Address to the Conference on Leadership, Management and Governance in diverse and complex contexts
towards quality education: (13 – 15 April 2015, Potchefstroom Campus, NWU)
Diversity and the quality of education leadership: why difference still makes a difference.
Robert J. Balfour, Dean of Education Sciences, North-West University
Introductory remarks
Good morning ladies and gentlemen, honoured guests of the North-West University, Prof Fika Janse van
Rensburg, our Vice Rector: Research and Planning on the Potchefstroom Campus, Dr Itumaleng Molale, the
Head of Department of the North West Department of Education and Sports Development who will also provide
the annual Deans Prestige Lecture tonight, Directors of the Faculty, Professors Kobus Mentz, JP Rossouw, Elsa
Mentz, and Drs Herman van Vuuren and Neal Petersen, colleagues from universities in South Africa, Rhodes
University, the University of Pretoria, Central University of Technology, the University of the Witwatersrand,
University of Johannesburg, and Tshwane University of Technology. A special word also to colleagues from
universities beyond South Africa, the National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe, from the USA,
Cicero-Matteson University in Illinois, and Teachers College, Columbia in New York, from the United Kingdom,
colleagues from the Universities of Leicester and Lincoln respectively, colleagues from the Open University of
Cyprus as well as officials from the Cyprus Ministry of Education, colleagues from the University of Oslo in
Norway, Sri Matharam Viharaya in Sri Lanka, and from the University of Teacher Education in Central
Switzerland.
Internal to South Africa and the North West I welcome warmly our valued colleagues from our sister Faculties of
the NWU at the Vaal and Mafeking campuses, officials, principals and leaders from the Department of Basic
Education in North West, Limpopo and Gauteng Provinces, Union officials and leaders from Naptosa, SADTU and
SAOU. At the outset I wish to acknowledge Professor Jan Heystek who together with a team of colleagues from
the Education and leadership subject group helped to organise this event and I wish to thank Ms Saartjie Venter
from the Faculty of Education Research Administration, who has also been assisted by a range of administrators
and students from the Faculty with regards to organising this event. Each year around April the Faculty hosts a
major conference on a special theme identified by colleagues as of timely interest in terms of national and
international debates associated with education scholarship. In 2014 we hosted a conference commemorating 20
years of the South African Constitution and the Brown v Board of Education Case in the US Supreme Court. In
2013 we hosted a national conference on Self-Directed Learning in higher education as well as schooling, and in
2012 a conference on Human Rights, Religion and Diversity in Education. These events enrich the intellectual life
of the North West University and Province, and deliberate on themes pressing to the nature and quality of
education provision (both its scholarship as well as teaching and learning). The theme of diversity of experience
and identity, is prevalent in every year. This is not accidental, but arises rather out of the clarity shared among
academics here about the vision and mission of the NWU to value and cherish the possibilities and opportunities
offered by transformation. In terms of all these backgrounds, places and colours what a diverse group we are, and
so it is not coincidental that diversity is reflected also in the 2015 Conference title.
A little about the Faculty of Education Sciences at NWU: the Faculty is second only to UNISA, the most prominent
provider of teacher education in South Africa. With some 26 000 students who are either current officials, or
teachers, or principals in schools, approximately 2400 student-teachers in our Bachelors programmes, and some
1500 postgraduate students, the Faculty at NWU boasts the best throughput rates in South Africa, an excellent
research profile and a history of teacher education since the early 1900s. Simply put, this is the Faculty of Choice
in South Africa for professionals in the system, as well as young people entering education. In my period of Office,
the Faculty has shifted direction of become more research led in terms of teacher education and in 2014 more
than attained its goals of realising one output unit per academic member of staff. With 132 academics, and almost
60 administrators the Faculty is a vibrant, diverse and attractive academic community in South Africa, and through
the NWU Unit for Open and Distance Learning, we reach teachers and students throughout South Africa and
indeed beyond, to the Southern African Development Community and region. North West Province, surprisingly to
those of you who are foreign to it, is always among the top three Provinces in South Africa in terms of school
performance, this despite not having to hand either Table Mountain in the Western Cape, or the metropolitan chic
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of bustling Gauteng! How does one explain this deep and long-standing tradition of excellence in teaching and
teacher education? It is a study begging yet to be undertaken.
It feels strange midst activities of the year to date to be among a gathering of academics in whose company I
stand in awe as a relative new-comer to the scholarship on education leadership. Although I have spent most of
my career in academic administration, it is really since coming to North West University that the scholarship
concerning leadership in education has become both a focus and presence in my intellectual life. In part, this
focus is deliberate, NWU being one of the few institutions in the development of the quality of leadership in the
academy is an explicit focus for university managers and leaders. In the last two years almost all academic and
administrative leaders of the University has been enrolled with a company named Thinking Fusion in a five month
of leadership training course, in which exposure to both the scholarship associated with leadership in systems.
