Educational leadership in collegial decision-making? How course leaders and teachers participate and influence decisions in planning meetings
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/qs.v9i3.149705Keywords:
Educational leadership, leadership-in-interaction, joint decision-making, epistemic, deontic, emotionAbstract
Although decision-making is central to development and change in higher education, few studies unpack how leadership is enacted and negotiated in situ in collegial planning tasks where decisions are at stake. This article addresses this gap in educational leadership by examining influencing work in decision-making processes at a Swedish university. It explores educational leadership in course-planning meetings with course leaders and teachers. The empirical material consists of video recordings of meetings from two teams with challenging conditions: not only was the data recorded during the pandemic, but the teams also had a high teacher turnover. Drawing on the tradition of leadership-in-interaction, this article explores educational leadership in meeting interaction by illustrating and contrasting how course supervisors and teachers participate in and influence decision-making on pedagogic and didactic designs.
Analyses of empirical episodes show how team members struggle to find common ground in the past and formulate decision proposals for educational change in backward- and forward-looking cycles. A key finding is how the trajectory of decision-making processes differs between the studied teams. The article discusses high teacher mobility as an organizational constraint that limits the collective competence of course teams, providing problematic conditions for smooth decision-making and, thus, educational change and leadership. This constraint places a heavy burden on course leaders to navigate ambiguities of knowledge, power, and emotion in interaction that highlight underlying assumptions about the course leader’s role as a collegial leader without managerial decision-making power.
References
Apkarian, N., & Rasmussen, C. (2021). Instructional leadership structures across five university departments. Higher Education, 81(4), 865–887. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00583-6
Asmuss, B., & Svennevig, J. (2009). Meeting talk: An introduction. Journal of Business Communication, 46(1), 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021943608326761
Barnes, R. (2007). Formulations and the facilitation of common agreement in meetings talk. Text & Talk - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse Communication Studies, 27(3), 273–296. https://doi.org/10.1515/TEXT.2007.011
Bennerstedt, U., & Svärdemo Åberg, E. (2022). Lärarrörlighetens betydelse vid digital omställning—En studie av hur arbetslag hanterar didaktiska utmaningar. In S. Lundmark & J. Kontio (Eds.), Digitala didaktiska dilemman (Vol. 2022, pp. 254–285).
Bertils, K., & Magnusson, S. (2019). Att koka ihop ett beslut: En multimodal interaktionsanalys av gemensamt beslutsfattande i vardagen. Språk och stil, NF 29. https://doi.org/10.33063/diva-399804
Bryman, A. (2007). Effective leadership in higher education: A literature review. Studies in Higher Education, 32(6), 693–710. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070701685114
Bryman, A., & Lilley, S. (2009). Leadership researchers on leadership in higher education. Leadership, 5(3), 331–346. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715009337764
Clifton, J. (2009). Beyond taxonomies of influence: “Doing” influence and making decisions in management team meetings. Journal of Business Communication, 46(1), 57–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021943608325749
Clifton, J. (2019). Using conversation analysis for organisational research: A case study of leadership-in-action. Communication Research and Practice, 5(4), 342–357. https://doi.org/10.1080/22041451.2019.1629756
Clifton, J., Larsson, M., & Schnurr, S. (2020). Leadership in interaction. An introduction to the Special Issue. Leadership, 16(5), 511–521. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715020954790
Elo, J., & Uljens, M. (2022). Theorising pedagogical dimensions of higher education leadership-a non-affirmative approach. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00890-0
Eriksson-Zetterquist, U., & Sahlin, K. (2023). Introduction: Revitalizing collegiality: Restoring faculty authority in universities. In K. Sahlin & U. Eriksson-Zetterquist (Eds.), Research in the Sociology of Organizations (pp. 1–26). Emerald Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20230000087001
Fox, S., & Comeau-Vallée, M. (2020). The negotiation of sharing leadership in the context of professional hierarchy: Interactions on interprofessional teams. Leadership, 16(5), 568–591. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715020917817
Fullan, M. (2000). Educational leadership for the twenty-first century: Breaking the bonds of dependency. I The Josseu-Bass on Educational Leadership (s. 156–163). Jossey-Bass.
Gjerde, S., & Alvesson, M. (2020). Sandwiched: Exploring role and identity of middle managers in the genuine middle. Human Relations, 73(1), 124–151. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718823243
Gregory Marshall, S. (2012). Educational middle change leadership in New Zealand: The meat in the sandwich. International Journal of Educational Management, 26(6), 502–528. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513541211251361
Have, P. ten. (2007). Doing conversation analysis (Second edition). SAGE Publications
Ltd. Heritage, J. (2013). Action formation and its epistemic (and other) backgrounds. Discourse Studies, 15(5), 551–578. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445613501449
Heritage, J., & Raymond, G. (2005). The terms of agreement: Indexing epistemic authority and subordination in talk-in-Interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68(1), 15–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/019027250506800103
Heritage, J., & Watson, R. (1979). Formulations as conversational objects. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 123–162). Irvington Press.
