Abstract:

Researchers tracing its history, have identified shifts in the focus of academic development (AD) work over the years, from a focus on student learning referred to as “academic support”, to a focus on teaching and staff development referred to as “academic development”, to a more systemic focus on issues such as curriculum renewal referred to as “institutional development”. As the AD field has grown, there appears to be a lack of focus on those providing leadership to the academic project at universities.

To address this lacuna, a short course on the Scholarship of Educational Leadership (SoEL) was designed and offered to senior staff members at Stellenbosch University (South Africa), who had been identified as providing leadership in the area of Teaching-Learning-Assessment (TLA) in their respective environments. The short course took a broad view of educational leadership as being a disposition, as being distributed and including aspects of influence, change and innovation in the TLA space. Engaging in critical reflection and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) were included as important learning opportunities in the short course.

A qualitative study aiming to answer the research question: What are the enabling and constraining factors underpinning the practice of educational leadership (EL) across ten sites of practice at Stellenbosch University, was undertaken. The research involved case study methodologies (Yin, 2018), comprising ten individual cases from different sites across the university, as well as a composite case study drawn from across the ten individual cases. The participants were the ten participants who had completed the first iteration of the SoEL short course. A focus group interview as well as document analysis of participants' assignments provided the data for the research. Ethical clearance and informed consent were obtained before the project commenced.

The analysis of the data pointed to the inter-relationships and tensions across the various enabling and constraining factors identified as influencing the practice of EL in different contexts. The following six themes namely Personal Agency; Relationality; Positional Leadership; Scholarship and Scholarliness; Professional Learning; and Contextual Intelligence, were identified from the data of this study as underpinning the leadership of TLA at Stellenbosch University, and could provide a potential framework or pathway through a curriculum for developing EL and those involved in it. Such a framework could inform the design, development and implementation of curricula for professional learning opportunities, such as the SoEL initiative, for building both the capacity of those who will be providing EL in future and potentially the ‘fifth scholarship’ (Kenny, 2009) of ‘Professional Educational Leadership.’

Acknowledgements:
Prof Cecilia Jacobs who was instrumental in the design and development of the inaugural SoEL short course. The first cohort of SoEL participants for availing themselves to participate in this research project.

References:
[1] Kenny, J. (2009). Boyer's scholarships and effective education: defining the 'Fifth Scholarship'. AARE 2008 International Education Research Conference. Brisbane, 30 Nov - 4 Dec: 1-11.
[2] Yin, R.K. (2018). Case study research and applications: Design and methods. (Sixth Edition). Sage: Los Angeles.

Keywords:

Educational leadership, academic development, teaching-learning-assessment, contextual intelligence, SoTL.