Address to the Conference on Leadership, Management and Governance in diverse and complex contexts towards quality education: (13 – 15 April 2015, Potchefstroom Campus, NWU)
Diversity and the quality of education leadership: why difference still makes a difference.
Robert J. Balfour, Dean of Education Sciences, North-West University
Introductory remarks
Good morning ladies and gentlemen, honoured guests of the North-West University, Prof Fika Janse van Rensburg, our Vice Rector: Research and Planning on the Potchefstroom Campus, Dr Itumaleng Molale, the Head of Department of the North West Department of Education and Sports Development who will also provide the annual Deans Prestige Lecture tonight, Directors of the Faculty, Professors Kobus Mentz, JP Rossouw, Elsa Mentz, and Drs Herman van Vuuren and Neal Petersen, colleagues from universities in South Africa, Rhodes University, the University of Pretoria, Central University of Technology, the University of the Witwatersrand, University of Johannesburg, and Tshwane University of Technology. A special word also to colleagues from universities beyond South Africa, the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe, from the USA, Cicero-Matteson University in Illinois, and Teachers College, Columbia in New York, from the United Kingdom, colleagues from the Universities of Leicester and Lincoln respectively, colleagues from the Open University of Cyprus as well as officials from the Cyprus Ministry of Education, colleagues from the University of Oslo in Norway, Sri Matharam Viharaya in Sri Lanka, and from the University of Teacher Education in Central Switzerland.
Internal to South Africa and the North West I welcome warmly our valued colleagues from our sister Faculties of the NWU at the Vaal and Mafeking campuses, officials, principals and leaders from the Department of Basic Education in North West, Limpopo and Gauteng Provinces, Union officials and leaders from Naptosa, SADTU and SAOU.At the outset I wish to acknowledge Professor Jan Heystek who together with a team of colleagues from the Education and leadership subject group helped to organise this event and I wish to thank Ms Saartjie Venter from the Faculty of Education Research Administration, who has also been assisted by a range of administrators and students from the Faculty with regards to organising this event. Each year around April the Faculty hosts a major conference on a special theme identified by colleagues as of timely interest in terms of national and international debates associated with education scholarship. In 2014 we hosted a conference commemorating 20 years of the South African Constitution and the Brown v Board of EducationCase in the US Supreme Court. In 2013 we hosted a national conference on Self-Directed Learning in higher education as well as schooling, and in 2012 a conference on Human Rights, Religion and Diversity in Education. These events enrich the intellectual life of the North West University and Province, and deliberate on themes pressing to the nature and quality of education provision (both its scholarship as well as teaching and learning). The theme of diversity of experience and identity, is prevalent in every year. This is not accidental, but arises rather out of the clarity shared among academics here about the vision and mission of the NWU to value and cherish the possibilities and opportunities offered by transformation. In terms of all these backgrounds, places and colours what a diverse group we are, and so it is not coincidental that diversity is reflected also in the 2015 Conference title.
A little about the Faculty of Education Sciences at NWU: the Faculty is second only to UNISA, the most prominent provider of teacher education in South Africa. With some 26000 students who are either current officials, or teachers, or principals in schools, approximately 2400 student-teachers in our Bachelors programmes, and some 1500 postgraduate students, the Faculty at NWU boasts the best throughput rates in South Africa, an excellent research profile and a history of teacher education since the early 1900s. Simply put, this is the Faculty of Choice in South Africa for professionals in the system, as well as young people entering education. In my period of Office, the Faculty has shifted direction of become more research led in terms of teacher education and in 2014 more than attained its goals of realising one output unit per academic member of staff. With 132 academics, and almost 60 administrators the Faculty is a vibrant, diverse and attractive academic community in South Africa, and through the NWU Unit for Open and Distance Learning, we reach teachers and students throughout South Africa and indeed beyond, to the Southern African Development Community and region. North West Province, surprisingly to those of you who are foreign to it, is always among the top three Provinces in South Africa in terms of school performance, this despite not having to hand either Table Mountain in the Western Cape, or the metropolitan chic of bustling Gauteng! How does one explain this deep and long-standing tradition of excellence in teaching and teacher education? It is a study begging yet to be undertaken.
It feels strange midst activities of the year to date to be among a gathering of academics in whose company I stand in aweas a relative new-comer to the scholarship on education leadership. Although I have spent most of my career in academic administration, it is really since coming to North West University that the scholarship concerning leadership in education has become both a focus and presence in my intellectual life. In part, this focus is deliberate, NWU being one of the few institutions in the development of the quality of leadership in the academy is an explicit focus for university managers and leaders. In the last two years almost all academic and administrative leaders of the University has been enrolled with a company named Thinking Fusion in a five month of leadership training course, in which exposure to both the scholarship associated with leadership in systems. This deliberate focus also compelled a reflection on my own learning about leadership, overtly as well as covertly.