This deliberate focus also compelled a reflection on my own learning about leadership, overtly as well as covertly.
This morning I wish to focus quite narrowly on the link between diversity and the quality of education leadership,
by way of some opening remarks. If it matters who we are, or what we have become, then surely an undeniable
fact of leadership in education is that difference ‘counts’. Whether we see such difference in terms of experience,
or youth, gender, or sexuality, class or race, the fact is that these variables still make a difference to both the
experience of education, as well as the practice and scholarship of education. Who we are as leaders, scholars,
teachers, or students also affects the quality and inclusivity of our leadership, and ultimately justifies why we
matter as leaders in the world.
The South African Constitution (1996) recognises historical and structural inequalities pertaining to groups “based
on perceived or ‘real’ differences” (De Vos, p.185). Law thus has an important role to play “in reordering ... power
relations in ways which strive to ensure that all individuals are treated as if they have the same moral worth” (De
Vos, p.185). Rancière argues that “… the rights of (people) and of the citizen are the rights of those who make
them a reality. They were won through democratic action and are... guaranteed through such action” (2006, p.74).
Ndashe (2010, p.6) echoes this statement to suggest that South Africans (referring particularly to sexual
minorities) must engage in ‘identity assertion’ to realise constitutional provisions in relation to still prejudicial
legislation regulating rights, responsibilities and associated processes. Arising from the above, I make four points
about leadership education and leadership in education.
First, rights to equal participation in education, or indeed even to equal consideration before the law, whilst
seemingly secured in the Constitution (1996), do not guarantee acceptance. Thus the difference between an
aspirational democracy, and the experience of acceptance having still to be won, suggests that the possibilities for
women, disabled people, or gay people to be viewed as role-models, let alone credible leaders in our governance
structures, or as teachers or leaders of our schools, remain problematic. Second, in view of the role of universities
to prepare leaders, it is evident that there is an urgent need to review the scholarship of education leadership as
regards the role of diversity as key to the expression, conceptualisation, practice of and reflection on, leadership.
Simply put, we need to re-imagine leadership-transformation to make specific reference to the development for
the inclusion of more women, more sexual minorities, and more persons from disabled groups. Leaders need to
be visibly diverse in order for that re-imagination to occur. Third, we ought to acknowledge that the experience of
misrecognition or invisibility of minority groups, makes possible the continued marginalisation and erasure of
groups who do not fit the norm of a leadership that is stereotypically characterised as abled, male and middle
class. Fourth, there can be no useful debates about diversity in leadership unless the leaders around the tables
shift from speaking about diversity, to allowing a greater representation of diversity in leadership for that
discussion to occur. It simply not good enough to note the absence of women in leadership, the erasure of people
who identify as gay, the marginalisation of differently abled people – we have actually to change what we consider
effective leadership to be, and to do that we need you in education leadership research to make contributions as
regards the scholarship not of deficit, but of affordances and value.
South African universities should not be in the business uncritically preparing curricula that privilege men, or of
preparing principals for middle class schools only, or teachers for heterosexual or able children only; we ought to
be in the business of developing leaders and teachers for everyone; as people who are aware and able to include
and value others. There are, of course, histories to explain the gaps in existing scholarship.
Contested contexts in relation to diversity in higher education
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There has been much work about the role of women in leadership, and in the last 20 years in South Africa the
scholarship concerning race and leadership has also begun to grow. Today I want to talk about leadership and
diversity. Between 1998-2006 several legal cases removed the criminalisation affecting same-sex desire (for
example, the decriminalisation of sodomy in 1998, and the legalisation of same-sex unions in 2006) in South
Africa. Despite progress, De Vos (2004) argues that “A mere extension of marriage rights to some same-sex
couples will also not lead to a necessary and fundamental re-imagining of the nature of ... relations in our society”
(p.182). De Vos’ point applies equally to other areas of society and, in this talk, is extended to the world of work
where this re-imagining as regards the importance of diversity in leadership is overdue.
The question I want to ask is where is the scholarship on what diversity (gender, sexuality, race, indigenous
knowledge systems) brings to change the leadership in, and of education, in South Africa or, indeed, the world?
