Janus or Judas Leadership and professionalism in the age of neoliberalism

1
Janus or Judas? Leadership and professionalism
in the age of neo-liberalism

• Professor David James
• University of the West of England, Bristol

2
What will I do?

• Introduce Janus and Judas as metaphors
• Offer definitions and distinctions and some
  thoughts about relationships between concepts,
  including leadership, management and
  professionalism
• Describe neo-liberalism and its importance for
  education and leadership
• Argue that being two-faced can be a helpful
  attribute for leaders in difficult circumstances,
  with positive practical implications
• Argue that this need not compromise their
  integrity.

3
Who was Janus?

• A Roman god. There were many Roman gods and they
  were an important part of everyday life
• Janus was god of doors. A house is only as
  strong as its doors.
• Janus has two faces. One looks in (or back), one
  looks out (or forward).
• Janus gave us the name January the month that
  looks forward to a new year

4
Who was Judas?

• One of the twelve disciples. There are many
  stories, but the most well known is that Judas
  Iscariot betrayed Jesus by identifying him to
  Roman soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane,
  taking 30 pieces of silver for doing so
• Religious scholars differ on whether it is fair
  to continue to promote this story and some
  argue that Judas was acting on instructions from
  Jesus himself, who by then needed to transcend
  his earthly body

5
Leadership and management

• The terms refer to quite different activities,
  though both may be embodied in one person, role
  or even one action at the same time
• Leadership E.g. having a goal or vision and
  enthusing others
• Management E.g. getting the right resources in
  the right place at the right time
• Some writers would identify a series of different
  styles or approaches for both terms

6
Some possible leadership styles

• Coercive you must do this now!
• Pace-setting this is the way to do it
• Authoritative this is where we are going and
  why
• Coaching how can I support your learning?
• Affiliative its important we all get on
• Democratic what do you think about this? (NAHT,
  2001)
• Transformational leadership how can I build a
  unified common interest? (Gunter, 2001)
• Distributed leadership how can I get other
  people to lead on matters that interest them

7
Varieties of management?

• Autocratic, democratic, consultative a
  common distinction between styles that it is
  often suggested managers could adopt to fit
  their personality or the needs of the
  organisation
• Directing, supporting, coaching, delegating
  (Blanchard)
• Large overlap with concepts of leadership in this
  how to do it literature on management

8
What is managerialism?

• It is not management or leadership as such
• Managerialism is underpinned by an ideology
  which assumes that all aspects of organisational
  life can and should be controlled. In other
  words, that ambiguity can and should be radically
  reduced or eliminated (Wallace and Hoyle, 2005,
  p.9). Wallace and Hoyle also argue that, by
  virtue of having backed a managerialist means to
  realising reform after reform, policy-makers
  have apparently failed to comprehend the nature
  of professional practice (p.10).

9
Competing definitions of professional

• The adjective/noun distinction - being
  professional versus being a professional
• Everyday meanings including doing a good job
  and even simply being paid,non-amateur
• Traditional - functionalist definitions via
  attributes like training, altruism, code of
  practice
• Critical - A strategy to maximise rewards for a
  specific occupational group, or an ideology
• Romantic or wishful including sloppy uses of
  the concept community of practice
• Research-based - showing intensification,
  deskilling and de-professionalisation or
  re-professionalisation

10
Recent research on learning cultures in England
suggests

• A perceived and unwelcome decline in professional
  autonomy among teachers
• A clash between professional values and the
  requirements of targets, audit, inspection,
  performance management and funding ecologies
  of practice versus economies of performance
  (Stronach)
• Mediation, strategic compliance, principled
  infidelity
• A policy silence and lack of discussion (still
  less, any agreement) about what learning is or
  should be (Coffield, 2008)

11
Globalisation or neo-liberalism?

• Two definitions of globalisation
• Ruud Lubbers, a Dutch academic, defines
  globalisation as a process in which geographic
  distance becomes a factor of diminishing
  importance in the establishment and maintenance
  of cross border economic, political and
  socio-cultural relations. 
• People around the globe are more connected to
  each other than ever before. Information and
  money flow more quickly than ever. Goods and
  services produced in one part of the world are
  increasingly available in all parts of the world.
  International travel is more frequent.
  International communication is commonplace.

12
Are we in an age of neo-liberalism?

• A trans-national pressure to release economic
  activity from state regulation? (Olssen, 2004)
• Something that puts into question all collective
  structures capable of obstructing the logic of
  the pure market (Tabb, 2002)
• Assumption that economic competitiveness and
  social inclusion are two sides of the same coin
  (OLeary, 2008)
• The faith in league tables is not just a specific
  national obsession, but an example of a more
  widespread structure and belief-system

13
Neo-liberalism and education

• Commodification
• Marketisation
• Consumerism
• Choice
• Neo-liberalism fosters the illusion that the
  market is somehow the underlying natural human
  condition(cf. Michael Apple)

14
Leadership as mediation

• Leadership as the capacity to look more than one
  way and to respond in more than one way?
• Importance of sharing leadership practice between
  leaders in different institutions
• Principled infidelity as a leader
• Avoiding the reduction of everything to
  individual qualities or characteristics and
  recognising that one works in a field, a social
  space

15
Field awareness

• field is not like a field of wheat, cows or
  sheep
• More akin to a magnetic field, or force-field
• Field awareness is a shift in perception parallel
  to when we move from Newtons to Einsteins
  physics
• It takes us away from seeing individuals as fixed
  in terms of attitude, role, character, interest,
  and towards a cultural view
• It draws attention to the relational aspects of
  the setting e.g. how each position in it helps
  to maintain the othersand how this could be
  disturbed for good or bad ends.

16
Leadership as mediation (2)

• How does the leader respond to objectionable
  external requirements?
• Pass them down without apology and allow them to
  reshape the culture?
• Pass them down with an apology but still allow
  them to reshape the culture?
• Reinterpret them so that the established shared
  values can engage with them and modify them,
  thereby consolidating the culture?
• Refuse to engage with them unless the response
  can be one that staff internally can collectively
  support?
• Where are you on this continuum?

17
Conclusions (1)

• Good educational leaders are in a difficult
  position because they are likely to have
  simultaneous allegiance to conflicting sets of
  expectations and values from different
  stakeholders
• Trying to reconcile these conflicts is probably a
  waste of energy. Instead, the good leader can
  find a way to meet the different expectations
  sufficiently whilst remaining true (enough) to
  other stakeholders
• This will sometimes involve challenges upwards,
  and such challenges are much more effective if
  they are shared across leaders

18
Conclusions (2)

• If the leader gives ultimate pride of place to
  the needs and interests of learners, then she/he
  can more easily do battle with the other
  stakeholders when necessary, including the most
  powerful. This is a source of moral authority
• Good leaders are like Janus rather than Judas