Education for Leadership and Social Responsibility

Gloria Nemerowicz, Eugene Rossi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317856122
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

The editors of this text contend that there is a lack of leadership in existence for deciding global and national problems. Colleges and universities are generally expected to produce national, political, scientific and corporate leaders. Most institutions maintain that their graduates are leaders, yet few institutions explicitly address the isssue of leadership and social responsibility in a systematic and comprehensive way. Often academic approaches consist of unfocused courses of leadership, looking at leadership styles and managerial decision-making within a business context. Basing their work on research, the editors discuss what they consider to be an important programme for the development of leadership and social responsibility in schools and institutions of higher education.

Part Two
Applications: Building Educational Communities for Leadership and Social Responsibility

Chapter 5

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Planning and Implementing an Education for Leadership and Social Responsibility

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From college faculty and staff:

I spend all of my time trying to keep up with the demands of my students and my research. How do you expect me to get involved in changing the way things are done around here? That's not my job.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Let's stop planning and start doing.

You're putting the inmates in charge of the asylum.

Planning for change should not be looked on as preliminary to the real work. It is as much a part of the real work of change as the actual programs, new organizations and revised curriculums that will follow. How we plan for and implement change provides critical opportunities to clarify and model the principles of inclusive leadership and social responsibility. In the academy, planning is usually defined as a necessary, laborious process that is part of somebody else's job, the results of which are passed on to administrators and faculty to implement. This top-down planning is antithetical to inclusive leadership. It deprives organizations of the best thinking and alienates participants who, because they weren't involved in planning for change, cannot effectively implement change.

In the past decade, the ‘quality’ movement has inspired application of Total Quality Management to higher education, with a resulting focus on students, teamwork and continuous improvement of the processes of education (Deming, 1986; Audette, 1990; Cornesky et al., 1991; Seymour, 1992; Wolverton, 1994). The quality movement has helped to involve more people in the process of planning and to appreciate the role of brainstorming and risk-taking. It is hoped that educators can reclaim the right and responsibility to help plan the directions our institutions will take, and steer a course between autocratic governance and a process that makes an institution ‘incapable o f … an expedited decision’ (Zemsky and Massy, 1995). Those directions have a profound effect on the lives of the individuals who are participants in the institution.

The Processes of Planning and Learning

In an educational environment, almost everyone thinks he or she knows something about learning. That is the business we are in. Few, however, profess to be expert planners. In many institutions, this job is outsourced to specialists or is institutionalized in an Office of Planning, whose personnel do not generally interact with most faculty and students. Higher education has created a specialty out of a basic organizational process that can be successful only if many people understand it and get involved. This involvement can be made easier by the acknowledgment that educators really do know more about planning than they or others may think, by virtue of their knowledge of the learning process. Because there is considerable similarity between the processes of learning and planning, our familiarity with learning can be used to facilitate successful planning.

In the framework of inclusive leadership, when we speak of learning we are speaking of interactive learning that relies on the active engagement of the learner with others in an open and supportive environment. Likewise, planning must be collaborative, interactive and ongoing. The processes are similar in at least the following ways:

• Both are change oriented with the goal of improvement. Both need to appreciate the developmental nature of change, while allowing for the occasional ‘ah ha’ breakthrough moments of insight. Change is generally incremental for both individuals and institutions and is made easier by self awareness, including knowledge of one's history.

• Both processes are influenced by a context of values, relationships among people and access to resources. Key questions for both individual and institutional growth are: How much support is there for risk-taking, failure, achievement, feedback and creativity? How much shared responsibility is there for the outcome of learning or planning? Whose responsibility are those students who do not learn or those plans that are not implemented?

• Both processes must acknowledge the necessity of systems thinking for accurate understanding, constructive feedback and goal-setting. Only a holistic approach that takes the whole person or the entire institution into account will produce good results.

• For both learning and planning, active involvement of people in the process increases the likelihood of the success of the process. Involvement in one's own learning or in institutional planning increases understanding of and commitment to the goals and engenders creativity.

• Characteristics that make for successful planning and implementation — honesty, openness, consultation, interactive communication (especially listening), assessment, feedback, facts, continuity and decentralization — are also those that provide the best context for learning.

