18.4: Leadership and Change
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The differences between leaders and managers: those who master the context and those who surrender to it (Bennis, 1989, p. 44).
If leadership is about shared vision in action, then that action is about change. The speed and complexity of change is increasing rapidly. What was once considered a linear and straightforward event (implementing change) is now more open-ended and complex. It is not enough to manage change, it is now important to lead change: “change is a requirement [italics original] for continued success, and competent change leadership is a most coveted skill” (Anderson & Ackerman-Anderson, 2001, p. 1). Change involves working with others—not simply mandating new actions or behaviours. Lambert (2002) describes the notion of leadership as the professional work of everyone in the organization, with the development of shared leadership dependent on participation, vision, inquiry, collaboration, and reflection on success.
When change is considered in the context of educational technologies, the Consortium for School Networking (2004) found that the quality of leadership was a primary indicator of whether technology funding was spent wisely or wasted, and that without meaningful leadership backed by supportive communities of practice, disparities in technology budgets increased. If building the leadership capacity of an organization is key to influencing change and adopting new educational technologies, then success will depend on the ability to build a community of leadership and organizational learning (Leithwood, 2005) centred on e-learning. Leadership “influences … the way instructors organise and conduct their instruction” (Mulford, Silins & Leithwood, 2004, p. 9) and is driven by the alignment of values and vision, and ability to “reflect in, on, and about action in each context” (Silins & Mulford, 2002, p. 5). That context is the digital learning environment created through the use of educational technologies, a place where traditional constraints and assumptions about learning and delivery of instruction shift.
Research on change describes how successful change takes place within a supportive community of practice that embraces pedagogical review (Fullan, 2001 & 2003), and that leadership is a key factor in the successful use of educational technologies (Creighton, 2003; Coleman, 2003; Hughes & Zachariah, 2001). Stated another way, to adopt educational technologies and implement e-learning programs, significant pedagogical and technological issues need to be considered and balanced against the purpose of education and training. Papert (1998) argues that if we confine our views of change to that which we already know or are familiar with, we could deprive ourselves of a new future. In other words, if we keep doing what we already know, we will keep getting what we already have. As technology continues to support rapid change in how information is processed, stored, and disseminated, Papert contends that the future could take us by surprise. As long as leaders confine the use of educational technologies to simply improving what is, little of significance can occur. Cuban (1996) describes this dilemma clearly as it relates to the implementation of educational technologies:
Techno-reformers, mostly public officials, corporate leaders, and other noneducators far removed from classrooms, deeply believe in the power of technology to transform schools into productive workplaces. This persistent dream of technology driving school and classroom changes has continually foundered in transforming teaching practices. (para. 2)