This morning I wish to focus quite narrowly on the link between diversity and the quality of education leadership, by way of some opening remarks. If it matters who we are, or what we have become, then surely an undeniable fact of leadership in education is that difference ‘counts’. Whether we see such difference in terms of experience, or youth, gender, or sexuality, class or race, the fact is that these variables still make a difference to both the experience of education, as well as the practice and scholarship of education. Who we areas leaders, scholars, teachers, or students also affects the quality and inclusivity of our leadership, and ultimately justifies why we matter as leaders in the world.
The South African Constitution (1996) recognises historical and structural inequalities pertaining to groups “based on perceived or ‘real’ differences” (De Vos, p.185). Law thus has an important role to play “in reordering ... power relations in ways which strive to ensure that all individuals are treated as if they have the same moral worth” (De Vos, p.185). Rancière argues that “… the rights of (people) and of the citizen are the rights of those who make them a reality. They were won through democratic action and are... guaranteed through such action” (2006, p.74). Ndashe (2010, p.6) echoes this statement to suggest that South Africans (referring particularly to sexual minorities) must engage in ‘identity assertion’ to realise constitutional provisions in relation to still prejudicial legislation regulating rights, responsibilities and associated processes.Arising from the above, I make four points about leadership education and leadership in education.
First, rights to equal participation in education, or indeed even to equal consideration before the law, whilst seemingly secured in the Constitution(1996), do not guarantee acceptance. Thus the difference between an aspirational democracy, and the experience of acceptance having still to be won, suggests that the possibilities for women, disabled people, or gay people to be viewed as role-models, let alone credible leaders in our governance structures, or as teachers or leaders of our schools, remain problematic. Second, in view of the role of universities to prepare leaders, it is evident that there is an urgent need to review the scholarship of education leadership as regards the role of diversity as key to the expression, conceptualisation, practice of and reflection on, leadership. Simply put, we need to re-imagine leadership-transformation to make specific reference to the development for the inclusion of more women, more sexual minorities, and more persons from disabled groups. Leaders need to be visibly diverse in order for that re-imagination to occur. Third, we ought to acknowledge that the experience of misrecognition or invisibility of minority groups, makes possible the continued marginalisation and erasure of groups who do not fit the norm of a leadership that is stereotypically characterised as abled, male and middle class. Fourth, there can be no useful debates about diversity in leadership unless the leaders around the tables shift from speaking about diversity, to allowing a greater representation of diversity in leadership for that discussion to occur. It simply not good enough to note the absence of women in leadership, the erasure of people who identify as gay, the marginalisation of differently abled people – we have actually to change what we consider effective leadership to be, and to do that we need you in education leadership research to make contributions as regards the scholarship not of deficit, but of affordances and value.
South African universities should not be in the business uncritically preparing curricula that privilege men, or of preparing principals for middle class schools only, or teachers for heterosexual or able children only; we ought to be in the business of developing leaders and teachers for everyone; as people who are aware and able to include and value others. There are, of course, histories to explain the gaps in existing scholarship.
Contested contexts in relation to diversity in higher education
There has been much work about the role of women in leadership, and in the last 20 years in South Africa the scholarship concerning race and leadership has also begun to grow. Today I want to talk about leadership and diversity. Between 1998-2006 several legal cases removed the criminalisation affecting same-sex desire (for example, the decriminalisation of sodomy in 1998, and the legalisation of same-sex unions in 2006) in South Africa. Despite progress, De Vos (2004) argues that “A mere extension of marriage rights to some same-sex couples will also not lead to a necessary and fundamental re-imagining of the nature of ... relations in our society” (p.182). De Vos’ point applies equally to other areas of society and, in this talk, is extended to the world of work where this re-imagining as regards the importance of diversity in leadership is overdue.
The question I want to ask is where is the scholarship on what diversity (gender, sexuality, race, indigenous knowledge systems) brings to change the leadership in, and of education,in South Africa or, indeed, the world?
