Delivering Educational Change in Higher Education

A Transformative Approach for Leaders and Practitioners

Jackie Potter, Cristina Devecchi, Jackie Potter, Cristina Devecchi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429620874
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Presenting leadership of educational change in higher education as a dynamic, collaborative, and evolving area, Delivering Educational Change in Higher Education provides rich examples of how new ways of working are being adopted and adapted. It brings together leaders and practitioners, as authors and readers, to share their experiences of whole organisational change.

Across the chapters, common threads highlight the importance of organisational context, of shared or distributed leadership, and the critical need for continuous learning in and on action by reflective readers. Linking case studies to a range of practical models and theories, this book:

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• Explores established paradigms and models of change management and leadership.

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• Offers examples from a diverse range of institutional contexts.

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• Models critical reflective practice in the leadership of educational change.

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• Addresses the future of educational developers working collaboratively with an increasingly diverse higher education workforce.

Providing rare insights into 'the what' and 'the how' of change management and leadership, this book will be of interest to senior managers, educators, programme leaders, and educational developers who are all working in collaborative ways to enact positive change for student learning and experience.

Part I

Current context of leading educational change in higher education

Chapter 1

A tailored undertaking: the challenge of context and culture for developing transformational leadership and change agency

Steve Outram and Doug Parkin

When it comes to leading complex change in a higher education setting, a one-size-fits-all approach is not the solution. The energy needed for sustainable, transformational change must come from the hearts and minds of not just those leading the change, but every actor in the change process, and this can only come about through rich dialogue and collaborative engagement. This chapter looks at the challenge for change leaders of understanding and working within an organisational context, both generally and specifically, and tailoring their approach to leadership and change. It goes on to consider the complex web of values, assumptions and stories that make up the underlying organisational culture, and concludes by exploring approaches, principles, techniques, and mindsets used in developmental change programmes designed for change teams and change leaders.

The challenge of context

‘Leadership takes place in a context. It is, or should be, context-sensitive. Being a successful leader in one context, situation or era may involve quite a different set of challenges and opportunities from being successful in another’ (Parkin, 2017: 1). The question then is what determines context? To explore this, it is useful to think in three dimensions, as shown in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1Leading with influence.

The challenge in higher education (HE) is invariably to lead with influence rather than authority. This acknowledges that position and policy may sometimes work well for pushing people, but to ‘pull’ people – to lead from the heart – involves a combination of commitment, positivity, and relationship. In leadership development the notion of ‘push’ and ‘pull’ is an extremely useful way of conceptualising the different dynamics at work within the leader/follower relationship and taken further can start to form the basis for sharing and distributing leadership. Social identity theory provides a series of ideas regarding leadership behaviours that are essentially relational in nature: working for the group, creating an enabling environment or holding space, bridging across organisational boundaries on behalf of the group, and ensuring fairness. Research suggests that academic communities are likely to recognise leadership in actions and behaviours of this kind (Bolden et al, 2012). These approaches help to foster the social identity of the group; that sense of ‘weness’ that helps to make an ‘us’ out of ‘it’. And it is through this more attuned approach to leadership that deep influence is achieved – a form of leadership based on consent and social exchange. The challenge, therefore, is to lead with influence because, in every sense that matters, you cannot lead without it.

At the top of the triangle, the first dimension to reflect upon is the prevailing perspective on leadership. This may be individually held, it may be a manifestation of the organisational culture, or it may be a combination of the two. Fundamentally, though, what one conceives leadership to be, consciously or otherwise, will have a considerable influence on how one goes about it. There is a significant difference, for example, between ‘command and control’ and ‘serve and enable’ – they each point towards a highly contrasting set of behaviours and actions. On a crude scale, envisage a spectrum from ‘hero’ to ‘humble’ and every point along it, and then consider the leadership voices in your organisation and how they resonate. The heroic leader with a bold voice that swoops in and takes control whenever difficulties arise; the humble leader with a soft voice ‘who carries water for his people so that they can get on with their jobs’ (Townsend, 1971). As well as whatever personal vision for leadership the individual may carry, there is also the cultural grain of the organisation. As Schein observed (1984: 14), ‘it will be easy to make changes that are congruent with present assumptions’. Sometimes the hardest place for an academic leader to find themselves is caught between an organisational perspective on leadership and a very different set of identity-based assumptions at a team or departmental level. This ‘pressed middle’ can sometimes be characterised as balancing managerialism with collegiality.

