P9 The role of a program director in a transformative educational landscape
Background and purpose
Engineering programs face societal demands for transformative change, but how can a program director cope with this in practice? In this work, I will describe the logic involved in this problem and give some practical advice for how to handle the situation.
Finished work/ongoing work
The ongoing digitalization (Brooks & McCormack, 2020) and societal expectations that universities should educate students to solve sustainability problems (UNESCO, 2020) calls for actions. Novel challenges for an educational program naturally fall under the duties of the program director. Since innovation and knowledge building within the mentioned fields are rapidly evolving, a single individual (manager, program director or teacher) does not have sufficient time to do all the work, and cooperation is required. To further complicate the situation, transformative challenges require an agile and adaptive leadership practice (Heifetz, Grachow & Linsky, 2009), which is seldom found at universities, and the application of change theory in STEM higher education lacks theoretical coherence (Reinholz, White & Andrews, 2021).
This may look hopeless, but there is hope. From successful leadership practices in K-12 education, it is found that ‘leaders in the middle’ are central for successful change actions (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2020; Fullan, 2020). In fact, these leaders assist to create coherence (Fullan & Quinn, 2016, Fullan 2020) between societal intentions and educators’ practice, which is necessary to keep up motivation and use available resources efficiently. In higher education, program directors are the natural ‘leaders in the middle’.
In my own practice, I started to make coherence from the bottom by introducing a time-efficient and agile structure to handle student input and drive change (Leander Zaar & Andersson, 2020). I have then increased the engagement of teachers through strategic discussions during program meetings and in curriculum development, by creating small working groups for strategic issues and by repeatedly talking about the need for efficient and continuous improvements. The motto is ‘Whatever can be improved, should be improved’. I also give input to individual teachers and groups of teachers about overarching principles relevant for their own practice and support them in the process of making sense of this.
Results/observations/lessons learned
It all comes to create a good balance between overall time effectiveness and the necessity to improve. Some practical advice to avoid getting overloaded are:
- Trust that teachers can manage improvements in their own courses but be always prepared to support them.
- Do not spend time on micromanagement of problematic courses. Be neutral and inspire instead to collegial discussions.
- Reduce the time spent on documentation to a necessary minimum.
- Carefully prepare teacher meeting and leave plenty of time for collegial discussions. Teacher time is an expensive resource and collegial discussions create coherence.
- Always focus on improvementsin internal communication (change can be either positive or negative).
- Continuously reflect about how to improve the program – this is your main duty.
- Learn the basics about agile change leadership and apply it in your practice! It helps to save time both for you and for the teachers in the program.
Take-home message
A program director is the key actor for creating change and can do it!
References
Brooks, D.C. & McCormack, M. (2020). Driving digital transformation in higher education. ECAR research report, ECAR.
Fullan, M. (2020). Leading in a culture of change. Josey-Bass.
Fullan, M. & Quinn, J. (2016). Coherence: The right drivers in action for schools, districts, and systems. Corwin.
Hargreaves, A. & Shirley, D. (2020). Leading from the middle: its nature, origin and importance, Journal of Professional Capital and Community, 5(1), 92-114.
Heifetz, R., Grashow, A. & Linsky, M. (2009). Thepracticeofadaptiveleadership. Harvard Business Press.
Leander Zaar, F. & Andersson, M. (2020). Streamlining academic change processes through engineering principles, Proceedings of the 16th International CCIO Conference, Chalmers University of Technology, 225-233.
Reinholz, D.L, White, I. & Andrews,T. (2021). Change theory in STEM higher education: a systematic review, International Journal of STEM Education, 8:37
UNESCO. (2020). Education for sustainable development: a roadmap. UNESCO.
