Leadership and scholarship, do they co-exist?\u00a0 Are they complimentary?\u00a0 Adversarial?\u00a0 Perhaps both?\u00a0 Is it possible for a leader \u2014 a business or ministry practitioner<\/i> \u2014 to, at the same time, engage in scholarly thinking about her work while attending to the busy-ness of her leading?\u00a0 These are the kinds of questions I find myself considering while engaging with Ramsey\u2019s articles this week.\u00a0 For many leaders, there is a pervading sense that to study leadership (from an academic perspective) is antithetical to the actual practices of leadership.\u00a0 This sentiment is captured in the idiom: \u201cThose who can, DO.\u00a0 Those who can\u2019t, TEACH.\u201d\u00a0 This week I am considering why this great divide has taken hold and can we merge the two streams into a helpful flow of learning that becomes circular.\u00a0 Can academic thinking fuel praxis which in turn generates new innovations to be considered within the academy?\u00a0 Caroline Ramsey considers this to be a possibility if leaders will become attentive to a scholarship of practice.<\/p>\n
Ramsey \u201cargue[s] for a scholarship of practice that centres attentional attending-to as its core.\u201d1 \u00a0This brand of scholarship will not allow for learning to happen for its own sake but rather, demands that learning has a practical end.\u00a0 This terminology (\u201dscholarship of practice\u201d) creates intriguing and somewhat juxtapositional, verbal bedfellows!\u00a0 \u201cScholarship” and \u201cpractice” encapsulated within the same term?!\u00a0 Hmmm\u2026\u00a0 Interesting, but is it really possible?\u00a0 Ramsey holds them together effortlessly.<\/p>\n
To pay attention to surroundings in real-time and expect meaningful learning to emerge from within the context of praxis is a valuable leadership contribution.\u00a0 The silos that separate academic inquiry from the practical application of learning can effectively be broken down if leaders will embrace a reflexive self-view, posturing themselves as embedded learners engaging in vocations that also serve as laboratories for innovation.\u00a0 Ramsey identifies three \u201cdomains of attention\u201d which, if attended to, will facilitate this \u201csilo-breaking\u201d and stimulate new streams of learning.\u00a0 These three are regular engagement with new ideas, a consistent orientation toward inquiry and the intentional navigation of relationships,2\u00a0even when difficult.\u00a0 When leaders give attention to these arenas, their organizations are incited to learn and mature.\u00a0 A \u201cprovocative relationship\u201d between theory and praxis ensues and the circularity begins!3 \u00a0I am realizing more and more that I can’t demand <\/i>any new learning from individuals within my organizations but I can provoke<\/i> them.\u00a0 I am working on becoming a learning provocateur!\u00a0 Although at times I must admit it feels like a covert operation\u2026<\/p>\n
Within my particular \u201ctribe\u201d the introduction of meaningful reflection on action seems to be minimized, instead preferring to just jump from action to action as seemingly disconnected initiatives.\u00a0 There are a few \u201cacademic types\u201d that speak for a continuity of theory and praxis but for the most part, they are just shouting into the wind as those who hold structural power continue to jump from place to place with our church in tow.\u00a0 Frenetic activity stands as a hollow substitute for reflective deliberation and meaningful dialog.\u00a0 There is a lot of discussion but very little authentic dialog.\u00a0 Every year seems to bring a new round of activity, disconnected from the previous year\u2019s with no apparent context-making for the next.\u00a0 There is very little, if any, \u201cscholarship\u201d connected with our \u201cpractice,\u201d just activity void of reflection.\u00a0 So, I am thinking about these things this week, hoping I can take steps toward a scholarship of practice that provokes learning among those for whom I do have some measure of influence.\u00a0 One day at a time\u2026<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
1. Caroline Ramsey, \u201cManagement Learning: a Scholarship of Practice Centred on Attention,\u201d Management Learning, <\/i>45: 6 (January 23, 2014) 7.<\/p>\n
2. Ibid. 15.<\/p>\n
3. Caroline Ramsey, \u201cProvocative Theory and a Scholarship of Practice,\u201d Management Learning,\u00a0<\/i> (March, 2011) 7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Leadership and scholarship, do they co-exist?\u00a0 Are they complimentary?\u00a0 Adversarial?\u00a0 Perhaps both?\u00a0 Is it possible for a leader \u2014 a business or ministry practitioner \u2014 to, at the same time, engage in scholarly thinking about her work while attending to the busy-ness of her leading?\u00a0 These are the kinds of questions I find myself considering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,613],"class_list":["post-4339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-ramsey","cohort-lgp5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4339"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4341,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4339\/revisions\/4341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}