{"id":827,"date":"2011-08-11T11:50:12","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T10:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=827"},"modified":"2011-08-11T11:50:12","modified_gmt":"2011-08-11T10:50:12","slug":"turning-around-leadership-for-sustainability-in-higher-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2011\/08\/11\/turning-around-leadership-for-sustainability-in-higher-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning around leadership for sustainability in higher education"},"content":{"rendered":"

Turnaround Leadership for Sustainability in Higher Education<\/em> is a project<\/a> funded by the Australian Learning & Teaching Council which involves the \u00a0University of Western Sydney (Lead), the\u00a0Sustainable Futures Academy (Salzburg), the Australian National University, and the University of Gloucestershire.<\/p>\n

A brochure which provides a summary of the\u00a0context and intentions of\u00a0 the project\u00a0says:<\/p>\n

The Project Team is seeking contributors to this international study. If you are an effective university leader in ESD or know someone who is, please contact a member of the Project Team. Leaders could be a Vice-Chancellor or President, a Deputy Vice Chancellor or Pro Vice Chancellor or Exective (sic<\/em>) Director who has taken a lead in promoting or facilitating change towards Education for Sustainability.<\/p>\n

We are also keen to identify Directors of Sustainability, Heads of Schools and Student Leaders who have influenced how a University addresses Education for Sustainability.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I note here that it is only very senior staff (Brigadier and above, as it were) who lead change.\u00a0 Everyone else (junior officers and other ranks) can only \"influence\" it. \u00a0This is a distinction which I find very odd and one that seems to fly in the face of what one finds on the ground.\u00a0 Indeed, it seems to go out of its way to valorise senior staff-led change which offers a peculiarly top-down view of what universities are actually like.<\/p>\n

A distinction might be made between inspiring \/ stimulating change, and \u00a0managing \/ consolidating it. \u00a0 However, there is no mention of management at all, which is odd given that universities are stuffed of managers of all kinds (many of whom think, quite erroneously, that they are leaders). \u00a0For me, leadership is about co-creating and jointly realising a vision of something better, more appropriate \/ effective, etc, whereas management is often only about shuffling resources one way or another. \u00a0It is obvious that the project is about the former, but this is not clear.<\/p>\n

The project seems to imply that it is sensible (and helpful) to think of \u201can effective university leader in ESD\u201d as opposed to an effective leader who understands that it is crucial to focus on sustainability (and knows something of how to do it). \u00a0Further, it implies that there are capabilities (that can be identified) which mark out such leaders from those who are merely effective leaders in universities (ie, run of the mill effective leaders). \u00a0But is this really the case? \u00a0I have to say that I'm sceptical.<\/p>\n

Anyway, wouldn't the HE system as a whole (and societies at large) be much more effective if existing \"effective leaders\", everywhere, (together with their institutions) successfully addressed sustainability? \u00a0 I hope that is the vision that the project actually has. \u00a0But does it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turnaround Leadership for Sustainability in Higher Education is a project funded by the Australian Learning & Teaching Council which involves the \u00a0University of Western Sydney (Lead), the\u00a0Sustainable Futures Academy (Salzburg), the Australian National University, and the University of Gloucestershire. A...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}