches have developed as academics introduced new ways of teaching and new subjects were introduced. Indeed in some ancient universities in the United Kingdom, the classes were originally in Latin, and in some the lecturer was paid by donations from the students depending on how ‘good’ the lecture was perceived as being. In these early days, what was taught and how it was taught and assessed were all the personal and individual responsibility of the lecturer, and there will have been relatively limited sharing of practice with other academics from the same subject compared to today, something that has been significantly enhanced by the availability of modern technology. What is studied at university has changed dramatically over the last 50  years. Subjects such as Business Studies did not exist before the 1960s, Engineering was predominantly studied in the evening on a part-time basis after students had been working during the day, Law was a non-graduate profession and teacher training and nursing had yet to become

Enabling Academic Leadership

167

part of universities. The massive growth in UK higher education inspired by the Robbins report (1963), Wilson (1963), Crosland (1966), Dearing (1997) and then Willetts (2013) created a paradigm shift for higher education and led to the model that we have today, which is arguably one of mass higher education (Trow, 1989; Scott, 1998). Since the 1960s, there has been a significant commitment to growth in participation, an increase in the breadth of delivery model and a greater variety of higher education providers. This has, broadly speaking, continued to be the policy of successive governments with a variety of different emphases dependent on issues at a particular time. A key aspect of this shift in scale has been the need to introduce a higher degree of certainty and conformity to the notion of what is taught and how it is assessed. The scholars of yesterday would have been bemused by debates around learning outcomes, learning and teaching strategies, programme specifications, subject benchmarks, quality enhancement and assessment strategies. They would, though, have probably found more comfort in the role of the learned societies and to some extent that of the professional, statutory and regulatory bodies (PSRBs), as the latter are more concerned with the discipline or subject-specific aspect of study. In effect, UK higher education had been on a journey which began with individual autonomy over the curriculum and its delivery to a system which is thoroughly documented in terms of content, delivery phase, assessment and anticipated outcomes. Any subsequent change to that detail then requires very specific institutional (and/or PSRB) approval. The danger of the system we have moved to is whether we have stifled innovation in the drive towards conformity. This is a major issue for the university sector, as it could follow the schools sector, and we could have the development of a national curriculum and a push towards greater standardization. It is also the case that the introduction of private sector organizations into higher education, many of which use external validation and learning materials, has begun this process. This means that innovation, enterprise and a sense of pushing at the boundaries are all in danger of being viewed as too risky and therefore discouraged. These are crucial issues for a university as members of academic staff need to be empowered to lead and shape pedagogical change and enhancement as otherwise there is the danger of a sterile learning environment. Given that there is always a need to enhance academic practice and that there should be a commitment to improving the connectivity between learning and learners, then academic practice will change. This is a central aspect of modern life. In 1998, when Tomlinson defined inclusive learning as ‘the greatest degree

168

Geoff Layer

of fit between the individual learner’s requirements and the provision that is made for them’ (Tomlinson, 1996, pp.  25–26), he was setting a vision for the future and a desire to ensure that individuals could achieve at the highest level. However, he did not foresee that practice would need to change to such a degree simply to keep up with modern approaches to student learning. Key areas that have seen development at a phenomenal rate can be grouped into categories such as: 1. ‘Delivery’ of learning 2. Subject development 3. Professional development They have all led to significant change, and the approach to leading that implementation will vary significantly, both at the different stages of development and in different institutions in respect of the ‘delivery’ of learning. An example of the scale or pace of change, and the approach to management of that change, is the introduction of the virtual learning environments (VLEs). When Blackboard and WebCT were in the early stages of competition and wooing universities, very few people could have envisaged the technological advances that have radically changed the way people, particularly young people, engage with the world around them. In 2015, universities were teaching students that have never used a landline and who do not know what an overhead projector is because they are ‘old’ technology. The VLE planning may have foreseen the extent of the digital age that we now live in, but whether it could have influenced the academy to plan in that way is questionable. The approach to the introduction of the VLE was predominantly from the command and control model as there was a need to identify a supplier and to sort the procurement. In some universities, open approaches through consultation may well have been to the fore in a classic Gandhi-type process, which will have ensured greater ‘buy in’. The crucial stage, however, then becomes the implementation process with the academic staff to make sure that the VLE is utilized. The easy straightforward approach is through a command and control model, with a clear project plan that indicates when everyone has to be trained, how the system is to be used and when staff members are to have completed the tasks they need to perform. This can be achieved quite rapidly and sees the production of a corporate and standardized approach. However, the positive impact of high-level systematization might be at the cost of the innovation of some academics. A  different way forward would be to encourage, enable and empower individuals to experiment and explore

Enabling Academic Leadership

169

using the system in their own innovative way. The role of the leader in these two approaches is very different and, while the control model will undoubtedly provide the quicker response, it is likely that it will only be used in that way and cause such frustration to the innovators that they circumvent the system in unhelpful ways, thus confusing students and colleagues as a result, whereas the model which encourages the greatest level of engagement will deliver the greatest innovation as it creates ownership and flexibility. So if we simply want to ensure that all handouts and educational materials are placed on the VLE, then all models will achieve this, but within different timescales and with different outcomes. The command and control model will produce the standard format for the framework for implementation of the VLE, whereas the engagement and empowerment model will be more firmly embedded and driven by individuals seeking to work through how they wish to use the VLE. Some will use it as a simple repository for notes and materials, and others will seek to maximize the impact of the VLE and use the full range of interactive facilities to push at the boundaries of engagement with the technology. It is of course for the university, hopefully influenced by the student voice, to determine which approach is appropriate, and the approach may well change as the process emerges through different stages. In the second category of subject development, the general approach has been focused more on engagement and empowerment. This was demonstrated through the establishment of the Learning and Teaching Subject Network, which evolved to become part of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). This has been followed up with the development of subject streams within the HEA. Interestingly, the approach has been to encourage those members of staff who wish to engage in the pedagogical development of their subject to do so. In many instances, they then shared that development with institutional colleagues in the same subject. They effectively became champions for the development and, as such, advocates for change, but because they felt empowered they were able to shape the nature of the change. It is interesting that in this particular area of subject and pedagogical enhancement there is a common perception that it is an area where development and take-up is encouraged rather than required. This reflects the tradition of academic scholars pursuing the development of the subject and ways in which it is taught and assessed, and is at the heart of much of the modern concept of academic freedom. However, the third category of professional development in learning and teaching is an interesting example of how approaches have emerged. Many

170

Geoff Layer

universities have for a number of years provided training courses to support those members of staff who are new to teaching, although there is no requirement for university lecturers to have a teaching qualification. A professional body was established in 2000 as the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (ILTHE) as a response to the Dearing Report. The ILTHE was originally a membership body, and academics were encouraged by universities to engage and join. In some instances the membership fee was paid by the university rather than the individual, which obviously is a key encouragement factor but, as is often the case, once the university stopped paying the fee, the membership numbers tended to decline in that institution. The approach was clearly one based on seeking to persuade and to empower. A  number of universities are now considering being more instrumentalist and seeking to ensure that all staff become Fellows of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), influenced by a commitment to professional development and also to ensure that the league table position that is likely to emerge is maximized. Currently in the United Kingdom, less than 25% of academic staff (HEA, 2015)  are members of the HEA, and the institutional push for academics to join will be interesting to observe. It is when there is a shift in emphasis to staff being required to become an FHEA that we see a move from empowerment and encouragement to one of a greater reliance on command and control. This is a good example of how leadership styles adjust to circumstances and scenarios. What these examples seek to demonstrate is that leadership styles in higher education need to be adaptable and flexible, and leaders will do different things at different times to manage the development of individuals and the university. Shattock (2010) calls this a climate of intellectual vibrancy that encourages academic entrepreneurialism. It is this entrepreneurialism that really makes a difference to the core business of universities. It is, of course, interesting to see which of the cultures will deliver the greatest benefit. The argument within the university community will always favour the approach that is based on empowerment and the individual being able to innovate. University management teams may have different views and, from the examples used above, it becomes evident that the need and practice is much more mixed than simply being within one school of thought. It was with this focus on individual development that Newman (1852) created his model of a university based on the liberal arts and that was very different to the fictitious Dickensian Gradgrind utilitarian perspective of how and what people learn.

Enabling Academic Leadership

171

Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them. (Dickens, [1854] 1994, p. 1)

This comparison demonstrates different approaches to education and with it the leadership of educational bodies. It recognizes that we need different approaches to leadership and that it will depend on strategic goals and people.

Final thoughts The critical issue is the role of academic staff and their connectivity with the concept of leadership. It is quite common across the private sector and within the further education sector to specifically recruit staff as course managers to oversee courses. They are recruited for their expertise in managing academic provision. Universities, however, are different, and they need to reflect different values in their strategies. Dearing (1997) referred to universities as having the following key functions: ●

●

●

●

To inspire and enable individuals to develop their capabilities to the highest potential levels throughout life; To increase knowledge and the understanding for their own sake and to foster their application for the benefit of economy and society; To serve the needs of an adaptable, sustainable, knowledge-based economy at local, regional and national levels; To play a major role in shaping a democratic, civilized, inclusive society.

In order to achieve this, it is crucial that universities have staff that focus on teaching and subject excellence, pushing at the paradigms of new research and able to manage courses. That means that, rather than having one-dimensional roles, universities need multifaceted academics who are subject experts, can lead courses and also be part of course teams led by another. This is not an easy combination of skills and something that universities often do not fully appreciate. It is very different from command and control models with their clear hierarchical lines. Increasingly, as universities seek to recruit staff globally, this brings the challenges of different cultures, a mix of learning styles and a variety of expectations, thus establishing a more cosmopolitan institution. This is why the integration

172

Geoff Layer

process of staff into the culture and mission of the university is crucial. We really should be setting out programmes that develop the individual into a role, rather than the traditional perspective of simply following someone else and doing what they did. This type of programme is equally applicable for research leaders and course leaders with different emphases. The new course leader needs to know about the student body, how it fits the university mission, the applicability of the curriculum model, the implications of the trends in performance and student evaluation and to be supported to manage change. Universities and their leaders have to make decisions as to the type of institution they wish to be. Inevitably they will go through change over the years and need to reflect on the nature of their structure and approach at various stages. The forward-thinking universities will have developed approaches focused on empowering academic staff to be leaders demonstrating innovation and entrepreneurship. It is by creating this type of culture that universities can be resilient and flexible while pursuing excellence. It does though require an organizational culture without fear of blame and where reflection, learning and analysis are crucial. This chapter has argued for the importance of approaches which empower academic staff to meet the leadership challenges facing universities today, particularly in changing academic practice. In this chapter, leadership models that focus on conformity and control, prescription and standardized approaches were contrasted with an entrepreneurial style of academic leadership. The argument advanced was that today’s academic leadership in learning and teaching is multifaceted and requires a complex set of skills and capabilities. These skills and capabilities embody academic entrepreneurialism, and it is academic entrepreneurialism that makes a difference to the core business of universities in today’s challenging environment.

