Continuous professional learning in private higher education: Making a case for distributed leadership

Abstract

Literature on management of professional learning in South African private higher education (PHE) institutions is limited. This may be due to incentives for professional learning in private higher education not being highly revered. Our article reports on the findings of research conducted on four campuses of a South African private higher education provider, inquiring into broadening organisational leadership roles towards distributed leadership. Findings show that academic managers in PHE see the proper educational induction of academics as a contributing factor to professional and institutional cohesion. However, the role of academic managers in designing custom-made professional learning initiatives is pivotal. Our findings confirm that academic managers in PHE contexts need to spend considerable effort on strategising their campus programmes to empower academic leaders through distributed leadership and with agency to lead their teams. We suggest a course of action for enhancing continuous professional learning (CPL) for academic staff in PHE: Firstly, academic management positions should be filled with the most competent people; secondly, academic managers should be directly accountable for the quality of professional learning on their campuses; and thirdly, academic managers need increased agency to use resources such as monetary and other incentives to support their academic teams.

Education and New Developments 2020

“…Thus allowing new ideas to be generated and increasing the effort to achieve institutional effectiveness (Munir et al, 2019). In this sense, multiple authors recommend the incentive of this ability both in formal leaders especially in Faculty (see Butler, 2019;Cronje and Bitzer, 2019;Fam et al, 2019;Thornton, 2020 andToni andMoodly, 2019).…”

“…A considerable group of works focuses on learning and development programs implemented in educational institutions to encourage leadership in students, trough pedagogical projects as well as initiatives to encourage the development of this ability in academics. Here are studies carried out in countries such as the United States (Kearns, 2019), Canada (Corriveau, 2020), Australia (Butler, 2019), New Zealand (Thornton, 2020), Ukraine (Soroka et al, 2019), China ( Lin and Shek, 2019), South Africa (Cronje and Bitzer, 2019) and Spain (Pérez et al, 2019).…”

Bringing clarity to the leadership of teaching and learning in higher education: a systematic review

“…Third, leadership roles are in focus in two papers. Cronje and Bitzer (2019) are interested in broadening organisational leadership roles towards distributed leadership whereas Floyd and Preston (2018) study how the role of a leader is defined and positioned in the organisation. Fourth, developing the competencies and capacities of distributed leaders is studied by Beckmann (2017), Carbone et al (2017), and Sales et al (2017).…”

Liderazgo en instituciones de educación superior: Un análisis a través de Bibliometrix R

“…En definitiva, el liderazgo se considera una habilidad altamente necesaria para mantener la competitividad de las instituciones, ya que el rol del líder no solo se limita a administrar los procesos de implementación, sino que también se encarga de apoyar el desarrollo, gestionar el cambio y construir una cultura de calidad [7], lo que permite así generar nuevas ideas y aumentar el esfuerzo para el logro de la efectividad institucional [13]. En este sentido son múltiples los autores que recomiendan el incentivo de esta habilidad tanto en los líderes formales como en los académicos en general [9,14,15,16,17].…”

“…Una segunda línea de investigación aborda los programas de aprendizaje y desarrollo implementados en las instituciones de educación terciaria para incentivar el liderazgo en los estudiantes, así como en las iniciativas para fomentar el desarrollo de esta habilidad en los docentes. Aquí se encuentran estudios realizados en países como Estados Unidos [47,48,49,50,51,52], Canadá [53], Australia [9,54], Nueva Zelanda [16], Finlandia [55], Reino Unido [56], Suecia [57], Ucrania [58], China [59], Malasia [60], Sudáfrica [14], Emiratos Árabes [61] y España [62,63]. Igualmente, se encuentran iniciativas que cuentan con participación internacional (ejemplo [64]).…”