The ignorant manager: conceptualising impact with Rancière

Literature review

Rancière (1991) articulates his view of equality through examination of the teaching of Jacotot, a late eighteenth century teacher whose Flemish-speaking pupils learned French not through his explication, but through their autonomous use of a bilingual edition of Telemaque. Jacotot could not speak Flemish, and so could not explain aspects of the French language to his students; they could not ask him for help, as they did not speak French. Despite these apparently unsupportive conditions, the students learned French. Rancière (1991) presents this as an example of emancipatory learning among equals. He uses it to consider the role of the teacher (or “master”, as he calls the teacher in this work) which he suggests it to direct the will of his students, but not their intelligence. Rancière suggests Jacotot made the students aware of their own intelligence, and their equality with him.

Jacotot’s story enables Rancière to expound his theory, not just in relation to education, but also more widely to the social order, where, he argues, there is complex material inequality. Part of this complexity is due to the way the hierarchy in the social order might conflict with commonly held assumptions. Rancière talks of “superior inferiors” – each person subservient to the one he represents to himself as inferior (p. 86). Thus, the teacher (or “master”) might appear to be superior to his/her learners, possessing knowledge and understanding to impart. However, the tutor is actually dependent on his/her learners: their need provides him/her with activity, identity. This startling and apparent upturning of the common assumption, that those defined socially as inferior are subservient to those defined as superior, indicates Rancière’s critical stance: one is dependent on inferiors to confirm one’s superiority. This stance is relevant for work-based learning in terms of the learner/tutor relationship, individual roles and their equality. The wider relevance and consequences of this view for work applied management should also be considered in relation to work-based learners as employees, alongside their managers and/or colleagues.

Rancière (1991) indicates his understanding that we cannot always act equally (should we want to maintain social order), outlining two opposing roles we each possess: a “reasonable man” who recognises himself as equal to other men (whatever their position in the social order) and a citizen (“man fallen into the land of inequality”) (p. 91). The balance of roles is needed to support order, but the reasonable man will always recognise this and preserve his reasonable perspective on equality of intelligence, despite the irrationality and inequality of the social order. He will consider what can be done with reason’s power, how it can “remain active in the heart of extreme irrationality” (Rancière, 1991, p. 95). Rancière does not expect society to be completely, permanently, reasonable, but hopes for “reasonable moments”, which arise through individuals’ “reciprocal recognition of reasonable wills” (p. 96). He asserts that actual, immediate emancipation requires us to “learn how to be equal men in an unequal society” (p. 133). The emancipated person can obey superiors knowing they are his equals and can emancipate others. For Rancière, like Jacotot, equality is “not an end to attain, but a point of departure, and a supposition to maintain in every circumstance” (p. 138).

Equality does not depend on the quality or quantity of one’s knowledge. Emancipation is gained through teaching oneself, and others, what one does not know. While one might assume explanation will help the learner become equal (eventually) to the teacher, this equality is always some way off. Explication, asserts Rancière (1991), divides people into those with and without knowledge, and perpetuates inequality. He questions the use of explication: when the source is available, understanding might be harder if explanation is inserted to help access it, leading to an explanation of the explanation – “regression ad infinitum” (p. 4). Yet the system (and therefore the explicator) depends on assuming an explicator is needed to help the ignorant learn, no matter that the ignorant learned to speak when young without such help. Despite this dependency on his/her learners, the role of tutor/explicator, responsible for judging whether learning has taken place, positions the ignorant (i.e. the learner, the recipient of the explication) as forever inferior; there will always be something more that only the explicator knows. In accepting this, the learner submits to “the hierarchical world of intelligence” (p. 8). This “stultification” pervades learning from school days onwards: ownership of one’s learning, of independent intelligence, is not possible. Should one wish to promote equality, it is important to consider the degree to which it is possible for learners and tutors to be equal and how this is demonstrated, the degree to which explication hinders or helps this, and the implications for work applied management.

