Ideologies in Educational Administration and Leadership

Eugenie Samier, Eugenie A. Samier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138958586
• eBook ISBN: 9781317339250
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Ideologies in Educational Administration and Leadership explores ideological dimensions of educational administration in a number of Western and Central European contexts as they influence or shape the understanding, analysis, and practice in the field covering a broad range of topics, such as ethics, governance, diversity, and power.

The first section, Philosophical and Theoretical Foundations, includes a range of sociological, political and linguistic approaches to examining ideology in an educational context. The second section, Ideologies of Research and Teaching, includes examinations of neoliberal and technological effects on research and teaching, as well as ideological shifts and challenges, in the West and in Eastern Europe. The last section, Contemporary and International Issues, includes critiques of social media, neoliberal impact on schooling, managerial leadership, university ideologies in Finland, the rationalisation of universities, and the impact of administrative ideologies on school systems.

The book will appeal to researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, academics, as well as post-graduates in educational administration theory, and related courses in the ethics and politics of education, educational leadership, and organisational studies.

Part I Philosophical and theoretical foundations

1 The ideology of skills and its implications for socially progressive learning in university co-operative education Student and administrator perspectives

Peter Milley

DOI: 10.4324/9781315661155-1

Since the 1980s, universities in Canada, as elsewhere, have been subject to neoliberal reforms aimed at annexing them to the economy (Hyslop-Margison and Leonard 2012). The contours of change have included marketisation, corporatisation, privatisation, and the privileging of knowledge, skills and credentials perceived to be needed in labour markets (Axelrod 2002; Buchbinder and Newson 1990; Côté and Allahar 2012). Critics have pointed out socially regressive effects on institutions and people (e.g., heightened inequality, distorting effects on knowledge production, threats to academic and democratic principles), but a narrative predominates in state and society that the reforms enhance individual, organisational and national competitiveness (Giroux 1999, 2014; Nussbaum 2010).

One institutional phenomenon that has quietly grown in tandem with this reform agenda is co-operative education (hereafter ‘co-op’). In co-op, students alternate periods of academic study with paid work experiences in appropriate fields (Canadian Association for Cooperative Education 2015a). More than 50 universities in Canada offer such programmes, with aggregate enrolment reaching 80,000 students as of 2013 (Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada 2015). Co-op is prominent in professional and technical programmes and has been integrated into disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social and natural sciences.

Co-op programmes are seen to improve the economic contribution of higher education by developing human capital and promoting efficient linkages between curricula and labour markets (Riddell 2008; Blackwell et al. 2001) that are no doubt important for actors in and around higher education. But they reveal how co-op is a solution to and embodiment of aspects of neoliberalism. Although socially critical scholars have devoted effort to unearthing the implications of such reforms in other areas of the academy (e.g., Polster 2000; Tudiver 1999; Turk 2014), co-op has not received attention (Milley and Kovinthan 2014).

This absence of critical scholarship may be explained by the fact that co-op programmes tend not to intersect with the professoriate. In many Canadian universities, co-op programmes are run by administrators where programmatic influences occur at micro-levels, shaping students’ academic choices, motivations and identities (Trede 2012). Co-op represents a bottom-up approach to reform.

This chapter offers a socially critical perspective on co-op, reporting on a sub-set of data from a study undertaken in the Canadian context that was framed with a conceptual lens developed from Jürgen Habermas’ (1984, 1989) critical theory. The study addressed two related questions: (1) How do co-op students negotiate and make meaning of the contemporary relationships between the sociocultural and economic purposes of higher education? (2) What are the social and educational implications of the answers to this first question that can inform policy and practice?

The findings presented here focus on skill development – or what others might call human capital development (Riddel 2008) – which emerged as a thematic concern for co-op students and administrators. Two cases are profiled to provide insights on the contradictions and power dynamics that existed for participants as they enacted, experienced and made sense of the sociocultural and economic dimensions of work-based learning in a neoliberal era.

The co-op/human capital connection

Some commentators have noted weaknesses with respect to how universities foster human capital, and co-op is seen to be one solution (Conference Board of Canada 2005). The official narrative on the advantages of co-op helps explain its appeal, speaking directly to the human capital agenda (e.g., co-op encourages students to develop employment-related skills and knowledge) (see Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 Summary of co-op benefits

Students	Employers	Institutions
Test skills and knowledge Get hands-on experience Gain competitive edge Earn money Explore career options Expand networks	Access a pool of human resources Reduce recruiting costs Vet future employees Benefit from fresh ideas Provide feedback on curricula Play a mentorship role	Increase enrolment Enrich the university community through work experience Prepare students for productive roles Enhance reputation Receive employer feedback on curricula

Source: Based on Canadian Association for Co-operative Education (2015b).