References Clark, B. R. (2004), Sustaining Change in Universities, Maidenhead: Open University Press. Crosland, A. (1966), A Plan for Polytechnics and Other Colleges, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Dearing, R. (1997), Higher Education in the Learning Society, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Deem, R., S. Hillyard and M. Reed (2007), Knowledge, Higher Education, and the New Managerialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Enabling Academic Leadership

173

Denison, D., R. Hooijberg, N. Lane and C. Lief (2012), Leading Culture Change in Global Organizations, San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons. Dickens, Charles ([1854] 1994), Hard Times, London: Penguin Popular Classics. Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (2011), Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Department for Education and Employment (1998), The Learning Age, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Further and Higher Education Act (1992), London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Garrett, G. and G. Davies, (2010), Herding Cats, Axminster: Triarchy Press. Higher Education Academy (2015), Annual Institutional Report 2013–14: Higher Education Academy. Lumby, J. (2012), What Do We Know about Leadership in Higher Education? London: The Leadership Foundation for Higher Education’s Research: Review Paper. Newman, J. H. (1852), The Idea of a University, London: Longmans, Green and Co. Scott, P. (1998), The Globalization of Higher Education, Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press. Shakespeare, William ([1599] 1995), King Henry V, ed. T. W. Craik, 5th rev. edn, London: Routledge. Shattock, M. (2010), Managing Successful Universities, 2nd edn, Maidenhead: Open University Press. Tomlinson, J. (1996), Inclusive Learning: Report of the Learning Difficulties and/or Disabilities Committee, Coventry: Further Education Funding Council. Trow, M. (1989), ‘The Robbins Trap: British Attitudes and the Limits of Expansion’, Higher Education Quarterly, 43 (1): 55–75. Willetts, D. (2013), Robbins Revisited: Bigger and Better Higher Education, London: The Social Market Foundation. Wilson, H. (1963), Labour’s Plan for Science, Speech at the Labour Party Annual Conference, Scarborough, 1 October.

10

Ethics of Academic Leadership: Guiding Learning and Teaching Alison Cook-Sather and Peter Felten

Both ‘leadership’ and ‘ethics’ are complex phenomena. Leadership can be conceptualized as an individual directing or controlling movement towards a goal, as a practice of organizing for movement in a given direction that focuses on responding and facilitating rather than commanding and controlling or as a sharing of the responsibilities for choosing a direction and pursuing it. Any conception of leadership evokes, and either reinforces or complicates, standard notions of position, power and responsibility. How those notions play out takes us into the realm of ethics: the values, ideals and standards that inform ideas and practices. In this chapter, we focus on academic leadership in higher education. We define academic leadership as any effort to enrich and improve teaching and learning undertaken by an individual (such as a staff member or student) or a programme (such as an academic development unit). We argue for academic leadership that embraces an ethic of reciprocity and the practice of partnership in learning and teaching, and we suggest that such an approach might serve as a bridge between dominant, neoliberal values and what Jon Nixon (2012a, p. 134) has called ‘an ethics of connectivity’. Striving for the inclusivity but wary of the assumption of shared values espoused by some claims of cosmopolitanism, we draw on Appiah’s (2005) argument for ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’ and Hansen’s (2014) discussion of ‘embodied cosmopolitanism’ to propose that the fundamental work of academic leadership is not to aim for universally shared values, but rather to cultivate practices that can be widely embraced by a diversity of people (Appiah, 2006) and that recognize the contributions of differently positioned people.

176

Alison Cook-Sather and Peter Felten

One such practice, and the one upon which we focus here, is the creation of liminal spaces into which academic leaders and (other) teachers and learners might enter in order to explore and experience partnership in learning and teaching. The ethic of reciprocity that guides such liminal spaces requires a balanced give and take not of commodities but of perspectives, insights and contributions. The practice of partnership requires perpetual negotiation among those within the liminal space. Both an ethic of reciprocity and the practice of partnership foster a comfort with and commitment to ongoing revision of approaches to teaching and learning. To situate our argument for a new model of academic leadership, we begin, in ‘The Current Neoliberal Context: Academic Leadership that Dehumanizes’, with a brief review of the neoliberal values that, many argue, have come to permeate higher education contexts and thereby both define the current ethic of much educational practice and inform many approaches to academic leadership. In ‘The Utopian Ideal: Academic Leadership that Re-humanizes’, we offer an equally brief summary of Nixon’s ethics of connectivity, a stark contrast to the neoliberal ethic, which, in turn, has very different implications for approaches to academic leadership. Working within and against the current neoliberal context, we also recognize that the utopian ideal of connectivity cannot be enacted unless there is a profound shift in dominant models of higher education in general. ‘Toward an Ethic of Reciprocity and the Practice of Partnership’ offers discussions of key concepts that, we propose, can help effect such a shift – liminality, reciprocity and partnership – and of the practice of partnership as ‘rooted’ or ‘embodied’ cosmopolitanism. In ‘Partnership in Learning and Teaching: A New Model of Academic Leadership’, we offer concrete examples of what an ethic of reciprocity and the practice of partnership look like in various higher education contexts. In our conclusion, we reiterate the premises of reciprocity and cosmopolitanism and propose a way forward to achieve the vision such a model of academic leadership promises.

The current neoliberal context: academic leadership that dehumanizes Most institutional structures and practices within higher education reflect ageold assumptions of hierarchy and transaction. In typical academic practice, inequities of position and power are built into and reinforced by the standard

Ethics of Academic Leadership

177

roles and relationships of ‘teacher’ and ‘student’. Often, these are embodied in the image of the all-knowing teacher and the disciple-learner who continue in many higher education contexts to embrace the delivery model of teaching, despite voluminous research on its inefficacy (e.g. Hake, 1998; Nelson, 2010; Watkins and Mazur, 2013). The traditional teacher as all-knowing sage and expert and the learner as empty vessel and disciple have found new form in the last half century in neoliberal visions of higher education. In his widely cited definition, Harvey (2005) characterizes neoliberalism as the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action. Through neoliberalism, rationalistic and economic calculations on a global scale come to dominate human practices, including education (Hansen, 2014; Popkewitz, 2008). Such an ethic, the common critique goes, replaces social responsibilities with private satisfactions (Giroux, 2009) and reifies the sage/disciple hierarchy: embracing a market-orientated approach, the job of the neoliberal teacher is to provide knowledge and the job of the student is to consume it. Within what Hansen (2014, p. 4) calls ‘a paradigm of nationalistic economic competitiveness’, education becomes ‘a mere means for training human capital, rather than a formative experience of cultivating expanded moral sympathies, deepened democratic dispositions, and a serious sense of responsibility for the world’. Walker (2009, p.  219) argues that ‘[i]n contemporary times, higher education has risen to the top of national policy agendas for its key part in producing highly skilled graduates to promote and service knowledge economies’. Such a focus, Walker (2009, p. 219) suggests, has resulted in ‘a downgrading of the intrinsic goods of learning and democratic citizenship’. A neoliberal economic dispensation ‘steers human beings to become strategic, self-serving entities rather than ethical agents (Hodgson, 2009; Schumann, 2012)’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 10). The self-serving drive prevents receptivity to alternatives, to difference, to deviations from what is known and comfortable. In effect, Hansen (2014, p. 10) suggests, ‘it prevents people from encountering existential challenge, which from a cosmopolitan perspective is invaluable for establishing humane, creative arrangements supportive of education’. According to neoliberalism’s many critics, humanity – in the sense both of the human race and of human-ness – is lost within a neoliberal ethic. As Walker (2009, p. 219) puts it, human capital theory views education as an instrumental investment to improve productivity and the level and distribution of individual earnings. Within this ethic, all interactions are reduced to profit-seeking exchanges.

178

Alison Cook-Sather and Peter Felten

The utopian ideal: academic leadership that re-humanizes Rejecting the neoliberal ethic and, indeed, many of the current practices in higher education that hold sway as a result of it, Nixon (2012a, p. 134) argues for ‘an ethics of connectivity’. He asserts that pedagogy needs to be considered within a broader frame of reference that includes the purpose of the university, the nature of higher education and the broader tradition of interpretive scholarship (2012a, p. 15). Putting the ‘polity’ – the people conceived and constituted as a political presence – back into pedagogy in higher education policy, he contends, would have three dimensions. First, it would focus on the ‘primacy of pedagogy  – on teaching and learning and on the scholarship of teaching and learning’. It would reject, among other things, ‘the nonsense whereby learning outcomes are pre-specified and would affirm the common sense view that in the main we do not know what we shall have learned until we have learned it’. Second, it would focus on ‘relationality: the relation between teacher and taught, teachers and teachers, academics and their diverse publics’. Finally, such a policy would orient squarely on inclusivity (Nixon, 2012b). These ideals of interpretive pedagogy, relationality and inclusivity are just that:  ideals of engagement characterized by reverence and regard. In Nixon’s (2012a) words again, the ‘pedagogicized university’ puts mutual respect and reciprocity at the heart of the student–teacher interaction. Since relationships involve people with different experiences and perspectives, the pedagogicized university embraces a commitment to exploring these differences. Building on Nixon’s assertion that we should not and cannot pre-define learning outcomes but must rather embrace a more organic and emergent process of learning, the pedagogicized university is open to new possibilities and horizons; not only is it willing to entertain new perspectives and emergent ideas, it constantly questions what is known. In the pedagogicized university, the orientation ‘shifts the focus away from pedagogies of technological rationality that require clearly defined objectives, rational planning and observable outcomes’ (Nixon, 2012a, p. 2). Instead, at the centre are ‘interpretive pedagogies that recognize plurality, incommensurability and contingency as factors that inevitably impact upon human understanding’ (Nixon, 2012a, p. 2). Such pedagogical orientation is complemented by Nixon’s (2012b) notion of student engagement, which values critical participation over compliance and questioning over answering. With their emphasis on relationships and inclusivity, and the hard work of communicating and collaborating across differences that such ethics require, these conceptualizations of pedagogy