Others have recognized the links between planning and learning. Michael (1973) maintains that learning should be the most important product of strategic planning and Senge (1990) proposes that healthy organizations in the twenty-first century will be learning organizations for themselves and for all of their stakeholders. These writers — and organizations that are implementing new ideas — do not recommend adoption of traditional elements of the learning process, such as rigid classroom structure and order (assigned seats, ringing bells), hierarchy (teacher as authority) and competition (for grades and attention). Rather, increasing value is being given in the workplace and in the process of planning to spontaneity and creativity, teamwork, collaboration and decentralization. The same elements that produce successful learning produce successful planning.

Characteristics of an Inclusive Planning Process

While each institution must design its own plan according to its own distinctive vision, the components and methods of planning and implementing change should include several similarities that reflect our discussion of inclusive leadership.

• Process values. Planning is guided by values as well as procedures and timetables, and people should be aware of the values that support the processes of planning and implementation at their institution. Consistent with the principles of inclusive leadership, process values will be rooted in democratic participation, respect and belief in the efficacy of people and groups. Articulation of these values by the participants, early in the process of planning, will help establish them as the foundation for the education that is being constructed. It should be made clear that the processes themselves — the way people go about planning and implementing — and not just the outcomes, are important to the institution. At no time are ignoble means justified by noble ends; the means must therefore conform to the implicit ends — the values of inclusive leadership.

•Systems thinking. Use of a whole-system approach to planning and implementation. Planning for the improvement of student learning and the attainment of the vision of the student graduate prepared for inclusive leadership in the twenty-first century must involve and enrich all of the participants in the organization — the faculty, staff, community (including families, businesses and non-profits), alumni, board members and administrators.

•Cross-boundary working. Diminished emphasis on traditional boundaries among divisions, departments, units and statuses of individuals when organizing to get the planning work done and the changes implemented. People should be organized across traditional boundaries into work groups, study teams, implementation and evaluation committees. The participation of constituencies outside the immediate campus should also be encouraged. ‘Planning conversations’ often lead to new working relationships that will prove valuable for other purposes for individuals as well as the institution.

•Collaboration, consultation, and feedback. These methods will need to be discussed at an early stage of the planning process, beginning with involvement in organizing the planning process itself. Ways to accomplish them include the use of email, networked discussions, focus groups, surveys and conversations. No method is more effective than representative working groups and the relationships that develop within them. A systems approach will assure that each working group represents all the diverse voices that need to be heard.

All members of the college community need to understand that while they are invited into the planning process, not to participate is an abdication of membership responsibilities that harms the organization and contradicts the principles of inclusive leadership. Visions for what the institution can accomplish can come from sources located anywhere within the institution, and the planning process needs to assure that all voices are heard. This message needs to be conveyed — through whatever means are available — within all organizational arenas of the campus, at local as well as public occasions, by the president, by senior administrators and faculty, by staff, union and student leaders. Planning is not more work (although it is necessary to be sympathetic to this initial, understandable reaction), it is the work.

Recognizing the Need for Change

The need for change — specifically change toward a more integrated education that focuses on preparation for inclusive leadership — must be widely acknowledged. Getting people to feel that change is necessary, especially change that will involve them in new work and new ways of thinking and doing, is often met with firm resistance (O'Toole, 1995). Understandably, it is more difficult to engage those who feel comfortable with their present circumstances and those who believe they have something to lose if things change than it is to engage those who feel dissatisfied, frustrated and disappointed with the current ways of doing things.

The first step toward change, therefore, involves coming to grips with those conditions in education that are distressing, depressing and enervating — conditions that are abundantly reported in the national and professional media as well as in the experience of our classrooms and professional lives. The confrontation with dissatisfactions needs to be taken out of hallways and cafeterias, out of self or other blame, out of ‘we-they’ analyses and elevated to public discussion within the educational community of the campus. Here is a good opportunity to involve the larger community, especially K-12 educators, parents and students, with the campus community in these conversations. New alliances can be forged by bringing together several groups composed of mixed campus and community constituencies to address the question ‘What's wrong with education today, specific to our town and campus?’

We would expect that an inventory of educational concerns, constructed by faculty, staff, students, alumni, and administrators, will include most of the following interrelated issues:

• Public misperceptions and lack of public confidence in education and educators. Many items fall into this category, all having to do with accountability. Included here are questions about faculty workloads and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• Part OneTheoretical Dimensions
• Part Two Applications: Building Educational Communities for Leadership and Social Responsibility
• References
• Index