Three points pertain to the question. First, the struggles in South Africa to ‘assert’ gay identity to enable the
individuation for gay people, suggests that acceptance is neither unproblematic, nor cause for (legal or other)
restitution (for example, employment equity). The Employment Equity Act (EEA) 55 of 1998 defines 'designated
groups' as black people, women and people with disabilities. Thus, whilst explicitly mentioned in the Constitution,
no further provision concerning the status of gay people as a group, is made. Few seem to have celebrated gay
rights as part of “the world we have won” (Weeks, 2007) in the name of non-sexism, non-racism, freedom and
equality. This affirms the relative insignificance, indeed invisibility, broadly speaking of gay people as a
disadvantaged group. This group, despite colour or gender differences, has experienced (and continues to
experience) violence, and lack of protection in a largely heterosexual and heterosexist state. Appiah argues that
the need for such special measures to promote and protect minority groups arises from the fact that the simple
right to human dignity is not sufficient protection in a State where a group or individual might still be attacked on
the basis of not conforming, amongst others, to a heteronormative ideal (2005, p.109). Where identity cannot be
considered as chosen (black people do not choose to be black, gay people do not choose their desires), and
where the consequences of such identities are severe, rights and protection cannot be assumed.
Invisibility of minority groups as part of the transformation of South Africa occurs also because of a lack of
education and leadership concerning sexuality or ‘gender’ in schools. For example, a handbook, Issues on gender
in schools (DoE, 2002), aims to equip teachers to deal with issues concerning ‘gender’, but in fact deals narrowly
and exclusively with issues concerning women as the subject of a range of discriminatory social practices. In the
absence of a genuinely inclusive approach to education, ignorance is aided and reinforced. The Soudien Report
(2012) makes passing reference to discrimination against gay people on South African campuses, only because
this minority grouping is rendered largely invisible in the ‘big’ narrative concerning race transformation in South
Africa. Why? Perhaps difference is still a painful and problematic concept in leadership in education? As much is
acknowledged in the Soudien (2008) Report which confirms that discrimination against women and gay persons
exists and is silenced:
However, although sexism has been raised in ...interactions with institutional constituencies in
relation to employment equity, with a few exceptions there has been a deafening silence on sexual
harassment in general... The silence... does not mean that the problem does not exist... it is clear
that sexual harassment, of women and gays and lesbians, is rife (Soudien et al, 2008, p.95).
Second, and in relation to the above, being a woman or part of a sexual minority group in leadership is rare, but
also risky because, in relation to sexual orientation, for example, it is not considered generally as a necessary
modification to heterosexist perspectives on role-modelling in which credible leaders can also be accepted as gay,
or a woman, or a black and gay woman.i Universities and schools are microcosms of society, albeit privileged
ones, and reflect social norms and values which in themselves can be exclusionary. In hierarchical organisations
the interface between power, work and leadership is complex. Unsurprisingly gender, sexuality and identity are
important, though uncomfortable factors in the exercise of leadership (well-documented in many studies on
women in leadership).
Third, higher education makes few other provisions even for spaces, or for formal representation of diverse
groups in leadership structures that are considered safe for women or minority groups. The choices for such
people seem binary: fight or flight; fit-in (and forgive the language) or f--- off. If leadership in education does not
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research the contribution that diversity makes to leadership, or influence policies that make provision for minority
groups as subordinated, and historically disadvantaged, then it is unsurprising that such groups are discriminated
against visibly and invisibly by institutions (staff and students alike). In such contexts where there is no education
for diversity, there is unsurprisingly, no diversity in the leadership either.
South Africa is policy rich as regards the promotion historically disadvantaged groups. But, is policy without
education enough? Can we trust a mostly male, mostly white or mostly black, or most heterosexual and abled
leadership to consider and promote diversity even when explicit policy provision exists? If we consider the last 20
years of democracy, then it is clear that South Africa’s education and higher education sectors have produced few
women leaders as professors, let alone in management or leadership roles. Gay people are almost invisible,
disabled persons absent. Simply put, more needs to be done concerning the quality of education received in
relation to race and gender, and the quality of teacher education relating to this.
The gaps are also not an accident. An extensive international scholarship exists concerning the conflict that arises
even within (heteronormative) higher education institutions between men and women. Such work draws upon
Ahmed’s (2010) theory on happiness and Berlant’s (2011) theory of cruel optimism (leadership is a normative
fantasy which can be a bad desire – for example an ambitious male might be regarded as forceful, but an
ambitious female as emasculating) and concludes that women rarely get identified or supported in leadership.
Morley, for example, asks why has gender escaped attention in the academy? Do cultural scripts for leaders
collide with gender performances? Citing Shackleton et al.’s (2006) literature review on women in leadership,
Morley argues that there is an essentialised debate (women have better skills, better people intelligence etc)
about women which confirms negative stereotyping. Overall the literature “blames the gap” (by bemoaning it), and
advocates that more women need to be seen figuring in existing structures without questioning the patriarchal
power imbued in these structures (Morley, 2012). Barad (2007) argues that differences are made and re-made
depending on the relationship between observer and observed. Leaders are made via the politics of difference
and where the norm as regards ‘effective leadership’ might be regarded as masculine, women typically have to fit
in, or drop out of that patriarchal leadership expectation.
