Date of Submission

8-2-2021

Document Type

DiP

Degree

Doctor of Education

Department

Education

Keywords

higher education quality, equity, student success, social justice leadership, tempered radicalism, neoliberalism.

Abstract

In 2018, the Government of Ontario introduced a post-secondary accountability framework that attributes up to 60% of colleges’ annual public funding to the achievement of ten government-directed performance outcomes. The new framework’s shift from the previous enrollment-based funding model intensifies neoliberal and post-structural policy discourses of quality and accountability, further relegating social inequities to the margins of post-secondary education. At the same time, burgeoning social movements have appealed to governments and post-secondary institutions to dismantle systemic barriers that impede students from equity-deserving communities from accessing and flourishing in college. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) explores how a large urban college can reconcile neoliberal and post-structural representations of quality to develop a strategic approach to improving college-level outcomes that advances equity and promotes student success. Managing inherent tensions between government-defined quality and the college’s moral obligations to advance equity and promote student success is conceptualized using a hybrid social justice framework through lenses of moral leadership, transformative educational leadership, and tempered radicalism. Examining leadership through these lenses produces a proposed solution that reorients quality by organizational frame-bending and situates individual and organizational leadership practice towards equity and student success with tempered radicalism. Continuous negotiation of neoliberal and post-structural representations of quality is deliberately discussed as a means through which leaders and the organization can engage in an ongoing process of praxis and sensemaking to navigate an increasingly complex and competitive post-secondary terrain.

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