However, the sociocultural implications of co-op remain unaddressed in practice and unexamined in research (Milley and Kovinthan, 2014), and caveats to the human capital perspective also do not feature. Little attention has been paid, for example, to the hiring and management practices of co-op employers and how these affect opportunity structures and workplace learning, even though it is known that inequities exist in the distribution of opportunity and treatment of certain groups (e.g., women, aboriginal peoples, persons of colour) in Canadian workplaces and labour markets (Block and Galabuzi 2011; Krahn, Lowe and Hughes 2011). Critics also observe that the human capital approach focuses too much on developing the forces of production (e.g., technological skills) and fails to see how certain sociocultural phenomena, such as gendered or racialised social relations in labour markets and workplaces, delimit productivity (Kumar 2004). Some have used this observation to argue competencies associated with the social sciences, humanities and fine arts (what participants here called ‘soft’ or ‘people’ skills) have a role to play in the human capital equation because they can help address sociocultural issues that contribute to economic problems (Allard et al. 2000; Axelrod, Anisef and Lin 2001).

Given the connections between co-op and human capital development, and the criticisms levelled at the latter, the social relations that constitute and are sustained by participation in co-op deserve as much focus as the ways in which it contributes to the development of human capital.

Research design and methodology

The study from which the sub-set of data reported here was derived relied on a multiple case design (Stake 2006). Ten co-op students were recruited from three undergraduate programmes (Arts, Engineering, Computer Science) at a mid-sized Canadian university in an urban centre. These students became the central participants in the research, around which case studies were conducted. At least three semi-structured interviews were held with each of them over 8 to 12 month periods. Interviews were timed to correspond with the phases in a full cycle of co-op in each of the student’s programmes (i.e., during the academic semester and job search process preceding a work experience, during the co-op work experiences, and during a subsequent academic semester). Two focus groups took place with the students near the end of the study. Students also wrote reflective journals, submitting these along with various programme-related documents (e.g., résumés and covering letters, job descriptions, official reports from their work experiences). People (n = 16, including co-op employers, co-op administrators and professors) in the students’ milieus who had influences on them in their academic and co-op programmes were also recruited and interviewed at least once. Publicly available documents pertaining to the university and its co-op programmes were also collected and analysed.

Towards a socially critical lens: A Habermasian conceptual framework

Habermas (1979) theorised that social progress occurs in modern societies through two related learning processes (Outhwaite 1994). People learn to coordinate their social action in non-violent ways by interacting with a sense of reciprocity. Habermas (1984) called this process cultural rationalisation, a democratic form of human flourishing achieved through ‘communicative action’ (p. 285). At the same time, people also learn to participate in the politico-administrative-economic institutions needed to organise and sustain collective life. He called this process social modernisation, which is achieved through ‘strategic action’ (p. 285).

Communicative action exists to foster understanding and the purpose of strategic action is to pursue and attain goals. Figure 1.1 presents these modes of social action. Where mutual understanding exists, actors have reached a background consensus. Where there are agreements to be reached, actors may adopt manifest forms of strategic action to influence each other or rely on concealed actions to manipulate or deceive. Systematically distorted communication consists in false understandings or misleading self-understandings that stem from the unconscious repression of conflict. Analyses of such situations can offer insights into deep conflicts (Habermas 1984), revealing how actors are engaged in practices that are not in their best interests (Braaten 1991).

Systematically distorted communication is an important concept for the present study because co-op is often presented as a ‘win-win-win’ scenario for all actors (see Table 1.1), even though it features competing interests. For example, students and employers use various strategies and tactics in the labour market system as each strives to meet their individual needs and goals, while co-op administrators intervene through various informal and formal means to regulate the market and maximise collective results. The idea of systematic distortions provides a sensitising lens for looking at conflicts that may be unconsciously repressed in co-op, by whom, and in whose interests.

Figure 1.1Modes of communicative and strategic action (adapted from Habermas 1984: 333)

Strategic actions are necessary aspects of experience for Habermas (1984), but problems arise when they assume a large presence and are used inappropriately for the context. An overblown strategic orientation can lead to high levels of misunderstanding, inter- and intra-personal conflict, and instability (Habermas 1984, 2001), interfering with socially progressive learning processes. As an alternative, social actors can enter into ‘discourse’ (1984: 117), a special mode of communicative action. Discourse requires special contextual conditions (Bernstein 1995), conceptualised by Habermas (1989) as ideal speech situations. These conditions provide a conceptual means for actors to identify the deleterious or illegitimate use of strategic power. There are four, which include the following necessary conditions: (1) all those potentially affected by the discussion have an equal opportunity to speak; (2) each person involved is motivated to reach consensus and can overcome their strategic motivations; (3) each participant observes the norms of honesty and sincerity; and (4) no participant exercises or invokes role privileges.

Habermas (1987) and others (e.g., Barnett 1993; Campbell Williams and Gunatunge 2000; Lakeland 1993) have argued that university communities (in their best moments) reflect these conditions, concluding universities are sites of communicative action whose major role is to foster the ability of members to participate competently in discourse; and the strategic functions of universities, such as their contributions to the employment system, should be subordinated to this primary purpose (Habermas 1989).

Given that co-op connects university-based actors to the employment system, these Habermasian ideas encourage a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Editor’s introduction
• Ideologies that maintain and constrain—EUGENIE A. SAMIER
• PART I Philosophical and theoretical foundations
• PART II Ideologies of research and teaching
• PART III Contemporary and international issues
• Index