Ethics of Academic Leadership

179

and engagement accord with commitments to ‘cultivating expanded moral sympathies, deepened democratic dispositions, and a serious sense of responsibility for the world’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 4). Nixon’s connectivity requires a shift called for by Barr and Tagg twenty years ago, which most higher education contexts have yet to effect: a shift from the instructional paradigm to the learning paradigm. Simply put, this means shifting from a focus on what teachers do (where method and product are the same) to a focus on what learners do (where method and product are different). In the learning paradigm, the goal is not to transfer knowledge but to create environments and experiences that bring students to discover and construct knowledge for themselves (Barr and Tagg, 1995, p. 4). Because the learner is the primary actor in this model, Nixon’s attention to relationality and inclusivity is essential. Education within this framework ‘constitutes an uncharted, unpredictable journey into self-awareness, self-understanding, and knowledge of the world in which we live’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 11). It is always, Hansen (2014, p. 11) continues, ‘unprecedented’ because ‘no two individuals are educated alike’, and this means that ‘education constitutes not replication but creation’; it is ‘the bringing into being that which was not here before, however modest the scale’. The emphasis in both Nixon’s and Hansen’s arguments is on possibility as it emerges at ‘the intersection of three agencies: the teacher, the learner, and the knowledge they produce’ – Lusted’s definition of pedagogy (1986, p. 3). These arguments are consistent with recognition that pedagogies depend on context and that no uniform panacea can solve difficulties in teaching and learning (Green and Little, 2013; Healey and Jenkins, 2003; Lueddeke, 2003). Embracing the dynamic process Lusted describes and striving towards the ‘pedagogicized university’ Nixon calls for, we argue that teaching and learning require the creation of liminal spaces that foster uncertainty and openness.

Towards an ethic of reciprocity and the practice of partnership In an effort to bridge the neoliberal reality of what much of current higher education is and the utopian ideal of what higher education could be, we propose embracing an ethic of reciprocity and supporting the practice of partnership between students and academic staff as one powerful means to construct liminal spaces (Cook-Sather, Bovill and Felten, 2014). Building on the work of van Gennep, Turner (1981, p. 159) defined a liminal space as an ‘in-between’ place

180

Alison Cook-Sather and Peter Felten

that bridges ‘what is’ and ‘what can or will be’. In the following sections, we explicate what we mean by liminality, by reciprocity and by partnership. Liminality, we propose, constitutes the space within which reciprocity unfolds through the practice of partnership. Particularly relevant to this volume is the practice of partnership as ‘rooted’ or ‘embodied’ cosmopolitanism, the focus of the final subsection of this portion of our discussion.

Liminality Walker (2009, p. 221) posits that ‘higher education institutions might become “as-if ” places – places where long term goals of social change are lived inside the institution as if they were already norms for society’ (Bivens, 2009, p.  3). Academic leaders, both individuals enacting change and educational developers facilitating change efforts, can take the lead in creating such ‘as-if ’ spaces – spaces within which we behave the way we want to live in the wider world of the academy. Green and Little (2013) frame this pursuit and embrace of an as-if space as ‘staking a claim on marginal territory’, which ‘permits us to act with integrity and with substance’. By ‘marginal’ they do not mean ‘marginalized’; they argue for ‘marginality as a state of being, not marginalization as an imposition’ (Green and Little, 2013, p. 525). Drawing on contexts in which the margins are seen in a positive light, they remind us of the generativity of marginality as a state of being. For instance, they cite Irmler et  al.’s (2008) claim that biodiversity is greatest at the margins of ecosystems. Likewise, they suggest that the growth of interdisciplinarity across the academy indicates that researchers in many fields recognize the power of ‘as-if ’ spaces (Green and Little, 2013, p. 525). Finally, they point to writers positioned between cultures, who have used their boundary-spanning stance to envision new literary vistas; indeed, ‘bell hooks argues that marginality is more than just “a site of deprivation” but “also the site of radical possibility, a space of resistance” (hooks, 1990: 342)’ (Green and Little, 2013, p. 525). Like Green and Little, we follow hooks’ (1990, p. 342) embrace not ‘of a marginality one wishes to lose, to give up, or surrender as part of moving to the center’, but rather, hooks continues, ‘as a site one stays in, clings to even, because it nourishes one’s capacity to resist. It offers the possibility of radical perspectives from which to see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds’. For us, the liminal spaces academic leadership might create nourish our capacity to resist education as ‘training human capital’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 4) and instead support us in striving to foster education that cultivates ‘expanded moral sympathies,

Ethics of Academic Leadership

181

deepened democratic dispositions, and a serious sense of responsibility for the world’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 4). For us, staking out the territory of liminality is an ethical claim; it is an assertion of the value of reciprocity and practice of partnership within teaching and learning, enacted first within liminal spaces or, put differently, with the goal of all spaces coming to embrace qualities of liminality. Typically, liminality describes a condition between two periods of active social participation, a transitional or indeterminate state between culturally defined stages of a person’s life (OED online). People in this state elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states and positions in cultural space (OED online). The concept of ‘in-betweenness’ foregrounds a quality of experience with unique potential to challenge deep-seated assumptions about how a community or society works. Someone in a liminal space is ‘ambiguous, neither here nor there, betwixt and between all fixed points of classification’ (Turner, 1974, p. 232); people in a liminal space enter ‘a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise’ (Turner, 1995, p. 97). While most discussions of liminality focus on transitions between one and another period or stage of a person’s life, we argue, with Green and Little (2013) and with hooks (1990), that the limen or threshold can be conceptualized as a space in which one can linger, from which one can depart and to which one can return (Cook-Sather and Alter, 2011). We argue, in fact, for academic leaders to situate themselves on the limen, in a suspended space, betwixt and between. Intentionally embraced as places within which the possible might unfold, such ‘as-if ’ spaces can support academic developers, academic staff and students engaging with one another as partners, and by enacting partnership in this in-between place, they can learn to become partners beyond it.

Reciprocity Reciprocity is an age-old practice, informing relationships of all kinds – personal, political, economic. In this discussion, we use ‘reciprocity’ to mean a particular way of interacting: a process of balanced give-and-take not of commodities but rather of contributions: perspectives, insights, forms of participation. There is equity in what is exchanged and how it is exchanged; however, those who are involved in the exchange do not get and give exactly the same things. Rather, reciprocity as we conceptualize it is the enactment of bringing different people together to exchange what they know from their different experiences and perspectives (Cook-Sather, Bovill, and Felten, 2014). The goal of reciprocity is certainly to benefit, but the other party’s benefit is as important as one’s own. Thus,

182

Alison Cook-Sather and Peter Felten

in contrast to the neoliberal ethic or what Walker (2009, p.  219) calls human capital theory, education within an ethic of reciprocity is not an instrumental investment to improve productivity and the level and distribution of individual earnings; rather, it is an unpredictable and ever-evolving process of dialogue. As Freire (1970) reminds us, without dialogue, there is no education; in our model, education is constituted in dialogue between people, between people and ideas, between people and action through which knowledge is made and remade. Reciprocity requires a notion of collective responsibility for education  – a community rather than only an individualistic approach that deepens the humanity of all involved. In ‘Pedagogy for rich human being-ness in global times’, Walker (2009, p. 231) summarizes Bernstein’s (2000) proposal for ‘three multi-dimensional integrated rights to link education and democracy, underpinned by assumptions of ethical obligations beyond self-interest to defend or promote the pedagogic rights of others’. The first right is ‘enhancement’, which involves critical understanding and seeing new possibilities, which are, in turn, ‘key to the formation of confidence and agency’. The second right, Walker continues, is ‘inclusion’  – the right to be ‘included socially, intellectually, culturally, and personally, which is fundamental to “communitas” ’. The third right is ‘participation’ in shaping and transforming political outcomes (‘civic practice’). These integrated rights can be pursued through an ethic of reciprocity; reciprocity has the potential to be the dynamic that ensures that individuals pursue their own rights and strive to ensure that others are assured those same rights.

Partnership When reciprocity is formalized, it becomes partnership. We have defined partnership as ‘a collaborative, reciprocal process through which all participants have the opportunity to contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways, to curricular or pedagogical conceptualization, decision making, implementation, investigation, or analysis’ (Cook-Sather, Bovill, and Felten, 2014, pp. 6–7). A partnership approach within academic leadership both rejects topdown models of leadership and embraces the basic premise of cosmopolitanism: that diverse individuals – individuals from literally different places but also more metaphorically from different ‘places’ or positions  – form relationships of mutual respect. It requires ongoing negotiations across difference of power, position and perspective with the goal of deeper understanding, empathy and informed action. It requires the dialogue without which there is no true education (Freire, 1970).