Huisman, M. (2001). Decision-making in meetings as talk-in-Interaction. International Studies of Management & Organization, 31(3), 69–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/00208825.2001.11656821
Jarvis, A. (2021). Untangling collegiality and distributed leadership: Equality versus utility. A perspective piece. Management in Education (Sage Publications, Ltd.), 1. https://doi.org/10.1177/08920206211057980
Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. H. Lerner (Ed.), Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (Vol. 125, pp. 13–31). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.125.02jef
Kangasharju, H., & Nikko, T. (2009). Emotions in organizations: Joint laughter in workplace meetings. Journal of Business Communication, 46(1), 100–119. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021943608325750
Kezar, A. J. (2018). How colleges change: Understanding, leading, and enacting change (2nd edition). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Kligyte, G. (2021). The logics of collegial practices: Australian and New Zealand/Aotearoa perspectives. Higher Education, 81(4), 843–864. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00580-9
Kligyte, G. (2023). Collegiality as collective affect: Who carries the burden of the labour of attunement? Higher Education Research & Development, 42(7), 1670–1683. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2023.2183940
Kligyte, G., & Barrie, S. (2014). Collegiality: Leading us into fantasy – the paradoxical resilience of collegiality in academic leadership. Higher Education Research & Development, 33(1), 157–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2013.864613
Larsson, M., & Meier, F. (2023). Leadership in interaction. In D. Schedlitzki, M. Larsson, B. Carroll, M. Bligh, & O. Epitropaki (Eds.), Sage handbook of leadership (pp. 28–39). Sage. Liu, B. F., Shi, D., Lim, J. R., Islam, K., Edwards, A. L., & Seeger, M. (2022). When
crises hit home: How U.S. higher education leaders navigate values during uncertain times. Journal of Business Ethics, 179(2), 353–368. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04820-5
Magnusson, S. (2022). Boosting young citizens’ deontic status: Interactional allocation of rights-to-decide in participatory democracy meetings (Vol. 2022). PhD dissertation, Södertörns högskola. https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-49856
Mårtensson, K., & Roxå, T. (2016). Leadership at a local level – Enhancing educational development. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 44(2), 247–262. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143214549977
McGrath, C., Barman, L., Stenfors-Hayes, T., Roxå, T., Silén, C., & Bolander Laksov, K. (2016). The ebb and flow of educational change: Change agents as negotiators of change. Teaching & Learning Inquiry: The ISSOTL Journal, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.4.2.9
McGrath, C., Roxå, T., & Bolander Laksov, K. (2019). Change in a culture of collegiality and consensus-seeking: A double-edged sword. Higher Education Research & Development, 38(5), 1001–1014. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1603203
Minett-Smith, C., & Davis, C. (2020). Widening the discourse on team-teaching in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 25(5), 579–594. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2019.1577814
O’Connor, P., Carvalho, T., & White, K. (2014). The experiences of senior positional leaders in Australian, Irish and Portuguese universities: Universal or contingent? Higher Education Research and Development, 33(1), 5–18.
Raclaw, J., & Ford, C. E. (2015). Meetings as interactional achievements: A conversation analytic perspective. In J. A. Allen, N. Lehmann-Willenbrock, & S. G. Rogelberg (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Meeting Science (1st ed., pp. 247–276). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107589735.012
Rapanta, C., Botturi, L., Goodyear, P., Guàrdia, L., & Koole, M. (2020). Online university teaching during and after the Covid-19 crisis: Refocusing teacher presence and learning activity. Postdigital Science and Education, 2(3), 923–945. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00155-y
Skorobohacz, C., Billot, J., Murray, S., & Khong, L. (2016). Metaphors as expressions of followers’ experiences with academic leadership. Higher Education Research & Development, 35(5), 1053–1067. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2016.1138451
Stevanovic, M. (2012). Establishing joint decisions in a dyad. Discourse Studies, 14(6), 779–803.
Stevanovic, M., & Peräkylä, A. (2012). Deontic authority in interaction: The right to announce, propose, and decide. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 45(3), 297–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2012.699260
Stevanovic, M., & Peräkylä, A. (2014). Three orders in the organization of human action: On the interface between knowledge, power, and emotion in interaction and social relations. Language in Society, 43(2), 185–207. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404514000037
Stevanovic, M., & Svennevig, J. (2015). Introduction: Epistemics and deontics in conversational directives. Journal of Pragmatics, 78, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.01.008
Stivers, T., Mondada, L., & Steensig, J. (2011). Knowledge, morality and affiliation in social interaction. In T. Stivers, L. Mondada, & J. Steensig (Eds.), The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation (1st ed., pp. 3–24). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511921674.002
Svennevig, J. (2011). Leadership style in managers’ feedback in meetings. I J. Angouri & M. Marra (Red.), Constructing Identities at Work (s. 17–39). Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230360051_2
Temple, P., Callender, C., Grove, L., & Kersh, N. (2016). Managing the student experience in English higher education: Differing responses to market pressures. London Review of Education, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.18546/LRE.14.1.05
Van De Mieroop, D. (2020). A deontic perspective on the collaborative, multimodal accomplishment of leadership. Leadership, 16(5), 592–619. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715019893824
Van Kruiningen, J. F. (2013). Educational design as conversation: A conversation analytical perspective on teacher dialogue. Teaching and Teacher Education, 29, 110–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2012.08.007
van Veggel, N., & Howlett, P. (2018). Course leadership in small specialist UK higher education—A review. International Journal of Educational Management, 32(7), 1174–1183.
Wåhlin-Jacobsen, C. D., & Abildgaard, J. S. (2020). Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches? Deontics and epistemics in discussions of health and well-being in participatory workplace settings. Discourse & Communication, 14(1), 44–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481319876768
Yielder, J., & Codling, A. (2004). Management and Leadership in the Contemporary University. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 26(3), 315–328. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080042000290177
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright belongs to the author and Qualitative Studies