In South Africa, the focus on race has for obvious reasons, dominated discussions concerning transformation,
equity, and social and economic change. Williams states that “racial discrimination is powerful precisely because
of its visibility, its felt neutrality ... Racism inscribes culture with generalized preferences and routinized notions of
propriety ... It empowers the mere familiarity and comfort of the status quo by labelling that status quo as ‘natural”.
(Williams, 1995, p.82). Dealing with gender within the context of race-based prejudice has been more complex
because as Fraser (1996, p.218) argues, gender equity is best understood as “a complex notion comprising a
plurality of distinct normative principles”. Given that complexity, the curriculum make provision for sexuality
education and employment equity, but it is evident that it is teachers and academics who need both the
confidence and support of leadership to initiate and engage with discussions concerning gender and leadership.
Diversity can hardly be celebrated when it is made invisible through the absence of a curriculum for gender and
sexuality education, or when an Employment Equity Policy in South Africa remains exclusionary, and, because of
the absence of a more diverse leadership, the challenge as regards diversity in workplace, let alone diversity in
leadership is still seen as ‘messy’.
How might education leadership for diversity lead to better quality in education?
I conclude by challenging this special Conference, unique as a gathering of education’s leadership from the
Province, our Unions, schools, and academics from many universities: Diversity is often regarded as the natural
context in which education occurs; as though all differences were either neutral or natural. Yet somehow in our
many differences, some as regards class and poverty, race and gender also come to be regarded as natural,
whereas they are in fact naturalised, constructed to serve the interests of some rather than all. Difference and
diversity do not require treatment with a view to what I would term ‘hetero-normalisation” (those day-to-day
processes which serve to render invisible the extent to which some differences enable or disable people). Instead,
can diversity contribute to a different conceptualisation of what effective leadership in education entails? And,
would new kinds of scholarship be required to understand how diversity actually makes for a better quality
education for whom, and to what end? I wish you well in your deliberations in days to come: I wish you
courageous debates and mindfulness of diversity! Thank you.
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Selected References
Ahmed, S. (2010). The Promise of Happiness. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press.
Appiah, K. (2005). The Ethics of Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Arendt, H. (1973). The Origins of Totalitarianism. London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Barnard, J. (2007). Totalitarianism (same sex) marriage and democratic politics in post-Apartheid South Africa, in South African Journal of Human Rights.
23(3) 500-525.
Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel Optimism. Duke University: Duke University Press, 27 Oct 2011
Botha, H. (2004). Equality, dignity, and the politics of interpretation. SA Public Law. 19. 724-751.
Cameron, E. (2005). Witness to AIDS. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. (1996). Parliament of the Republic of South Africa.
Department of Education. (2002). Issues on gender in schools: an introduction for teachers. Pretoria: Government Printing Works.
Department of Labour. (1998). Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998. Parliament of South Africa Cape Town: Government Printing Works.
De Vos, P. (2004). Desire and the re-imagining of of the South African Family. South African Journal of Human Rights. 20. 179-206.
Fraser, N. (1996). ‘Gender equity and the welfare state: A post-industrialist thought experiment’ in S. Benhabib (Ed). Democracy and difference: Contesting
the boundaries of the political. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Morley, L. (2013). The rules of the game: women and the leaderist turn in higher education. Gender and Education Special Issue on Thinking Education
Feminisms: engagements with the work of Diana Leonard. 25(1), 116-131.
Ndashe, S. (2010). The battle for the recognition of LGBTI rights as human rights. Perspectives, 4(10), 4-9.
Rancière, J. (2006). Hatred of Democracy. (Transl S. Corcoran), London: Verso Books.
Reddy, V. (2010). Identity, law, justice. Thinking about sexual rights and citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa. Perspectives, 4(10), 18-23.
Richardson, D. & Monro, S. (2012). Sexuality, equality & diversity. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
Shackleton, l, Riordan, S. & Simonis, D. (2006). Including Women: Gender in Commonwealth Higher Education. Gender and the transformation agenda in
South African higher education. Women's Studies International Forum. 29(6), 572–580.
Soudien, C. Michaels, W; Mthembi-Mahanyele, S; Nkomo, M; Nyanda, G; Nyoka, N; Seepe, S; Shisana, O; Villa-Vicencio, C; (2008). Report of the
Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions.
Warner, M. (Ed). (1993). ‘Introduction’ in Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. University of Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
vii, xxi.
Weeks, J. (2007). The world we have won: The remaking of erotic and intimate life. Oxford: Routledge.
Michael Warner (1993) defines heteronormativity as arising from heterosexual culture’s ability to interpret itself as co-extensive with society, as “the
elemental form of human association, as the very model of inter-gender relations, as the indivisible basis of all community, and as the means of reproduction
without which society wouldn’t exist” (viii & xxi).
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