Ethics of Academic Leadership

183

Bias, prejudice, presupposition or assumption always are present in any dialogical act (Hansen, 2014, p. 9). Otherwise, ‘such an act cannot get under way and persons remain mute before the world’. By coming to grips with one’s prejudices and assumptions, ‘an undertaking sparked by the encounter with the new’, people can ‘gain reflective distance’ and ‘begin to grasp difference as well as similarity’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 9). This is precisely what happens regularly in partnership. Beginning, as everyone does, with the prejudice of their position, with the bias born of their perspective, people can make their way, ‘in ever-dynamic ways’, towards ‘a broader, more responsive as well as respectful platform for judgment and mutual understanding (Fairfield, 2011; Gallagher, 1992; Kerdeman, 1998; 2003)’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 9). In short, people ‘come to see, reciprocally, the limitations in their knowledge and understanding of self, other, and world’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 9) and, once recognizing those limitations, become receptive to what others, differently positioned, have to contribute to understanding and practice. Drawing on the work of Lloyd (2012), Hansen (2014, p. 9) suggests that this process is an organic transformation of the concept of tolerance. He quotes Lloyd: What emerges is the possibility of a ‘tolerance’ not associated with a granting of concessions from a passive standpoint of presumed moral superiority or greater access to truth. ‘Tolerance’ here becomes, rather, a readiness to enter – through imagination and empathy  – into an active and open-ended engagement with difference. (p. 492)

Ongoing negotiation of values and understandings in ways that are mutually respectful is the modus operandi of the model of academic leadership for which we argue here. The redefinition of tolerance as active and open-ended engagement with difference can be understood as ‘cosmopolitan-mindedness’ (Hansen, 2014, p.  9)  – an orientation that welcomes differently positioned people with different values into the liminal space created for the purpose of co-creation of knowledge about teaching and learning.

The practice of partnership as ‘rooted’ or ‘embodied’ cosmopolitanism There are many versions and visions of cosmopolitanism. The Greek origin of the word, ‘the idea of a kosmopolites or “citizen of the world” ’, informs the cosmopolitanism we embrace with its sense of ‘moral obligation as allegiance to humanity itself ’ (Hansen, 2014, p.  3). We draw on Appiah’s (2005) ‘rooted

184

Alison Cook-Sather and Peter Felten

cosmopolitanism’ and Hansen’s (2014) ‘embodied cosmopolitanism’ to ground our argument for the practice of partnership. The adjectives these theorists use to modify cosmopolitanism  – ‘rooted’ and ‘embodied’  – signal physical, living presence in contrast to abstract or inhuman, institutional constructs. This human-ness is key to our notion of an ethic of reciprocity, human give and take, and the practice of partnership between people. Appiah’s (2005) ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’ offers core insights into how we might define academic leadership as partnership. Appiah’s attention to weighing universal claims with legitimate particular interests has two significant implications for academic leadership. First, even the most cosmopolitan among us work within specific contexts, and those contexts matter. The ways that academic leaders enact a cosmopolitan outlook must be grounded in the realities of a college or university setting. No single universal practice can reach cosmopolitan aims; instead, practices should be tailored to the constraints and possibilities of the local environment. Second, and even more important, academic leaders should focus on cultivating practices that can be shared by people who hold differing values. As Appiah (2006, p. 71) contends, ‘we can agree about what to do in most cases, without agreeing about why it is right’. This focus on practice suggests a path out of the conflict between those who celebrate and those who critique neoliberalism in the academy. Cosmopolitan academic leaders can foster institutional practices like partnership that are valued for different reasons, ranging from efficiency to ‘radical collegiality’ (Fielding, 1999), without sinking into the morass of ideological battles. Appiah’s insistence on attention to context and to agreed-upon practices driven by different values is consonant with the ‘organic vision’ of cosmopolitanism that Hansen (2014) attributes to Rousseau. This vision ‘involved the serious study of other people’s political, economic, artistic, and cultural customs’, those ways of being enacted in contexts different from one’s own, ‘precisely to be able to criticize those of one’s own community and, he hoped, move toward more naturalistic, humane relations’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 2). What Hansen (2014, p. 9) calls ‘embodied cosmopolitanism’ springs from the wonder one feels ‘triggered by substantive encounters with the new’. Embodied cosmopolitanism ‘implies being open reflectively to new persons, ideas, values, and practices’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 11). Such open reflectiveness is at once outward and inward facing; it requires people being willing to enter an educational space and accept that they ‘cannot predict or prescribe how the encounter will affect or transform them’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 11).

Ethics of Academic Leadership

185

Partnership in learning and teaching: a new model of academic leadership In our model of academic leadership, partnership is the practice through which people engage in reciprocal processes of teaching and learning that embrace a spirit of cosmopolitanism. The liminal space within which reciprocity unfolds through the practice of partnership can be a formal space within an academic development programme, a space created by group of committed academic staff and students or a dialogue between two individuals from these groups that ‘offers the possibility of radical perspectives from which to see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds’ (hooks, 1990, p. 342). Within that space, which people might enter and leave many times over weeks and years, participants listen to the perspectives their partners bring, share their own and try on and try out ways of being in relation. They welcome differences – of position, perspective, identity and more – as dimensions of people’s selves with the potential to foster deeper connection and empathy (Cook-Sather, 2015; Felten et al., 2013). Examples of academic leadership as partnership enacted at the institutional level include, for example, academic development units supporting the design or redesign of courses before or after they are taught and the development of programmes and research partnerships that catalyse institutional change (CookSather, Bovill, and Felten, 2014). At the University of Ballarat in Australia, for instance, a suite of ‘Student Led Learning Programs’ called ‘Succeed @ UB’ have been co-developed and co-delivered with students (University of Ballarat, 2013; see also Bovill, 2014; Mihans, Long and Felten, 2008). As another example, the Students as Learners and Teachers programme at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges supports student–faculty pairs in semester-long explorations of pedagogical practice based in the context of a course the faculty member is teaching (Cook-Sather, 2014; see also Cox and Sorenson, 2000; Crawford, 2012; Hagstrom, Olson and Cross, 2014). Finally, Students as Change Agents at the University of Exeter is a student-led action research initiative through which students carry out small-scale research projects about their learning and teaching environments focused on issues that have been identified within student– academic staff liaison committees (Dunne and Zandstra, 2011), and CEMUS is a student-designed programme focused on sustainability at Uppsala University in Sweden that has become a key component of the university’s offerings (Hald, 2011). Although very different in context and focus, these forms of academic leadership have in common the bringing together in liminal spaces of differently

186

Alison Cook-Sather and Peter Felten

positioned players in higher education – students and academic staff – to construct opportunities for classroom learning and approaches to institutional change based on an ethic of reciprocity and the practice of partnership. Individuals also can engage in forms of academic leadership that embrace an ethic of reciprocity and enact the practice of partnership without significant institutional support for their efforts. For instance, at the University College Dublin, in Ireland, two senior lecturers, Niamh Moore and Mary Gilmartin, invited a group of three third-year undergraduate students to redesign a virtual learning environment of a first-year geography course that typically enrols approximately 400 students each year (Moore and Gilmartin, 2010). Mano Singham, professor of physics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, invites his students to co-create syllabi for his courses (Singham, 2007). And Jody Cohen, term professor of education at Bryn Mawr College, developed a flexible and multipart strategy that includes several key moments at which she and her students establish and reinforce a collaborative approach in her classroom (Cook-Sather, Bovill, and Felten, 2014). These academic staff members both enact partnership approaches in their courses and, in the liminal spaces of informal conversations and formal academic development forums, lead peers in exploring how they might enact such approaches. Suspended in a space of what can and might be, these academic leaders accept and, indeed, embrace uncertainty. They have let go of the assumption that any one person can know everything and that they can predict how learning will unfold. They accept that in dialogue and partnership, through listening and receptivity as well as finding words to name what they know, they come to understand and engage better. Entering liminal spaces for reflection and dialogue can support such engagement within a single academic term, but it can also become a more cyclical process. Rather than strive for mastery of some kind – the pedagogical equivalent of ‘the nonsense whereby learning outcomes are pre-specified’ (Nixon, 2012a) – teaching can be re-imagined as a process of opening spaces within which students and academic staff can explore what they already know and what they are striving to know (Bach and Cook-Sather, 2016). Thinking about both academic leadership and teaching and learning as partnership in the suspended spaces constituted by liminality allows academic staff, students and academic developers to embrace their unfinishedness – the very quality, Freire (1998) argued, that makes us educable. We can never say, then, ‘I’ve got this course down,’ because that assumes that the people don’t matter. In teaching, content, process and relationships are never finished. Reciprocity as an ethic and partnership as a practice, mean, too, that the effectiveness of

Ethics of Academic Leadership

187

teaching cannot be measured in the standard ways. Within the neoliberal model of higher education the educational transaction of what Freire (1970) called the banking model – teachers depositing knowledge into the empty accounts/minds of learners  – can, ostensibly, be measured through evaluations of instructors and courses; the goal is to produce performance at a level that was predefined without relation to students or teachers according to objectives that were also pre-defined. Effectiveness in a partnership model requires a far more nuanced and complex rubric that takes into account multiple perspectives and that recognizes that both content and process matter. Any ethical evaluation of teaching requires engagement in regular, ongoing forms of formative and summative assessment (see Cook-Sather, Bovill, and Felten, 2014, pp. 195–201, for a discussion of assessing partnership).

Conclusion Tuan (2010) asks: How might we count ourselves ‘citizens of the stars above and the earth beneath’? If we conceive of education broadly, ‘as an ongoing, uneven, and unpredictable constellation of activities and processes that is larger in scope and often more persistent in impact than schooling’ (Hansen, 2014, pp. 6–7), the need for spaces that support differences of value and approach is thrown into particular relief. We see the potential for liminal spaces to accommodate contingency and responsiveness as especially promising for the ways they welcome the ‘as-if ’, the generativity of marginality, the suspension of the ‘what-has-been’ and the ‘what-is’ to allow the trying out of the ‘what-could-be’. Partnership invites ‘the creative, cosmopolitan capacity’ of teachers and learners ‘as they encounter challenge and opportunity in the world today’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 7); it provides them within a space with which to try out this collaborative way of being ‘as if ’ it were a way of life. Both an ethic of reciprocity and the concept of cosmopolitanism as we have defined them here highlight the fact that no one person has all the knowledge, no one person has the definitive perspective. Both reject the inherited constructs of the all-knowing teacher and the disciple-learner and embrace at once social responsibility in relation to those with whom we are in immediate relationship and a sense of responsibility to the wider world. Therefore, rather than rationalizing the world into hierarchies, academic leadership must cultivate shared knowledge and equal contributions but different perspectives. Partnership as a practice has the potential to help us do just that by ‘rebalanc[ing] higher

188

Alison Cook-Sather and Peter Felten

education goals in the direction of much more expansive public good, and the formation of graduates rich as human beings’ (Walker, 2009, pp. 220–1). This type of leadership takes as foundational that education is ‘self-cultivation and self-transformation in concert with dwelling with others’, which means that it is, from a cosmopolitan perspective, a form of ‘cultural creativity’ (Hansen, 2014, p. 11). Academic staff and students can create liminal spaces – small and large, of short or lasting duration – within which to foster relationships among a diversity of participants committed to exploring the complexities of learning and teaching. Using the existing structures of higher education that already claim some qualities of liminality, such as academic development forums, innovation grants and independent studies, academic leaders can develop and try out theories and approaches that might benefit a single course or grow to constitute a major component of education offered by an institution. We humanize ourselves when we engage in critical, dialogical praxis (Freire, 1970). Partnership as we define it here is, we argue, just such a humanizing effort:  a model of academic leadership in and of itself and an approach that encourages and supports inclusive relationships among academic staff, students and academic developers in learning and teaching. Despite – or perhaps more accurately, because of – diverse institutional, disciplinary and interpersonal contexts, ethical leadership linked to teaching and learning must cultivate mutual respect, shared responsibility and, ultimately, a commitment to reciprocity among all of those who learn and teach in higher education. We contend that an ethic of reciprocity and the practice of partnership, in which each participant both gives and gets not with the goal of exchanging a commodity but rather with the goal of enriching one another as human beings, is a powerful and empowering model for academic leadership in higher education.

