When the Romance is Over: Follower Perspectives of Aversive Leadership

While leadership is indisputably one of the most pervasive topics in our society, the vast majority of existing research has focused on leadership as a positive force. Taking a follower- centric approach to the study of leadership, we integrate research on the Romance of Leadership and the dark side of leadership by examining followers’ perceptions of aversive leadership in the context of public high schools. Although Meindl, Ehrlich, and Dukerich (1985) demonstrated that the Romance of Leadership also includes the overattribution of negative outcomes to leaders, subsequent research has failed to explore the implications of this potentially darker side of romanticizing leaders. Specifically, we examine perceptions of principals’ aversive leadership and traditional affective, behavioral, and performance outcomes of followers in a sample of 342 dyads. Followers assessed their principals’ leadership behaviors and self-rated their levels of job satisfaction, self-efficacy, and resistance, while principals assessed their followers’ citizenship behaviors, complaining behaviors, and job performance. Results show that perceptions of aversive leadership are positively related to follower resistance and negatively related to followers’ job satisfaction. In addition, a usefulness analysis revealed that follower-rated variables were significantly related to perceptions of aversive leadership above and beyond leader-rated variables, suggesting that the relationship between negative outcomes and aversive leadership may be more constructed than real. In sum, the tendency to romanticize leadership may also lead to a proclivity to readily misattribute or overattribute blame to leadership as a convenient scapegoat for negative outcomes. Alors que le leadership est incontestablement l’un des thèmes les plus envahissants de notre société, la grande majorité des recherches existantes a porté sur le leadership en tant que force positive. En adoptant une approche centrée sur le suiveur dans l’étude du leadership, nous examinant la perception qu’ont les collaborateurs du leadership insupportable dans le contexte des lycées publics. Quoique Meindl, Ehrlich, et Dukerich (1985) aient montré que la Romance du Leadership inclut aussi la surattribution de résultats négatifs aux leaders, les recherches ultérieures ont méconnu les implications de cet aspect potentiellement plus sombre des leaders idylliques. Nous analysons en particulier sur un échantillon de 342 dyades la perception du leadership répulsif du proviseur et les résultats habituels des collaborateurs en rapport avec l’affectivité, le comportement et les performances. Les collaborateurs ont noté les comportements de leadership de leur proviseur et auto-évalué leur niveau de satisfaction au travail, d’efficience et de résistance, alors que les proviseurs appréciaient les conduites de citoyenneté et de revendication, ainsi que la performance professionnelle. Les résultats montrent que la perception du leadership répulsif est Positivement reliée à la résistance du suiveur et négativement à sa satisfaction professionnelle. En outre, une analyse des plus fructueuses a révélé que les variables évaluées par les collaborateurs étaient significativement en relation avec la perception du leadership répulsif, bien plus qu’avec les variables évaluées par les leaders, ce qui indique que la relation entre les résultats médiocres et le leadership négatif serait plus construite que réelle. Au total, le penchant à l’idéalisation du leadership peut aussi bien conduire à une propension à trop facilement condamner à tort et à travers le leadership qu’à la désignation d’un bouc émissaire tout trouvé pour expliquer de mauvais résultats.

Literacy Research: Issues of Authority, Ownership, and Representation

With the “social turn” of language in the past decade within English studies, ethnographic and teacher research methods increasingly have acquired legitimacy as a means of studying student literacy. And with this legitimacy, graduate students specializing in literacy and composition studies increasingly are being encouraged to use ethnographic and teacher research methods to study student literacy within classrooms. Yet few of the narratives produced from these studies discuss the problems that frequently arise when participant observers enter the classroom. Recently, some researchers have begun to interrogate the extent to which ethnographic and teacher research methods are able to construct and disseminate knowledge in empowering ways (Anderson & Irvine, 1993; Bishop, 1993; Fine, 1994; Fleischer. 1994; McLaren, 1992). While ethnographic and teacher research methods have oftentimes been touted as being more democratic and nonhierarchical than quantitative methods—-which oftentimes erase individuals lived experiences with numbers and statistical formulas—-researchers are just beginning to probe the ways that ethnographic and teacher research models can also be silencing, unreflective, and oppressive. Those who have begun to question the ethics of conducting, writing about, and disseminating knowledge in education have coined the term “critical” research, a rather vague and loose term that proposes a position of reflexivity and self-critique for all research methods, not just ethnography or teacher research. Drawing upon theories of feminist consciousness-raising, liberatory praxis, and community-action research, theories of critical research aim to involve researchers and participants in a highly participatory framework for constructing knowledge, an inquiry that seeks to question, disrupt, or intervene in the conditions under study for some socially transformative end. While critical research methods are always contingent upon the context being studied, in general they are undergirded by principles of non-hierarchical relations, participatory collaboration, problem-posing, dialogic inquiry, and multiple and multi-voiced interpretations. In distinguishing between critical and traditional ethnographic processes, for instance, Peter McLaren says that critical ethnography asks questions such as “[u]nder what conditions and to what ends do we. as educational researchers, enter into relations of cooperation. mutuality, and reciprocity with those who we research?” (p. 78) and “what social effects do you want your evaluations and understandings to have?” (p. 83). In»the same vein, Michelle Fine suggests that critical researchers must move beyond notions of the etic/emic dichotomy of researcher positionality in order to “probe how we are in relation with the contexts we study and with our informants, understanding that we are all multiple in those relations” (p. 72). Researchers in composition and literacy stud¬ies who endorse critical research methods, then, aim to enact some sort of positive transformative change in keeping with the needs and interests of the participants with whom they work.

The Impact of Teaching Presence in Intensive Online Courses on Perceived Learning and Sense of Community: A Mixed Methods Study

This mixed methods concurrent triangulation design study was predicated upon two models that advocated a connection between teaching presence and perceived learning: the Community of Inquiry Model of Online Learning developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000); and the Online Interaction Learning Model by Benbunan-Fich, Hiltz, and Harasim (2005). The objective was to learn how teaching presence impacted students’ perceptions of learning and sense of community in intensive online distance education courses developed and taught by instructors at a regional comprehensive university. In the quantitative phase online surveys collected relevant data from participating students (N = 397) and selected instructional faculty (N = 32) during the second week of a three-week Winter Term. Student information included: demographics such as age, gender, employment status, and distance from campus; perceptions of teaching presence; sense of community; perceived learning; course length; and course type. The students claimed having positive relationships between teaching presence, perceived learning, and sense of community. The instructors showed similar positive relationships with no significant differences when the student and instructor data were compared. The qualitative phase consisted of interviews with 12 instructors who had completed the online survey and replied to all of the open-response questions. The two phases were integrated using a matrix generation, and the analysis allowed for conclusions regarding teaching presence, perceived learning, and sense of community. The findings were equivocal with regard to satisfaction with course length and the relative importance of the teaching presence components. A model was provided depicting relationships between and among teaching presence components, perceived learning, and sense of community in intensive online courses.