Considering Rancière’s stance in relation to education, a criticism might arise regarding apparent inequality in learning caused by individual, social or psychological circumstances. For example, May (2010) considers individual differences to be due to our being “nearly equally intelligent” (p. 77) although he minimises this apparent critique of Rancière with acceptance of the need for intelligence equality in order to challenge justification for hierarchical divisions.

Bourdieu’s work might help one understand material inequality. For example, the “structured and structuring structure” of one’s habitus (Maton, 2012, p. 50) might constrain the range of one’s experience. How and where one’s cultural capital is different from that of peers might influence one’s development (Moore, 2012). While a Rancière stance is founded on equality, Bourdieu could help a tutor recognise challenges students face today. Applying his consideration of capital and habitus (Maton, 2012) in conjunction with Rancière’s perspective would support a relevant and individual exertion of will. Bourdieu (2000) has indicated how inequality might be configured and arise. While Rancière asserts equality, Bourdieu starts from the assumption of inequality. However, Bourdieu might enable a more realistic, individual application of “reasonableness”.

Pelletier (2009) alludes to a fundamental difference between Bourdieu and Rancière: Bourdieu explains inequality as the poor not succeeding academically “because they cannot formulate scholarly discourse”, whereas Rancière asserts that lack of academic success is the result of “their discourse not being treated or heard as scholarly” (p. 145). This prompts one to consider how, if Pelletier is right, one can allow all learners’ voices to be heard.

While adoption of Rancière’s stance might be combined with other concepts, as indicated, practical challenges remain when seeking to enact it as a tutor: Rancière’s (1991) suggestion that assessment is irrelevant to emancipation seems legitimate: individuals vary in how they use (and so demonstrate) emancipation. However, this might lead one to question how to work to emancipation in higher education today, where it is assumed that quality can be measured and students’ performance graded (with significant implications for their place in the social order) (Johnson, 2015). Teachers wishing to support this stance in these measured times might direct the students’ will to emancipation, treating them as “reasonable men” do, with equal intelligence, while concurrently preparing students for institutionalised assessment, which cannot assess emancipation quality and quantity.

James moves on

James e-mailed me to arrange a tutorial. I was pleased to see him, thinking he had given up on his studies when he had produced no draft work for a few months:

I’m sorry, it’s doing my head in. I’ve been on this module for ages, haven’t I?

Well, yes, it’s a while. In fact, I thought you’d decided not to carry on, but just didn’t want to let me know.

Yeh, I don’t want to carry on. You know I don’t like studying. Takes me ages to read anything. I was just doing it cos I won’t get any further without a degree.

Our conversation continued, leading us to arrange a schedule for James’s completion of the module. He completed, gaining a modest pass. He progressed, taking other modules, some of which took similarly lengthy periods. Tutorials did not indicate any change of heart. Well, that is a student’s choice. Getting the assignments in (eventually), working through the programme – that is what I need to keep tabs on. Disappointing if someone is not enjoying it, but that is not really recorded, is it? (Well, maybe through NSS results, etc.), whereas completions and marks are.

The penultimate module came: project-focussed, requiring James to identify an area of his work for development that could provide a practice goal. We met to discuss the project, allow learning outcomes to emerge, and agree assessment methods. This was a module in which he therefore had considerable autonomy:

So you’ll use those learning outcomes when you’re reading my work? How do we make sure it’s up to standard?

I’ll be looking to see if you show that you’ve learned the things you’ve set out to learn. For example, with that one about understanding new employees’ learning needs, I’ll be looking to see what you write about those needs, how you found out about them, how your reading about employability, maybe human resources, or about company policy and so on, helped you.

But what if it’s rubbish?

You might come up with ideas that surprise me – you’re working on something where you’ll become the expert and I’ll know very little. I might not agree with everything you say, but you’re the one that will have done the work. If you justify what you say – give examples, relate to your reading – then that’s what I’m interested in assessing – how well you do that.

Hmm. It could still be rubbish.

Why?

I might get the wrong end of the stick.

What makes you think that?

Just how hard I find the reading, and how long the writing takes me. I want to make points quickly but can’t.

What about cutting down on the writing by doing a presentation for part of the assessment?

