Connecting Philosophic and Scholarly Traditions with Change in Higher Education

Abstract

Stimulated by experiences associated with the Kellogg Foundation's &dquo;Leadership for Institutional Change&dquo; (LINC) initiative, the authors argue for expanding the conventional notion of leadership required for higher education change. In addition to competently envisioning, organizing, and enacting change, we believe that change agents must become more familiar with the philosophical and scholarly traditions associated with the substance of intended change. We make our case by considering two contemporary change platforms in American higher education: the shift from teaching to learning in undergraduate education, and the quest to make colleges and universities more &dquo;engaged&dquo; (with society) institutions. Understanding the Academy as a tapestry of scholarly traditions-with distinct philosophical roots and conceptual frames of reference-night stimulate more academic change agents to reframe leadership and change in postmodern terms. Doing that will offer change platforms that are more embracing than declarative, more inviting than directive, and more connecting than restrictive.

Messy Leadership: Interrupting Marketplace Responses to Leadership in Learning and Teaching

“…Today, many schools seek to be ‘learning institutions’ and references abound in mission statements to student-, learner-, and learning-centered education. (Fear, Adamek, and Imig, 2002, p. 44)…”

“…He described the university itself as a ‘ruin’ of the Enlightenment Project – with hints and nightmares of the past framing the present. More recently, Fear et al (2002) state that higher education is now positioned as “a corporation driven by market forces” (p. 49). So, I ask the question here: What does this mean for Educational Leadership?…”

“…This crisis of legitimation is then further evidenced by the move to centre the empirical study of the technicalities of learning and instruction:Change efforts in higher education are typically framed by the notion that ‘something needs fixing’ or ‘a vision compels us to walk a new path.’ This framing often comes in the form of articulating a direction – from current ‘old way’ to a future ‘new way.’ The new way often given an appealing title, such as the platforms considered in this manuscript – “The Learning Paradigm” and “The Engaged Institution.” Considerable effort is made to articulate reasons for making the change, as is the desire to describe the new way comprehensively. (Fear, Adamek, and Imig, 2002, p. 44Fear et al, 2002)…”

“…Thus, whilst there are some who might argue that the focus has not shifted and that universities have always been consumed by technologies of power, I suggest this current historic moment, amplified by the Covid-19 pandemic, clearly situates the former second-class citizen that is educational leadership as a more readily consumable populist target (Cary, 2006). The discourses have changed and historic, and often unquestioned, critical positions are under attack (Fear, Adamek and Imig, 2002), producing specific global higher education reforms, such as The Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (2017) in the United Kingdom and The Job-Ready Graduates Package reform (2020) of the Commonwealth Grant Scheme in Australia. These reforms have had an immediate effect of power on the academic work of universities.Managerialism has had a profound influence on the management and orientation of education over the last two decades of the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first.…”

“…Considerable effort is made to articulate reasons for making the change, as is the desire to describe the new way comprehensively. (Fear, Adamek, andImig, 2002, p. 44Fear et al, 2002) If we take this one step further, we can view the landscape of educational leadership in a new light by considering Read's (2105) suggestion, that reason and excellence in leadership in higher education has no content: But back to Europe, and North America, where Readings laid his ground. Here Reason lost its specious authority, Culture lost its nation-status, and Excellence had, by definition and slightly problematically, when we looked more closely at what manager's were extolling when they extolled its virtue, no content.…”