Three points pertain to the question. First, the struggles in South Africa to ‘assert’ gay identity to enable the individuation for gay people, suggests that acceptance is neither unproblematic, nor cause for (legal or other) restitution (for example, employment equity). The Employment Equity Act (EEA) 55 of 1998 defines 'designated groups' as black people, women and people with disabilities. Thus, whilst explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, no further provision concerning the status of gay people as a group, is made. Few seem to have celebrated gay rights as part of “the world we have won” (Weeks, 2007) in the name of non-sexism, non-racism, freedom and equality. This affirms the relative insignificance, indeed invisibility, broadly speaking of gay people as a disadvantaged group. This group, despite colour or gender differences, has experienced (and continues to experience) violence, and lack of protection in a largely heterosexual and heterosexist state. Appiah argues that the need for such special measures to promote and protect minority groups arises from the fact that the simple right to human dignity is not sufficient protection in a State where a group or individual might still be attacked on the basis of not conforming, amongst others, to a heteronormative ideal (2005, p.109). Where identity cannot be considered as chosen (black people do not choose to be black, gay people do not choose their desires), and where the consequences of such identities are severe, rights and protection cannot be assumed.
Invisibility of minority groups as part of the transformation of South Africa occurs also because of a lack of education and leadership concerning sexuality or ‘gender’ in schools. For example, a handbook, Issues on gender in schools (DoE, 2002), aims to equip teachers to deal with issues concerning ‘gender’, but in fact deals narrowly and exclusively with issues concerning women as the subject of a range of discriminatory social practices. In the absence of a genuinely inclusive approach to education, ignorance is aided and reinforced. The Soudien Report (2012) makes passing reference to discrimination against gay people on South African campuses, only because this minority grouping is rendered largely invisible in the ‘big’ narrative concerning race transformation in South Africa. Why? Perhaps difference is still a painful and problematic concept in leadership in education? As much is acknowledged in the Soudien (2008) Report which confirms that discrimination against women and gay persons exists and is silenced:
However, although sexism has been raised in ...interactions with institutional constituencies in relation to employment equity, with a few exceptions there has been a deafening silence on sexual harassment in general... The silence... does not mean that the problem does not exist... it is clear that sexual harassment, of women and gays and lesbians, is rife (Soudien et al, 2008, p.95).
Second, and in relation to the above, being a woman or part of a sexual minority group in leadership is rare, but also risky because, in relation to sexual orientation, for example,it is not considered generally as a necessary modification to heterosexist perspectives on role-modelling in which credible leaders can also be accepted as gay, or a woman, or a black and gay woman.[i]Universities and schools are microcosms of society, albeit privileged ones, and reflect social norms and values which in themselves can be exclusionary. In hierarchical organisations the interface between power, work and leadership is complex. Unsurprisingly gender, sexuality and identity are important, though uncomfortable factors in the exercise of leadership (well-documented in many studies on women in leadership).
Third, higher education makes few other provisions even for spaces, or for formal representationof diverse groups in leadership structures that are considered safe for women or minority groups. The choices for such people seem binary: fight or flight;fit-in(and forgive the language) or f--- off. If leadership in education does not research the contribution that diversity makes to leadership, or influence policies that make provision for minority groups as subordinated, and historically disadvantaged, then it is unsurprising that such groups are discriminated against visibly and invisibly by institutions (staff and students alike). In such contexts where there is no education for diversity, there is unsurprisingly, no diversity in the leadership either.
South Africa is policy rich as regards the promotion historically disadvantaged groups. But, is policy without education enough? Can we trust a mostly male, mostly white or mostly black, or most heterosexual and abled leadership to consider and promote diversity even when explicit policy provision exists? If we consider the last 20 years of democracy, then it is clear that South Africa’s education and higher education sectors have produced few women leaders as professors, let alone in management or leadership roles. Gay people are almost invisible, disabled persons absent. Simply put, more needs to be done concerning the quality of education received in relation to race and gender, and the quality of teacher education relating to this.
The gaps arealso not an accident. An extensive international scholarship exists concerning the conflict that arises even within (heteronormative) higher education institutions between men and women. Such work draws upon Ahmed’s (2010) theory on happiness and Berlant’s (2011) theory of cruel optimism (leadership is a normative fantasy which can be a bad desire – for example an ambitious male might be regarded as forceful, but an ambitious female as emasculating) and concludes that women rarely get identified or supported in leadership. Morley, for example, asks why has gender escaped attention in the academy? Do cultural scripts for leaders collide with gender performances? Citing Shackleton et al.’s (2006) literature review on women in leadership, Morley argues that there is an essentialised debate (women have better skills, better people intelligence etc) about women which confirms negative stereotyping. Overall the literature “blames the gap” (by bemoaning it), and advocates that more women need to be seen figuring in existing structures without questioning the patriarchal power imbued in these structures (Morley, 2012). Barad (2007) argues that differences are made and re-made depending on the relationship between observer and observed. Leaders are made via the politics of difference and where the norm as regards ‘effective leadership’ might be regarded as masculine, women typically have to fit in, or drop out of that patriarchal leadership expectation.