References Appiah, K. A. (2005), The Ethics of Identity, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Appiah, K. A. (2006), Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, New York: Norton. Bach, D. and A. Cook-Sather (2016), ‘Open space: Nurturing reflection, dialogue, and radical listening in higher education’, The Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 27(2): 97–116. Barr, R. B. and J. Tagg (1995), ‘From teaching to learning: A new paradigm for undergraduate education’, Change, 27 (6): 13–25.

Ethics of Academic Leadership

189

Bovill, C. (2014), ‘An investigation of co-created curricula within higher education in the UK, Ireland and the USA’, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 51, (1): 15–25. Cook-Sather, A. (2014), ‘Multiplying perspectives and improving practice: What can happen when undergraduate students collaborate with college faculty to explore teaching and learning’, Instructional Science, 42: 31–46. Cook-Sather, A. (2015), ‘Dialogue across differences of position, perspective, and identity: Reflective practice in/on a student-faculty pedagogical partnership program’, Teachers College Record, 117: 2. Cook-Sather, A. and Alter (2011), ‘What is and what can be: How a liminal position can change learning and teaching in higher education’, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 42 (1): 37–53. Cook-Sather, A., C. Bovill and P. Felten (2014), Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching: A Guide for Faculty, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Cox, M. D. and D. L. Sorenson (2000), ‘Student collaboration in faculty development’, in M. Kaplan (ed.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 18. Resources for Faculty, Instructional, and Organizational Development, 97–106, Bolton, MA: Anker. Crawford, K. (2012), ‘Rethinking the student-teacher nexus: Students as consultants on teaching in higher education’, in M. Neary, H. Stevenson and L. Bell (eds), Towards Teaching in Public: Reshaping the Modern University, 52–67, London: Continuum. Dunne, E. and R. Zandstra (2011), Students as Change Agents. New Ways of Engaging with Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, Bristol: ESCalate Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Education / University of Exeter. Available from: http:// escalate.ac.uk/8064. Fairfield, P. ed. (2011), Education, Dialogue and Hermeneutics, London: Continuum. Felten, P., J. Bagg, M. Bumbry, J. Hill, K. Hornsby, M. Pratt and S. Weller (2013), ‘A call for expanding student engagement in SoTL’, Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 1 (2): 63–74. Fielding, M. (1999), ‘Radical Collegiality: Affirming Teaching as an Inclusive Professional Practice’, Australian Educational Researcher, 26 (2): 1–34. Freire, P. (1970), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Herder and Herder. Freire, P. (1998), Pedagogy of Freedom, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Gallagher, S. (1992), Hermeneutics and Education, Albany: State University of New York Press. Giroux, H. (2009), ‘Neoliberalism, Youth, and the Leasing of Higher Education’, in D. Hill and R. Kumar (eds), Global Neoliberalism and Education and Its Consequences, 30–53, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Green, D. A., D. and Little (2013), ‘Academic development on the margins’, Studies in Higher Education, 38 (4): 523–37. Hagstrom, F., J. Olson and C. Cross (2014), ‘The student observer program at Carleton College: Three perspectives on supporting good teaching’, Teaching

190

Alison Cook-Sather and Peter Felten

and Learning Together in Higher Education, 14. Available online: http:// teachingandlearningtogether.blogs.brynmawr.edu/archived-issues/thirteenth-issuefall-2014/the-student-observer-program-at-carleton-college-three-perspectives-onsupporting-good-teaching (accessed 12 February 2015). Hake, R. R. (1998), ‘Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses’, American Journal of Physics, 66: 64–74. Available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/ 1.18809. Hald, M., ed. (2011), Transcending Boundaries: How CEMUS is Changing how we Teach, Meet and Learn, Uppsala: CEMUS/CSD Uppsala, Uppsala University and the Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences. Hansen, D. T. (2014), ‘Cosmopolitanism as cultural creativity: New modes of educational practice in globalizing times, Curriculum Inquiry, 44 (1): 1–14. Harvey, D. (2005), A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Healey, M. and A. Jenkins (2003), ‘Discipline-based educational development’, in H. Eggins and R. Macdonald (eds), The Scholarship of Academic Development, Buckingham: Open University Press. Hodgson, N. (2009), ‘Educational research, governmentality and the construction of the cosmopolitan citizen’. Ethics and Education, 4 (2): 177–187. hooks, b. (1990), ‘Talking back’, in R. Ferguson, M. Gever, T. T. Minh-ha and C. West (eds), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, 337–43, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Irmler, U., O. Dilly, J. Schrautzer and K. Dierssen (2008), ‘Site-related biocoenotic dynamics’, in O. Fränzle, L. Kappen, H.-P. Blume and K. Dierssen (eds), Ecosystem Organization of a Complex Landscape: Long-term Research in the Bornhöved Lake District, Germany, 119–46. Berlin: Springer. Kerdeman, D. (1998), ‘Hermeneutics and education: Understanding, control, and agency’, Educational Theory, 48 (2): 241–266. Kerdeman, D. (2003), ‘Pulled up short: Challenging self-understanding as a focus of teaching and learning’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 37 (2): 293–308. Lueddeke, G. (2003), ‘Professionalising teaching practice in higher education: A study of disciplinary variation and “teaching scholarship”’, Studies in Higher Education, 28 (2): 213–228. Lusted, D. (1986), ‘Why Pedagogy?’, Screen, 27 (5): 2–16. Mihans, R., D. Long and P. Felten (2008), ‘Student-faculty collaboration in course design and the scholarship of teaching and learning’, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2 (2). Available online: http://academics. georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/v2n2.html (accessed 7 November 2009). Moore, N. and M. Gilmartin, (2010), ‘Teaching for better learning: A blended learning pilot project with first year geography undergraduates’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 34 (3): 327–44.

Ethics of Academic Leadership

191

Nelson, C. E. (2010), ‘Dysfunctional illusions of rigor: Lessons from the scholarship of teaching and learning’, in L. B. Nelson (ed.), To Improve the Academy, 28, 177–92, San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Nixon, J. (2012a), Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education: Arendt, Berger, Said, Nussbaum and their Legacies, London: Bloomsbury Academic. Nixon, J. (2012b), ‘Putting the “polity” back into policy: reclaiming higher education for an engaged citizenry’, Symposium on Student Engagement in Higher Education. York St John University, UK. Popkewitz, T. (2008), Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform, New York: Routledge. Schumann, C. (2012), ‘Boundedness beyond reification: Cosmopolitan teacher education as critique’, Ethics & Global Politics, 5 (4): 217–37. Singham, M. (2007), ‘Death to the syllabus!’, Liberal Education, 93 (4): 52–6. Sullivan, G. (2011), ‘The culture of community and a failure of creativity’, Teachers College Record, 113 (6): 1175–95. Tuan, Y. (2010), ‘A New Cosmopolitanism’, The Chronicle of Higher Education. Available online: http://chronicle.com/article/A-New-Cosmopolitanism/124131/ (accessed 22 January 2015). Turner, V. (1974), Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Turner, V. (1981), ‘Social dramas and stories about them’, in W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.), On Narrative, 137–164, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Turner, V. 1995[1969]. ‘ Liminality and Communitas’, in The Ritual Process: Structure and Antistructure, 94–130. Aldine Transaction. Walker, M. (2009), ‘Pedagogy for rich human being-ness in global times’, in E. Unterhalter and V. Carpentier (eds), Global Inequalities and Higher Education: Whose Interests are You Serving?, 219–40, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Watkins, J. and E. Mazur (2013), ‘Retaining students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors’, Journal of College Science Teaching, 42 (5): 36–41.

Coda: A Response Helen M. Gunter

Introduction The field of leader, leading and leadership in education is intellectually moribund. Much financial and rhetorical investment is taking place, with claims about the efficacy and vitality of being a particular type of leader, and doing leading and exercising leadership in a particular way in order to modernize for the new century, but in reality the ideas and strategies are usually banal and potentially dangerous (Gunter, 2014; 2016). It seems that putting an adjective in front of the word ‘leadership’ is a globalized industry, and so professionals and researchers are confronted with brands of leadership:  transactional, instructional, distributed, transformational. Then there are organizational variants (school, university, college, nursery); organizational roles (dean, student, middle and senior); and focus on organizational purposes (educational, academic and learner-centred). I could go on. Rescuing this situation and developing a more productive, and indeed more interesting, approach is vitally important: not least because of the need to be respectful of and to those who do the job. The chapters in this collection are about academic leadership in ways that are more than adjectival leadership. The focus is on leadership within and of academic activities regarding teaching and research and how this happens within and external to a particular university. The editors and their co-authors are keen to examine the resources that can be drawn on to enable the field to think their way out of the intellectual intensive care unit. Importantly, the book is about how this is taking place at a time of a cosmopolitan turn in how the global is engaged with, understood and brought into our practices. In this chapter I take up the position of discussant, where I raise issues for the field with regard to the long standing commitment of many researchers to thinking critically, and how this can be informed by the cosmopolitan outlook, and how such an outlook can be informed by our socially critical intellectual history.

