A genuine career or impossible heroism? Experiencing the role of the Head of School: an Australian case study

Abstract

Studies since the mid-1980s suggest that university heads of schools experience the role as a series of tensions between enlightenment and enterprise-building agendas. It is apparent that the headship requires skills in management and capacities in leadership not necessarily furnished via typical academic pathways. In such light, the present investigation asks could the headship be different, given evidence that scholarly productivity and professional satisfaction are often compromised, even where heads value the role and demonstrate effective leadership? My aim is to contribute to the study of leadership and management in higher education; interpret discourses generated about the experience of the headship; analyse how the role is constituted and bounded; and explore how it might be transformed. Focusing on understandings of the headship at the University of Tasmania, Australia, the work is contextualised to experiences elsewhere, and should have salience across the sector.

Keywords:

• headship
• leadership
• management
• professional satisfaction
• scholarship
• transformation

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on the author's project report, prepared while studying in the LH Martin Institute's Master of Tertiary Education Management (MTEM) program in 2010.

I wish to acknowledge Dr Geoff Sharrock, Associate Professor Leo Goedegebuure and Jon File (CHEPS, University of Twente); to you all – and to those you gathered around us – many thanks for your efforts over 2009–10. Geoff supervised this project sympathetically (and no shortcomings therein should be attributed to him). I would also like to express thanks to my fellow inaugural MTEM students – our class of 2009/10 – from whom I have gained much camaraderie and many insights. I now have a vocabulary, conceptual framework and professional network of significant worth, which I will value into the long term. Staff from the LH Martin Institute at The University of Melbourne have looked after us so well; sincere thanks. Tim Mattingsbrooke, I was grateful for your clear and timely assistance with ethics.

At the University of Tasmania my thanks go to Professor David Rich, Deputy Vice Chancellor and Academic Provost, who has provided much support to me in undertaking these studies. I warmly acknowledge intellectual debt to participants in this work, who gave most willingly of their time. Thanks, also, to members of the Heads Reference Group for their stewardship. Tracy Payne, Administrative Assistant, School of Geography and Environmental Studies; your transcribing, as ever, was speedy and accurate. Conversations about translating research to policy with Brigid Freeman, Manager, Policy and Delegations, and Pip Rose, Senior Workplace Relations Officer, have been most clarifying. Associate Professor Frances Martin, Chair of Human Ethics, thanks for speedy assistance with ethics at our end.

To Jill Currey, the University of Tasmania's Manager of Organisational Learning, my debts are significant. Jill established the Leadership Development for Women program some years ago and, alongside other initiatives championed by this singularly dedicated person, it inspired me to traverse several interrelated and deeply self-reflective sojourns of which enrolment in the Master of Tertiary Education Management has been key. Jill's collegial efforts and support in this research project are noteworthy and much appreciated.