Oh no – who to?

I explained the options and he said he had given it a go. Draft work came in; preparations were made for final submission and presentation. James set a fast study pace, leading to a professional, informed presentation (apparently the first he had ever done outside of job interviews) complemented by a good written piece: thoughtful, relevant, up-to-date, creative. In the subsequent “Exit” module James showed similarly strong personal engagement, and indicated a developing, surprising self-image:

I never saw myself as teaching anyone anything. However, I enjoyed that last module, creating resources, asking staff to try them. That makes me want further opportunities.

What had led to this? Perhaps it was the greater autonomy in the penultimate module. Perhaps that was the first time he had felt in control of his learning, of identifying what he wanted to learn and achieve. Perhaps each previous module had seemed a challenge set by someone else (the tutor), and his job was to work out what they wanted and accomplish it, the object being to pass: “he wouldn’t have followed the route he has just been led down” (Jacotot, cited in Rancière, 1991). This time, the object was to create something that addressed workplace problems he had perceived.

Successful completion of the assignment was matched with successful creation of workplace resources. James saw how he could use his course to achieve things beyond marks, and have an effect in the workplace. Synthesis of creativity and workplace impact seemed to trigger deeper intrinsic impact, as demonstrated in “Exit” when he talked about what gave him a sense of achievement, and outlined his interest in taking on responsibilities relating to staff development – something he had never considered previously.

While the impact of negotiated work-based learning appeared to happen quite late on in his programme, it was powerful when it did. Here was someone who had said he hated his studies, who found himself slowed down by dyslexia, who focussed on the minimum needed to get each assignment completed and once done that was it, on to the next one. The penultimate assignment, where I truly had to stand at the door as Rancière (1991) advises while James went on the journey, offered autonomy which led him to follow his own priorities. This seemed to inspire personal as well as professional exploration, continuing into the final module, from which emerged someone perceiving their potential for impact on the organisation, who had stronger self-efficacy and self-esteem, and who began to consider how further study might fit with his growing interest in developing his role at work:

What? Are you saying you’d like to carry on to do a Masters now? But you’ve been saying since you started how much you hate studying.

I know – it’s just this last few months – I’ve actually enjoyed it. Those guides I created, it was good working out what to do, how to do it, asking people what they thought. I never thought I was creative.

They are really good. Even I can understand them.

Well, that was a help – you saying you didn’t know how to use your own equipment.

Yeh, I guess I’m a great example of how things need to be written in as basic a way as possible. I give up quite quickly.

“I know” (laughs).

We talked more about implications. The guides are used in James’s organisation. James maintains his interest in developing in this area, but opportunities allowing him to do this as a normal part of his job are limited, constrained by organisational policies and practices. While organisational effectiveness depends largely on employees having clear roles and responsibilities, boundary blurring might yield surprisingly constructive impact. This is challenging, taking staff into unfamiliar territory where the outcomes are unclear. Sometimes, a manager who can accept temporary ignorance, awaiting outcomes to emerge, can facilitate powerful impact from workers.

Carl’s research to action

Carl, in contrast, was already a Manager when he enroled for a negotiated work-related learning programme. Living abroad, engagement was online; poor connections in his country prevented aural contact via Skype or other such programmes. While unfamiliar with the academic conventions relating to his particular course, Carl was confident in his learning and had the capacity to implement many of the changes in practice his studies led him to identify. Carl’s greater confidence led him to ask for more guidance than James did, and there was the possibility of my “explication” involving far more than “standing at the door”. I explained critical reflection in detail, providing a list of questions he could adapt and apply to prompt his critical analysis.

Carl used this effectively, although I perceived that my programme’s – in fact UK higher education’s – emphasis on critical reflection might be a cultural characteristic. “You’re referring to academic colonialism. Yes, it is just one way of thinking things through, analysing them. There’s plenty of others”, agreed an external examiner. So – implications for me? I was perplexed. What was the “right” thing to do? Providing a “recipe” of optional ingredients for critical reflection seemed to work: the assignments indicated Carl’s developing skills of critical analysis, but was this the result of “moulding”? Was he, in effect, like James – learning the rules to follow, to achieve his award? As with James, I shrugged my shoulders mentally. I thought, “Well, he’s on a UK course, part of that is getting to understand the expectations, the assessment criteria. If he learns this without deep ‘engagement’, does it matter?”