194

Helen M. Gunter

Leaders, leading and leadership Leadership is a power ‘over’ and ‘with’ process that is codified and enacted through leading (thinking, saying, doing) and undertaken by someone as leader (either formally designated through appointment and/or recognized by those who are positioned and/or take the position as follower). Hence leaders, leading and leadership are about the exercise of power (along with other words such as ‘influence’, ‘direction’, ‘authority’; see Gronn, 2003), a power that is empty until filled with a site and situation. Hence, the chapters in this book are variously concerned with innovation and change (e.g. Tamish; Taylor and Stevenson); teaching and the curriculum (e.g. Holderness; Layer); organizational structures and practices (e.g. Duke; Cook-Sather and Felten; Nebres; Yamamoto). The sites are as expected and are focused on institutions of what is often called ‘higher’ education with purposes around research and teaching that enable the award of degrees. The situations are varied, not only in regard to different nation states but also to historical and contextual locations, in which the agency of a lived life and career is intimately intertwined with the political, economic and social contexts in which these people have grown up, sought accreditation and employment, and have raised families themselves. There are accounts of struggles within the university whereby Taylor and Stevenson talk about enabling writing development as organizational innovation, through to accounts of apartheid by Holderness, and martial law by Nebres. Studying what it means to work in higher education reveals how little is known about practice either through biographical accounts or larger empirical projects. Working lives (e.g. Deem, 1996; Ribbins, 1997; Talburt, 2000) have been emplotted with evidence of how such biographical accounts can be illuminative of how advantage and disadvantage work through the intersectionality of class, gender, race and sexuality (e.g. Cole and Gunter, 2010; Deem, 2003; Fitzgerald, 2013; Morley, 2014). In addition, there is work that examines the strategic situations in which professional practices and careers are developed within globalized and entrepreneurial universities (e.g. Blackmore and Sachs, 2007). This has generated critical accounts of the changes to purposes and practices within working conditions, activities and careers, with an emphasis on performance data and audit linked to income streams, employability and markets. The shift from notions of academic identities located in teaching and research that seek to make a contribution to a discipline, towards organizational identities located in measures of efficiency and effectiveness, has been enabled through forms of managerialism whereby leaders are technically accountable for

Coda: A Response

195

what the data says, leading is about data production and assessment and leadership is focused on improving the effectiveness of data design and outcomes (see Fitzgerald, White and Gunter, 2012; Smyth, 1995). The chapters in this book all speak to this in a range of ways, and the authors make visible the struggles that are taking place in the tensions between the rationality of performance leadership and the realities of day-to-day practices within wider political and economic contexts. In order to bring perspective to this, I  intend deploying a framework for analysing accounts of leaders, leading and leadership that has enabled me to make a contribution to the field (see Gunter, 2016; Gunter, Hall and Bragg, 2013). This framework conceptualizes leaders, leading and leadership as being approached from three main positions: Functional: providing descriptive accounts of how leading and leadership by leaders is done, and normative exhortations of how it should be done; Critical: focusing on the realities of what it means to be a leader and to do leading and leadership; Socially Critical: espousing a values-based stance to reveal oppression and to work for social justice through activist leaders, leading and leadership. Within the accounts in this book there is a strong functional thread, whereby those who are (or have been) in formal roles describe their stories of career changes and job shifts, not least how they came to be in and out of roles, and how they linked such roles with a sense of purpose and intention. There are descriptions of doing the job, along with the issues embraced and obstacles that have been overcome (or not as the case may be). The ongoing legacy of the normality of leadership attached to a formally appointed elite leader and leading role (e.g. vice-chancellor, Dean, Head of School or Director of Research) is evident and in more than the sediments of their experiences. This is to be expected. This is what those within universities do, it is how our careers are scripted and where organizational logics of practice are evident. But the chapters do show something more than the normal. There is evidence of critical work, where the authors reveal what it means for them as individuals, as partners, as parents, to work in a university. For example, Duke (in this volume) takes time to examine how leadership is rooted, to use Bourdieu’s (1990) thinking tools, in the embodied habitus of a lived life and so challenges the reality that it can be trained. Such reflexivity is also visible in Taylor and Stevenson (in this volume), who use vignettes to examine the dysfunctions of micropolitics; in Holderness (in this volume), who engages with the organizational demand for teaching with a personal identity located in research

196

Helen M. Gunter

and community projects; and in Yamamoto (in this volume), who uncovers what she calls ‘double “F” ’ status as someone simultaneously representing two minority groups: foreign and female faculty. Such personal investigations into a lived life also generate claims that revealing the realities of working lives is not enough; there is a need to think and do differently. Within the field of leadership studies in education, there is evidence of thinking about practice in ways that remove leading and leadership from the prime ownership of an elite leader. Therefore, Foster (1986) talks about leadership as a power resource that all can access and deploy; it is communal and shared. This is reflected in the overt positioning taken up by Taylor and Stevenson (in this volume) who locate leadership within ‘webs of relations within institutional settings’, and so their stories are about parity of esteem and shared purposes in ways that are relational rather than just functional, and in those exchange relationships there is a sense of mutual learning where outcomes, performance and data are secured in other ways than efficiency gains. This is a counter-discourse to what is officially in play, and so the vignettes illuminate struggles with the self over negotiating what they identify as form of ‘academic brutality’, with an ongoing commitment to processes that are safe spaces for participation. Holderness (in this volume) talks about leadership as ‘pioneering’ and making changes that make a difference to people’s educational opportunities, and so socially critical approaches to leaders, leading and leadership require the field to think about how the social justice agenda permeates our lives and not just the library. Consequently, our authors examine how our agency as knowledge workers is related to the nation state (Duke, in this volume), to the increased globalization of markets (Layer, in this volume) and the traditions in which changes take place (Yamamoto, in this volume). Specifically, Tamish (in this volume) engages with the sociopolitical context regarding Palestine, and Nebres (in this volume) examines the experience of living in turmoil and martial law in the Philippines and concludes:  ‘what helped me grow the most in leadership was a readiness to face difficult challenges, to go out of comfort zones and learn’. Consequently, this leads our authors to confront what Cook-Sather and Felten (in this volume) identify as a need to focus on the purposes and underlying values of pedagogy within the university. Socially critical work enables agency and structure within our biographies to be examined, and while post hoc codification may present a rational account, it is the case that serendipity is always a feature of what happens. And yet, as Yamomoto (in this volume) shows, the resilience within agency matters, and this reads in a complementary way to the stories that Barbara Cole and I collected (Cole and Gunter 2010) of women

Coda: A Response

197

in higher education, where support from colleagues, family and friends goes unrecognized but is integral to official performance delivery.

Taking a cosmopolitan outlook The question that this collection of accounts poses and seeks to address is whether, how and why the adoption of a cosmopolitan outlook can bring new and important insights to the experiences of our co-authors. Certainly the field is an outward-looking one and is an example of a ‘rendezvous discipline’ (Breckman, 2014), where a range of ideas, and increasingly fads and fashions, come to visit. Challenging national boundaries is difficult (see Clarke and Wildy, 2009), even though globalization has elided such boundaries through the trade in modernizing leadership brands and packages (Gunter, 1997; Thomson, Blackmore and Gunter, 2014). The productive contribution of how we actually do take a cosmopolitan outlook in order to reveal and provide alternative positioning is shown by the editors in how they have brought together a range of writers who would not ‘normally’ have expected to be in a collection except under this type of conceptual umbrella. The stories enable the construction, challenges to and the crossing of borders to be central; hence, there is much in the book that reveals not only how the university is a particular type of organization as a container of people and practices but how it is also a site for academic work that is challenged from beyond the organizational borders and that seeks to challenge such borders through research and teaching, which make a difference to the field and wider lives. Central to much current research and analysis of higher education is the interplay between the university within the nation state (as illustrated by Holderness and Duke’s chapters, in this volume) and the marketization of the globalized university (as illustrated by Layer, in this volume). In this sense the identified contribution by the editors of ‘relationality’ and ‘interconnectivity’ within the chapters is helpful, because this questions how this might be limited by the nation state, and how exchange relationships within markets beyond the state may promote enterprise but not necessarily higher education. Sociologists of education have been doing a lot of work that is located in cosmopolitan thinking, particularly the relationship between territory, knowledge production and disciplinary norms (see Seddon, 2014). Work has been undertaken at a European level, where the concern over the nation state is highly visible in work on education policy and practice (see Dale and Robertson, 2009;

198

Helen M. Gunter

Gunter et  al., 2016). Echoing the calls by the editors of this book, Robertson (2006) makes the case against what has been called methodological ‘nationalism’ or ‘statism’ in order to promote academic thinking and positioning that does not take context and scale for granted. In this sense, there is a requirement to ‘grasp the social and political realities in which we live and act’ (p. 2), and where ‘national borders and differences are dissolving and must be renegotiated in accordance with the logic of a “politics of politics” ’ (Beck, 2006, p. 2). This is more than emailing networked members across the globe, or getting on a plane to go to a conference as forms of ‘banal cosmopolitanism’ (Beck, 2006, p. 19), but is a different outlook on academic leadership as thinking otherwise about the world, while being in that world. An important outcome of these chapters is how, in working for a new position within academic leadership, the authors not only confront how they work their way out of their own limitations through reflexive engagement with tough organizational and wider political and economic contexts, but also have to handle the compromises generated by the people and settings they are in. In this sense, as Rizvi and Beech (in this volume) contend, a cosmopolitan ‘outlook’ is just that: it is a way of being in the world, it is constantly in play and under construction rather than achieved. The challenge that the editors and authors have set the field is how this might enable the identified problematics of leaders, leading and leadership in higher education to be confronted. I would identify for now two main issues that will test a cosmopolitan outlook: first, the diversity and equity issue, whereby studies on the intersectionality of structural injustice show that higher education (Fitzgerald, 2013) and the field (Mertz, 2009) are gendered, raced and classed, and we know from accounts by researchers just how hard it has been to enable issues of gender to be put onto the research agenda (see Hall, 1999); and second, that the cultural organizational structuring of higher education has ‘othered’ education as a low-level border-vulnerable entrant into the university that is outclassed and outranked in status and buildings by more worthy disciplines (Becher, 1989), and we know from within the field what it means to be bullied from those who are seeking methodological status and recognition with elite disciplines (see Greenfield and Ribbins, 1993). These are issues that inflect and run through the chapters by our co-authors, and so the basic question is how a cosmopolitan outlook can enable the field, and other colleagues in higher education, to engage and work for a different type of university. Smyth, and Rizvi and Beech (in this volume) are very helpful here as both chapters engage with the changes to the university in national and global contexts and hence the implications for the purposes and practices within and for