In universities, perhaps uniquely, there is another set of perspectives on leadership that to varying degrees contest the very notion and place of leadership itself, particularly hierarchical or imposed leadership. One of the reasons behind this is that traditionally, and without using the term, academia has placed a very high emphasis on self-leadership (Bolden et al, 2012) and individualism. The importance of independent thought, freedom for critical enquiry, and the need to spearhead a research agenda are manifestations of this, as is the central notion of academic freedom. This may be given the more palatable title of ‘intellectual leadership’ that relates in various ways to research, scholarship, citizenship (social responsibility), and maintaining and enhancing curricula.

This brings us to the second dimension in the above diagram which concerns leading in HE. Is it different/distinctive, and if so, why? In one sense as a marker of organisational culture, leadership is very much in the eye of the beholder: what we see it to be may be as important as what it sets out to be. Middlehurst (1993: 185) describes that ‘leadership may reside elsewhere than in the actions of leaders, for example in the minds of the beholders or in the systems or norms of a group’. Other features that characterise the challenge of leading in HE include:

• It is a context in which ‘success’ is very multi-dimensional (balancing not just research and teaching, but also enterprise, innovation, internationalisation, community engagement, citizenship, social responsibility, supporting the professions, employability, widening participation, and so on).
• Working in a critically refined environment where the reflex to question and challenge is absolutely integral to the very purpose of the organisation: learning, enquiry, and discovery.
• Linked to the above, leading smart people in both academic and professional roles (Goffee and Jones, 2009).
• The importance of participatory decision-making for collective commitment and strengthening a collaborative environment (Bryman, 2007).
• Levels of inherent complexity that often make systematic management through targets, superordinate goals, and well-aligned objectives hard to achieve (even if there was reasonable consensus regarding the appropriateness of such an approach).
• Roles may involve the wearing of multiple hats. This may sometimes highlight tensions, for example, between disciplinary allegiances, research commitments, and organisational leadership.
• There is a complex web of values encompassing people, stakeholders, the sense of purpose/service, and the work itself. This is sometimes manifested in an apparent collision of values such as between individualism and collectivism, authority and empowerment, and even the ancient and the modern. Here can be found, at times, the place of paradox, where, for example, to stay the same (ancient) things have to change (modern).
• The complexity of the changing world within and around higher education, the shifting expectations that come with this, and the need for agility and responsiveness. This last feature takes us neatly through to the third point of the triangle diagram.

Point three in the above diagram encourages reflection on the external context for leadership. This is critically important for penetrating the real environmental drivers when leading change and achieving connectivity. Change does not take place in a vacuum; it is the necessary product of the evolving world that surrounds the organisation and to which it contributes. Achieving a more inclusive and engaged approach to change leadership, a greater sense of changing together, involves creating a shared appreciation of those external drivers. This needs to be done openly and honestly and without hidden agendas. Devecchi et al (2018: 24) highlight that ‘there are benefits of early and ongoing engagement in change processes by as many, and as diverse, stakeholders as practicable’. Exploring the external context through collaborative dialogue is a very strong and legitimate way of involving people in the earliest stages of change.

It is always a forlorn effort to try to capture and express the ‘current’ context for leadership and change in a constantly evolving HE world. However well one does so, it will be instantly overtaken by new and sometimes unexpected developments, and rendered out-of-date, particularly with the pace of change currently being experienced. However, to give a snapshot example of one key driver as regards learning and teaching in universities in countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia, the focus on student engagement and teaching excellence has never been stronger. The expectations of students and their families are greater than ever, value-for-money has become a key consideration, employability skills are high on the agenda, teaching excellence has become something to be measured, political and media scrutiny is intense, and universities are working hard to differentiate the quality of their offering in an increasingly competitive ‘buyers’ market’ for undergraduate study. This, as just one thinly sliced example, is part of the current external context for leadership. As Willetts (2017: 361), a recent UK higher education minister, recently observed ‘the behaviour of our universities is influenced by their environment and the incentives they face’.

From context to culture

Context and culture are indispensable to each other. Behind everything they do, organisations exist as a complex web of values, assumptions, and stories, and ‘successful organisations tend to be those which possess assumptions and values which encourage behaviours consonant with the organisational strategy’ (Hassard and Sharifi, 1989, as adapted and cited in Brown, 1998: 163). This is particularly true amongst intellect communities and within educational establishments where the dialogue around and investment in values may be particularly cogent and explicit. A tailored approach to change, therefore, needs to take in both context and culture. Without this change initiatives are likely to be limited as structural and transactional.

Culture can be defined as:

Sets of taken-for-granted values, attitudes and ways of behaving, which are articulated through and reinforced by recurrent practices among a group of people in a given context.

(Becher and Trowler, 2001: 23)

And once a culture is embedded, i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Readers
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Current context of leading educational change 
in higher education
• PART II Developing people and leaders for a changing 
educational context
• PART III Whole institutional change: leaders in action
• Conclusion
• Index