I wanted to find out more, to find out if there were other expectations or criteria that would resonate more strongly with Carl’s culture, but other than an e-mailed question or two, I did not follow this up. Fair enough – Carl had chosen this course, it was my job to help him succeed, and that might include explaining elements more fully or differently than I did with students who had only ever known UK education.

Carl’s manner, and preferred writing style was modest, possibly finding it difficult to focus on his own approach and performance, and the consequent impact in formative work. I sensed that he was reluctant to change this following my feedback. Therefore, one had to read his work with much thought to what might be unspoken, when considering impact. Even in his final assignment – an insider-researcher work-based dissertation – he appeared to wish to make little of the contribution his studies could make immediately to his company, and eventually to the sector as a whole. However, the impact did emerge: his research led to a set of recommendations for his company to implement to face effectively their competitive challenge. Despite my doubts for much of his studies about the amount of autonomy Carl was actually taking, I realised in his final project that his creativity – unprompted by me – established his independence firmly. Looking back, I saw that all my “explication” had not prevented similar creativity throughout his studies.

The final work included a section of critical reflection on his performance as a researcher and in his studies. I realised I was surprised by what I read because I had perceived little personal impact prior to this. However, completing both a UK masters programme, and carrying out research, led Carl to refer to the significant impact on his self-image. Previously, he had seen himself as a manager in a big company, judged himself to be capable in his field. Engagement in the course had opened up a whole new world he could access in ways he felt were interesting and useful; as a researcher he was seeking to find things out. He had been unsure he could manage this role, but had enjoyed the “journey”.

My last contact with Carl indicated that studying had had significant impact on both personal and professional development, contributing to his promotion to a senior manager’s role with responsibility specifically in the topic he had been researching. This was a new area for his company, Carl’s line managers being comparatively ignorant in this field and, apparently, willing for Carl to lead. Despite my doubts, the work-based learning programme seems to have enabled personal, professional and organisational impact, possibly in a sustainable way.

Tracy’s communication impact

While Carl might demonstrate that it is possible to effect impact should one’s organisational position be sufficiently senior, a brief glimpse at Tracy’s situation indicates more modest roles might also allow this to happen. Attending a workshop for a communication skills module, Tracy was quiet in manner, while making constructive comments or asking questions. She hesitantly suggested an aspect of practice to focus on for her assignment which seemed reasonable and would require some collaboration with colleagues for operational impact.

Choosing to use a storyboard as part of her assessment, she also presented this visual image of her journey to the team and the manager. While the work problem she considered was not immediately resolved, Tracy’s presentation sufficiently impressed her manager to request action from the technical team. Perceiving how her work has influenced her manager, Tracy continues to contribute to organisational development, changing signage in the office and suggesting to colleagues that they share how they write to their clients, so an increasingly friendly tone of communication develops:

I was a bit nervous, asking people to share. Especially because one person’s been there for ages. She’s very experienced. But she was dead keen! And we made it a bit more fun as well, bringing in cake which we ate while we had a read and a chat.

What does your manager think? It sounds great, but sometimes […].

Oh, she’s been fine. She’s not really there very much because she has to visit all the sites, so there’s usually only one day a week when she’s in. When she knew I was studying this sort of degree she said. “Tracy, it’d be great to use your studies in the office. It’s up to you what you do. Try to involve the others, but you’ll get loads of ideas so use them!” So that made me think it’d be OK to make suggestions.

Tracy seems to have a manager willing to be “ignorant”, perhaps recognising the beneficial impact Tracy might have if given free rein. The organisational impact is happening. As for Tracy, while perhaps she already possessed a quiet self-confidence, her engagement in negotiated work-based learning leads her to use this confidence, along with her growing knowledge, to develop her own, and her colleagues’, practice.