Coda: A Response

199

the university. Both sets of authors rightly argue that a cosmopolitan outlook must be critical, and so in relation to the issues I have raised for the field and for universities there is the capacity to ask questions: who owns the university and in whose interests is it run? How is knowledge to be produced in ways that challenge grand issues that are constructed within and beyond boundaries, and who has stakes in particular forms of knowing? How are researchers to be enabled to think otherwise and have recognition that challenges oppression that knows no boundaries? Hence, if we think about knowledge production and how knowledge workers locate their projects within organizations and states, and how in doing so they are respectful of this (not least how research is funded, and quality assessed), then we can provoke different understandings of academic leadership that speak to the accounts in this collection. As Rizvi and Beech (in this volume) show, there is a need to examine the meaning of the university and how this has been challenged through the globalization of trade and population movements (see also Rizvi and Lingard, 2010). This is particularly important given that much of what is presented to academics as effective, efficient, modern and new forms of leadership are products of a globalized leadership industry that are increasingly disconnected from research and peer review (Gunter 2012; 2016; Gunter and Mills, 2016). Importantly, we have to resist the translation of cosmopolitan visioning into a series of bullet points that can be put on a slide and used in a training session, not least because much of what is promoted as effective leadership does not speak to universities sited in war zones. Such reductionism is an accepted norm in much professional development, but as Rizvi and Beech (in this volume) show, it is more problematic than this as the universal underpinnings of cosmopolitanism assume there is one moral tradition, and as such it corrals and disciplines practice. As Smyth demonstrates it is the critical that matters, or in Fay’s (1975) terms it is about identifying suffering and how this can be revealed and worked on; hence, ‘theories must not simply explain the sources and nature of discontent experienced by social actors, but also must demonstrate how it is that such discontent can be eliminated by removing, in some specified way, the structural contradictions which underlie it’ (p. 97). In taking on an activist role regarding how situations are revealed, challenged and alternatives developed (see Apple, 2013; Smyth et al., 2014), there are two challenges for the cosmopolitan outlook. The first one lies within fields such as ‘leaders, leading and leadership’, where there exists an established body of socially critical work about the field that is cosmopolitan in outlook without using that framing. If I return to the issue of social justice, and in particular gender, there is a body of evidence,

200

Helen M. Gunter

conceptualization and theorizing that has enabled field members to think and act in the way that this book is reporting on (see Blackmore and Sachs, 2013; Fitzgerald, 2013; Morley, 2014). Here, I am thinking of landmark texts such as Smyth’s (1989) collection of essays that outline knowledge production in the field and critique it in ways that cross boundaries and think differently. What I am saying here is that a critical cosmopolitan outlook is embedded within our traditions, but as a normative cosmopolitan outlook it is vulnerable to colonization by entrepreneurial knowledge workers who travel the globe ‘challenging boundaries’. What is needed is for thinking about cosmopolitanism to draw on a body of intellectual resources that predates it in order to ensure that the vision is rooted in the lived lives of people. Cosmopolitanism is about breaking with history, but we have an intellectual history that is integral to thinking about and securing how such a break needs to take place, and so any such outlook is located in its own traditions, which are valid resources. Adopting cosmopolitan outlooking, without what Rizvi and Beech (in this volume) identify as ‘cosmopolitan learning’ through drawing on such resources, will get us very far and may alienate the very people that we would want to share our research with. The second challenge lies in the critiques of cosmopolitanism that need to be taken into account (see Chernilo, 2006; Robertson and Krossa, 2012). Visioning needs to be scripted against something, and in this case the cosmopolitan vision exists by constructing the nation state as a unified ‘it’. Such visioning is therefore based on the nation state as ‘the self-sufficient, solid and well-integrated representation of the modern society – when it is thought of as the natural organizing principle of modernity’ (Chernilo, 2006, p. 14, original emphasis). Such a construction enables methodological nationalism to be created and condemned and demonstrates a failure to engage historically, politically and economically with the state. Investigations into knowledge production show how the state tends to present itself as coherent, deterministic and causally linked to policy. However, in reality the state is differentiated, and those who inhabit state institutions are in a constant process of flux and image control (Gunter, 2014), and, as the chapters in this book show, boundaries can shift through war and unrest. If we are to adopt a cosmopolitan outlook that is critical then, as Smyth argues, we do need to ask questions about the relationship between the state and the university, and also global economic elites and the university, but in doing so we should challenge accounts of boundaries that are based on sociological thinking alone. Political thinking enables us to not only examine choices in relation to power processes, but also to link to institutions and civil society.

Coda: A Response

201

A final point that we need to take on board is who we are and who we are talking to and with. We seem to be talking to ourselves and people like us in higher education, particularly since we have experiences and aspirations for our work that speak to shared concerns. But we also need to be mindful of forms of elite cosmopolitanism, and this is integral to the two issues I raised above for the field – a gendered field and university, and a field that is seeking status in the universities through competition with other knowledge claims. This begs a range of questions about whether we automatically default to the ideal of the white male, middle class, middle-aged person as the leader, doing leading and exercising leadership and whether the struggle for recognition within higher education connects such privileging with the ‘scholastic fallacy’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p.  49) of methodological purity, with requisite citations and acclaim. In this sense we again need to challenge our resources and consider if we automatically default to the north at the expense of the south for our theoretical insights (Connell, 2007) and for our empirical sites for investigation (Gandin and Apple, 2003). Appadurai (2013) asks us to think about forms of elite cosmopolitanism through his study of Mumbai, where he talks about ‘cosmopolitanism from below’, regarding how the ‘local’ is a site for valid rather than restricted analysis (see Gunter, Hall and Apple, 2016). This is key to Rizvi and Beech’s (in this volume) contribution to this book, particularly their recognition that cosmopolitanism is routine in academic practices as well as within civil society – well, at least for some. What they are asking us to rightly think about is the everydayness rather than the abstractness of cosmopolitanism, and how that everyday normality might be a construction of capitalism and colonialism. This connects directly to Smyth’s contribution in this book and elsewhere regarding the meanings and realities of scholarly activism (see Smyth, 2012). What the chapters in this book show is how potent the local remains, regarding teams we work in, the meetings we attend, the policies that structure our activity and how this is located within wider historical, political, cultural and economic structures, events and discourses. By linking our practice with morality and values, then Rizvi and Beech (in this volume) enable the local to be the focus of our attention and also show how boundaries need to be seen within and in relation to claims for coherent unity and cleavages that divide. Hence the starting point for a cosmopolitan vision is within the locality (with different scaling approaches, e.g. career, family, office, colleagues, university, region, nation), and in thinking beyond normalized assumptions there is a need to draw on critical research within the field that not only helps us to challenge with boundaries but also to question the knowledge production processes that generates such visioning.

202

Helen M. Gunter

A final thought . . . I began this Coda by making the point that the field is intellectually moribund, and hence any contribution to academic leadership needs to work differently. This collection of stories and analysis both supports and challenges this judgement: there is clearly a disconnect between the recipe models of effective and efficient behaviours and languages for appointed leaders to adopt and for their followers to comply with, and the accounts given in this book, rooted in values and experiences that show negotiation with and sometimes resistance to such models. Our co-authors demonstrate the validity of stories as a key way in which we understand ourselves and others and how our assumptions are open to the type of scrutiny that cosmopolitan thinking allows. The potential exists to acclaim the potency of cosmopolitan narratives, through which we can therefore continue to challenge the intellectual poverty within the field. In doing so we do need to recognize that we already have resources within our field to do this, and hence we need to ask serious questions about whether cosmopolitanism brings anything distinctive. The key message from this book is that this can be in the affirmative only if cosmopolitan outlooks are socially and politically critical, and as such are located in long-standing and robust intellectual traditions in our field.

References Appadurai, A. (2013), The Future as Cultural Fact, London: Verso. Apple, M. W. (2013), Can Education Change Society? New York, NY: Routledge. Becher, T. (1989), Academic Tribes and Territories, Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press. Beck, U. (2006), Cosmopolitan Vision, Cambridge: Polity. Blackmore J. and J. Sachs (2007), Performing and Reforming Leaders: Gender, Educational Restructuring, and Organizational Change, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Bourdieu, P. (1990), In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, trans. Matthew Adamson, Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers, Oxford. Bourdieu, P. (2000), Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity Press. Breckman, W. (2014), ‘Intellectual History and the Interdisciplinary Ideal’, in D. M. McMahon and S. Moyn (eds), Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History, 275–93, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Coda: A Response

