Leadership and Values in Language Education - Al Akhawayn ...

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102Proceedings of the 27 th MATE Annual ConferenceTeacher Leadership in Higher Education:The Case of the UniversitySmail KerouadUniversity Cadi Ayyad. Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Beni MellalIntroductionLeadership has been a concern of several domains such as sociology,anthropology, history, politics, and business since an early age; however, writingsin the field of education have only flourished throughout the last two decades.Researchers have studied leadership and leaders at all levels ranging from being adean, or a principle to being a teacher within a school or a classroom. This articleaims at exploring teacher leadership at the university. In the absence of teacherleaders or what is called ‘clinical educators’ (Sherrill, 1999) from the Moroccanuniversity, every teacher is in a position to become a leader inside his/herclassroom, and perhaps the institution as a whole. Nevertheless, leadershiprequires certain practices and traits that a university teacher needs to possess ordevelop if he/ she seeks to qualify as a leader. The article first outlines some ofthe ways in which leadership has been defined both in the past and in recentworks. Second, it deals with how teacher leadership at the university is perceived.Defining leadershipLeadership, which has emerged as a discipline for study since the 1920s, is acomplex process on which hundreds of definitions have been formulated. Somescholars have even described it as “one of the most observed and least understoodphenomena on earth” (Bennis & Nanus, 1985:4). As reported in Hughes, Ginnett,and Curphy (1993:6), leadership was defined in various ways. It is- The creative and directive force of morale (Munson, 1921).- The process by which an agent induces a subordinate to behave in a desiredmanner (Bennis, 1959).- Directing and coordinating the work of group members (Fiedler, 1967).- The presence of a particular influence between two or more persons(Hollander & Julian, 1969).- The process of influencing an organized group toward accomplishing itsgoals (Roach & Behling, 1984).
103Proceedings of the 27 th MATE Annual ConferenceImplied in these definitions is the fact that different researchers have consideredleadership from different angles, resulting in various perspectives and approachessuch as the trait approach, and the behavior approach. However, most of the earlydefinitions are found to describe leadership as one person (leader) controlling anddirecting other people. Bennis (op. cit.), for example, includes in his conceptionof leadership the word “subordinate” to show the hierarchical nature of therelationship between leaders and their followers. Fiedler (op. cit.) focuses ondirecting and coordinating as two major elements of leadership. Thus, it can bededuced that leadership in the past was understood as exercising one’s power andcontrol over others.Recently, many researchers and scholars have started to see leadership with moreor less the same lenses. Several definitions seem to revolve around three mainnotions that appear to be the pillars on which any leadership conception is built.(1) Leadership is relational; (2) it seeks a certain change or difference on the partof the leader and his/her participants; (3) both the leader and the participantsshare common goals. As a case in point, Komives, Lucas, and McMahon(1998:11) define leadership “as a relational process of people together attemptingto accomplish change or make a difference to benefit the common good”. Alongthe same lines, Daft (1999:25) views that leadership “involves people in arelationship, influence, change, a shared purpose of achieving a desired future,and taking personal responsibility to make things happen”. He also perceives that“leadership may be expressed in the classroom, your neighborhood, community,or volunteer organization”.For the purpose of this paper, the above definitions will be adopted for exploringteacher leadership at the university in the Moroccan context. I would argue thatreal teacher leadership occurs inside the classroom, and true change should stemfrom the relationship that the teacher leader develops with his/her participants (inthis case the students), and also from the shared tasks they perform to achieve thedesired goals. In order to realize this kind of relational leadership, some practicesand traits are found to be essential on the part of the teacher leader.Teacher leadershipIn European and American colleges and universities, teacher leadership is mainlyrelated to those teachers who, besides their classroom practices, participate invarious school jobs such as curriculum development, school exams, teacherevaluation, etc. These are well summarized in Barth (2001, p. 444) who statesthat teacher leaders are involved in
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