Conroy, Maeve (2021) Practice, Interrupted Narratively exploring a pedagogy for leadership development with emphasis on knowledge and power. PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
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Abstract
The choice of Practice, Interrupted as thesis title encapsulates the profoundly
personal nature of this scholarly journey for me as a practitioner and researcher as I
seek to go to the heart of my life's work in a way I never have before. As a
Leadership Development (LD) Practitioner, I create and facilitate learning
workspace for leadership in commercial learning environments. Through the
process of unearthing and exploring concerns of a pedagogic nature, I challenge my
sense of self, my understanding of how knowledge is created, and by whom, and
the impact of power on the space for leadership learning. Adopting a critically
reflexive stance significantly enhances my ability to deeply and at times painfully
explore these aspects of my practice of LD.
This inquiry is located in an LD programme entitled ‘Managers And Leaders
Together’ or ‘MALT’, which I delivered at a production facility over seven months.
The espoused normative assumptions behind the 'MALT' programme design include
leadership being viewed as collective, situated, dialectic and privileging ‘wisdom in
action.’ It includes a view of leadership in organisations as neither position nor
possession, which it claims is humanising. In this way, ‘MALT’ favours a view of
leadership as practice (Raelin, 2016), emerging and unfolding from daily experience.
This study differentiates itself from prior research in three ways.
Firstly, most research into LD has focused on concerns of a macro nature ʹ models,
competencies, curriculum design and financial return. To date, there has been
significantly less attention paid to how leadership development occurs within LD
programmes, in particular, how LD practitioners prepare for and work with
participant learners and their learning in workplace settings. Literature and
research concerning the orientation and positioning of the LD practitioner as a
pedagogue are to be found in higher education, public education, nursing and
medical education. There is little evidence of such research in the commercial
workplace learning environment. I identify this as a significant gap in the literature
which this study seeks to address.
Accordingly, the central purpose of the inquiry is an in-depth exploration of a
pedagogy for LD. Pedagogy, as so used, focuses attention on that which takes place
at the intersection of the practitioner, participants and the knowledge they
produce, attending in particular to the conditions and means through which this
occurs (Lather, 1994). Practice-based pedagogic choices are embedded in the MALT
programme include experiential learning, reflective dialogue, meaning-oriented
reflection and more. Emphasis is placed on using real-life experience as the basis
for knowledge generation and meaning-making.
Secondly, concerning methodology, I take the position of insider-researcher,
drawing upon narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) to critically and
reflexively explore my experience of delivering ‘MALT’ over seven months to Ϯε
participants. Narrative methods are less frequently used in LD research. In this
instance, the desire to access and understand the LD lived experience guided the
choice of a story-telling methodology rich in detail and context.
The third aspect that differentiates this study is that I draw on adult education
literature and learning to examine my pedagogic thinking and decision making.
Echoing the predominant concerns of adult educators, I pay particular attention to
discourses of knowledge and power throughout.
This study makes a claim to knowledge from several perspectives.
There is a substantive contribution in offering a fuller understanding of the lived
experience of an LD practitioner as she navigates and facilitates her way through an
LD programme with the concomitant insights into knowledge and power that this
research positioning reveals. The methodological contribution concerns a novel use
of first-person inquiry along with critical reflexivity in a field that has been
previously dominated by texts relating to macro models and frameworks.There is a significant impact on my practice, illustrating the value of engagement
with ongoing critical reflexivity in LD practice and understanding the impact of
pedagogic choices on knowledge creation and ways of knowing in leadership
learning workspaces. As an LD practitioner, my capacity for agency and to foster
agency in the participants is continually impacted by hidden discourses of power,
which wind their way through the narratives. Drawing on adult learning
perspectives supports the critical awareness of the impact of power in commercial
learning workspace as it unfolds, enabling it to be interrogated and potentially
transformed.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) |
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Keywords: | Practice; Interrupted Narratively; pedagogy; leadership development; knowledge and power; |
Academic Unit: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Adult and Community Education |
Item ID: | 16030 |
Depositing User: | IR eTheses |
Date Deposited: | 31 May 2022 15:05 |
URI: | https://mu.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/16030 |
Use Licence: | This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here |
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