203

Chernilo, D. (2006), ‘Social Theory’s Methodological Nationalism, Myth and Reality’, European Journal of Social Theory, 9 (1): 5–22. Clarke, S. and H. Wildy (2009), ‘The Europeanisation of Educational Leadership’, European Educational Research Journal, 8 (3): 352–475. Cole, B. and H. M. Gunter, eds (2010), Changing Lives: Women, Inclusion and the PhD, Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books. Connell, R. (2007), Southern Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press. Dale, R. and S. Robertson (eds) (2009), Globalisation and Europeanisation in Education, Oxford: Symposium Books. Deem, R. (1996), ‘Border territories: A journey through sociology, education and women’s studies’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 17 (1): 5–19. Deem, R. (2003), ‘Gender, organisational cultures and the practices of manageracademics in UK universities’, Gender, Work and Organization, 10 (2): 239–59. Fay, B. (1975), Social Theory and Political Practice, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Fitzgerald, T. (2013), Women Leaders in Higher Education: Shattering the Myths, London: Routledge. Fitzgerald, T., J. White and H. M. Gunter (2012), Hard Labour? Academic Work and the Changing Landscape of Higher Education, Bingley: Emerald. Foster, W. (1986), Paradigms and Promises, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Gandin, L. A. and M. Apple (2003), ‘Educating the state, democratizing knowledge: The citizen school project in Porte Alegre, Brazil’, in M. W. Apple, P. Aasen, M. Kim Cho, L. A. Gandin, A. Oliver, Y.-K. Sung, H. Tavares and T.-H. Wong (eds), 193–219, The State and the Politics of Knowledge, New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Greenfield, T. and P. Ribbins, eds (1993), Greenfield on Educational Administration, London: Routledge. Gronn, P. (2003), ‘Leadership: Who needs it?’ School Leadership and Management, 23 (3): 267–90. Gunter, H. M. (1997), Rethinking Education: The Consequences of Jurassic Management, London: Cassell. Gunter, H. M. (2012), Leadership and the Reform of Education, Bristol: The Policy Press. Gunter, H. M. (2014), Educational Leadership and Hannah Arendt, Abingdon: Routledge. Gunter, H. M. (2016), An Intellectual History of School Leadership Practice and Research, London: Bloomsbury. Gunter, H. M. and C. Mills (2016), Consultants and Consultancy: The Case of Education, Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Gunter, H. M., D. Hall and M. Apple, M. (eds), (2016), Corporate Elites and the Reform of Public Education, Bristol: Policy Press. Gunter, H. M., D. Hall and J. Bragg (2013), ‘Distributed Leadership: A study in knowledge production’, Educational Leadership, Management and Administration, 41 (5): 556–81.

204

Helen M. Gunter

Gunter, H. M., E. Grimaldi, D. Hall and R. Serpieri, R., eds (2016), New Public Management and the Reform of Education: European Lessons for Policy and Practice, London: Routledge. Hall, V. (1999), ‘Gender and education management: duel or dialogue?’, in T. Bush, L. Bell, R. Bolam, R. Glatter and P. Ribbins (eds), Educational Management: Redefining Theory, Policy and Practice, 155–65, London: PCP. Mertz, N. T. (ed.) (2009), Breaking into the All-Male Club: Female Professors of Educational Administration, Albany, NY: State University of New York. Morley, L. (2014), ‘Lost leaders: women in the global academy’, Higher Education Research and Development, 33 (1): 114–28. Ribbins, P. ed., (1997), Leaders and Leadership in the School, College and University, London: Cassell. Rizvi, F. B. and Lingard (2010), Globalizing Education Policy, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Robertson, R. and A. S. Krossa (eds) (2012), European Cosmopolitanism in Question, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Seddon, T. (2014), ‘Renewing sociology of education? Knowledge spaces, situated enactments and sociological practice in a world on the move’, European Educational Research Journal, 13 (1): 9–25. Smyth, J., ed. (1989), Critical Perspectives on Educational Leadership, London: Falmer Press. Smyth, J., ed. (1995), Academic Work: the Changing Labour Process in Higher Education, Buckingham: Open University Press. Smyth, J. (2012), ‘Policy Activism: an animating idea with/for young people’, Journal of Educational Administration and History, 44 (3): 179–86. Smyth, J., B. Down, P. McInerney and R. Hattam (2014), Doing Critical Educational Research, New York: Peter Lang. Talburt, S. (2000), Subject to Identity: Knowledge, Sexuality and Academic Practices in Higher Education, New York, NY: State of University of New York Press. Thomson, P., J. Blackmore and H. M. Gunter (2014), ‘Series Foreword’, in H. M. Gunter (ed.), Educational Leadership and Hannah Arendt, vi–xii, London: Routledge.

Index academic writing 91, 101 academic practice 6, 12, 37, 159, 162, 166–7, 172, 176, 201 African National Congress (ANC) Party 116 Agency 2, 26, 182, 194, 196 apartheid 8, 107, 109, 111–12, 194 Appadurai, A. 41, 201 Appiah, K. A. 2, 45, 47–8, 53, 175, 183–4 Ateneo Center for Educational Development (ACED) 85 Ball, S. 23 barriers 123, 151 Beck, U. 1–3, 17, 25, 30–1, 41, 43, 198 Border(s) 3, 9, 26, 31, 35–6, 41, 43, 52, 111, 118, 127, 136, 139, 141–3, 151–2, 197–8 Boundary 19, 101, 180 Bourdieu, P. 17, 22, 27, 60, 195, 201 career 6, 23, 29, 75, 92–4, 99, 104, 108–9, 115–6, 120, 124–30, 134–6, 139–43, 152–3, 163, 194–5, 201 community 3, 23, 37, 40–1, 44, 60–5, 68–70, 77, 79–80, 82–3, 85, 88, 92, 96, 101, 104, 111–13, 115, 117–21, 126, 139–40, 143, 145–6, 149–50, 152, 160, 164, 170, 181–2, 184, 196 service 77, 79 cosmopolitan learning 5–6, 10, 12, 47, 49–52, 200 outlook 1–4, 12–13, 184, 193, 197, 198–202 perspective 1, 11, 17, 24–5, 118, 177, 188 cosmopolitanism critical 10, 17, 24–5, 31 embodied 175–6, 180, 184 everyday 36–7, 43, 45–6, 50 rooted 2, 47, 175, 184 critical research 201

critical theory 10, 31–2 curriculum 11, 36, 78, 80–2, 84, 110, 113–14, 117–18, 120, 131–2, 159, 161, 166–7, 172, 194 Dearing, R. 167, 170–1 dialogic imagination 25 democracy 8, 59, 79, 107, 116, 145, 182 empowerment 104, 165, 169–70 entrepreneurialism 170, 172 equity 60, 124, 142–3, 181, 198 ethics 10, 12, 175, 176, 178 Fitzgerald, T. 123–4, 126, 135–6, 194–5, 198, 200 Freire, P. 67–8, 182, 186–8 Gaza 61–2, 66 global citizenship 36–7 globalization 3, 21, 25–6, 35–7, 42, 44, 80–1, 88, 151, 196–7, 199 governance 130, 146, 151–2, 159–60, 164 Greenleaf, R. K. 96, 103, 105 Hansen, D. T. 175, 177, 179–81, 183–4, 187–8 Held, D. 2–3 Higher Education Academy (HEA) 169–70 Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) 96, 147, 161 Holton, R. J. 3 hooks, b. 180–1, 185 identity 8–9, 19, 28, 41, 45, 47, 61, 91, 98, 100–1, 150, 152, 185, 195 inclusivity 162, 175, 178–9 internationalization 6, 26–7, 35, 48–9, 131, 133, 142 interdependency 2

206

Index

Jamieson, I. 21 Japan 80, 88, 123–33, 136 Jump, P. 96 Kant, I. 38–9 leadership command and control 12, 165–6, 168–71 intellectual 19, 28, 117–18 managerial 20 political 20, 63 research 9, 91, 95, 100–3 symbolic 20 learning and teaching 12, 51, 119, 121, 140, 162, 167, 169–70, 172, 175–6, 185, 188 lifelong learning 139–40, 152–3, 162 liminality 176, 180–1, 186, 188 Macfarlane, B. 19, 28–30 management 1, 23, 28–9, 58, 80, 82–4, 86–7, 96, 117, 120–1, 139, 145, 147, 150–1, 153, 163, 165, 168, 170 mentoring 94–5, 102–3 Middlehurst, R. 6–7, 11, 59 Murray, R. 92, 135 Naidoo, R. 21–2 narrative accounts 1–2, 5–7, 9 neoliberalism 43–4, 177, 184 new planetary vulgate 17, 22, 28 Newman, J. H. 160, 170 Nixon, J. 2–3, 5–6, 175–6, 178–9, 186 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 115, 145 Nussbaum, M. 37 Palestine 57–8, 61, 65, 196 partnership 12, 83–4, 139, 143, 148, 175–6, 179–88 pedagogy 36, 70, 93, 178–9, 182, 196 Philippines 75–6, 78, 86–8 political oppression 8, 61, 72 post-1992 universities 92, 94, 98, 104 poverty 8–9, 65, 85–7, 107, 202 Primary Education Upgrading Programme (PEUP) 112–15, 117, 120–1

reciprocity 12–13, 131, 143, 175–6, 178–82, 184–8 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 140 Research Excellence Framework (REF) 92 output 95, 97–9, 104 submission 93, 95–7, 98–9 panel 97–8 Rothwell, N. 7 Said, E. W. 40 Scott, P. 159, 167 Skrbis, Z. 36–7, 42–7 social engagement 10, 84, 86–7 social justice 9–10, 60, 63, 79, 121, 195–6, 199 South Africa 8, 107, 109–13, 115–16, 118 Trow, M. 17, 19–20, 159, 167 UK Quality Assurance Agency 93 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 64 university Australian National 141 Ateneo de Manila 75, 78–80, 83, 85 Ballarat 185 Bethlehem 57 Bophuthatswana 111 Cambridge 141 Cape Town 109 De La Salle 78 London 109 Nelson Mandela Metropolitan 118 Oldenburg 118 Osaka 123, 125, 128–31, 134, 136 Oxford 127, 142 Port Elizabeth 116 Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific 128 Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology 141 Sheffield 126, 128 The Philippines 78 Uppsala 185 Vista 118

Index Warwick 141, 144–7 Western Australia 147 Western Cape 118 Western Sydney 141 Witwatersrand 110 values 1, 4, 7–9, 11, 28, 36, 42–3, 45–51, 60, 63, 68, 72, 91, 94, 100, 102–3, 105, 136, 139, 150, 152, 171, 175–6, 178, 183–4, 195–6, 201–2

vignette 18, 91–2, 95, 97, 100–3, 105, 195–6 Wacquant, L. 17, 22, 27–8 Walker, M. 177, 180, 182, 188 West Bank 61–2, 66 Willetts, D. 159, 167 Woodward, I. 36–7, 42–7 Zimbabwe 108

207