‘Knowledge’ is considered in two ways in this study, as a source of authority and as an element of practice. This dual presence suggests the importance of knowledge to the practice of authority. Use of knowledge resources in accounts of practice is often complex, including skills (practical understanding, know- how) and tacit knowledge (a feel for the game) as well as declarative knowledge. Reckwitz (2002) lists multiple strands of knowledge, including background knowledge, know how, states of emotion, motivational knowledge and practical understanding. Furedi (2013) highlights the role of tacit knowledge (Polyani 2009) in supporting political decision making. Welch and Warde (2017)
177 focus on Schatzki’s (2001) general understandings as well as practical understanding (components of specific practices), arguing that the former concept could be helpful in addressing wider cultural understandings in practice theory.
However, despite this complexity, categories of ‘knowledge’ are sometimes simplified in the literature. For example, Shove et al, (2015) because they are seeking to understand the links between and movements of practices:
“…lump multiple forms of understanding and practical knowledgeability together and simply refer to them as ‘competence’ our second element.” (Shove et al. 2015:23)
Gherardi (2016) in addressing the question of how it is possible for practices, which have knowledge as a central platform, to also be creators of knowledge, does not unpack elements of knowledge at all. Typologies of authority may also simplify: identifying only professional (technical-rational) scientific/technical expertise and ‘lived experience’ (Weber 2004, Woods 2004).
The findings in this study suggest practitioners use knowledge/expertise in complex ways to establish authority. Multiple knowledge resources in the findings include:
• Claiming professional practice and disciplinary expertise: current practice in common with team as well as using professional and disciplinary expertise.
178 • Having knowledge and skills to deal with systems and processes: understanding systems, structures and processes as well as having technical skills.
• Knowing what is going on: knowing the data, knowing what staff and students think and understanding internal politics.
Knowledge was used by practitioners both as a tool that enabled successful completion of actions (for instance knowledge of student perception data coupled with understanding of the significance of this supported practical decision making) and as a means through which to establish authority based on inequalities of access to this knowledge (for instance managers/leaders, but not staff, had early access to all student perception data).
Understanding of these elements of knowledge supports understanding of how tributary authorities may combine or contradict in practice. It is possible to see some alignment between typologies of authority and these categories: having knowledge and skills to deal with systems and processes, for example, matches use of technical-rational authority, and ‘using professional and disciplinary expertise’ is captured by Woods’ (2016:58) ‘professional expertise’ if the focus is technical-rational knowledge. After that it gets harder.
When participants talked about professional, practice or disciplinary knowledge it was usually in relation to past or present practice. This might be categorised as either lived experience or professional expertise – probably it was both, but this professional expertise was not technical-rationale, bureaucratic knowledge. Recent or current experiences in higher education practice, or of a particular
179 profession (school, FE or early years) authorised managers/leaders to engage professionally with staff on an equal footing (‘module leader to module leader’). When a DHoD at Hefton said, “How can you possibly talk about learning and teaching if you’re not actually teaching?” she was expressing a sentiment reflected many times in the data: the need for managers/leaders to be able to match staffs’ professional expertise, whether that related to their discipline or to their day to day work. The desire to establish aspects of an equal relationship as a way of simultaneously establishing authority has been found by others. Huising (2013) found that technicians’ attempts to gain authority by understanding academics’ disciplinary expertise was ineffective. The frequency with which this strategy was used by middle managers/leaders at Hefton and Rockborough may highlight the value of a shared professional background.
A further complexity was that there were multiple bodies of professional and practice knowledge: for example, teaching (in school, FE or Early Years), educational research or bureaucratic knowledge. These different bodies of professional knowledge could, and did conflict, indicating problematic nature of treating professional knowledge as a single entity. The ways in which managers/leaders did or did not validate bodies of knowledge authorised some staffs’ expertise over others: an instantiation of the creation of unequal knowledge. . It was not uncommon for ‘pedagogical reasons’ and ‘management perspectives’ to conflict: when they did middle managers/leaders normally supported pedagogical knowledge and sometimes authorised challenges in support of pedagogy.
180 While most knowledge conflicts were across a central unit/departmental divide, conflicts also occurred within the department/school. The clearest example of this was the way in which the HoD at Hefton privileged prior teaching experience over an academic route into HE. In doing so, his opinion (not a matter of truth of course) gave authority to his own experience (in teaching) and also validated the experience of one group of staff at the expense of others.
The question of the direction of the relationship between authority and knowledge is an interesting one. Blencowe writes:
“Authoritative relationships derive from inequalities of knowledge. Authoritative statements provide guidance, judgement or witness from the position of ‘knowing better’…. The force of authority has, then, something to do with the structures and the force of knowledge. But it is clear that the force of authority is not the same as the force of truth itself. To be impelled by authority is not the same as being compelled by reason…. A statement might remain authoritative despite being untruthful, depending upon who declared it and in what circumstance, so authority cannot be the same as truth. Moreover, authoritative statements can refer to matters of opinion, not only of veracity. (Blencowe 2013:15) (My emphasis)
On the face of it the first underlined fragment stands in contradiction to the latter: on the one hand authority is derived from unequal knowledge, on the other the inequality of knowledge is created by the authority of the person who uttered it. In practice these can be true simultaneously as practices both shape, and are shaped by, the actions carried out by practitioners (Hui 2017). In the example
181 above the inequality of disciplinary and teaching expertise was created by the positional authority of the HoD (his place in the bureaucracy) and the values he placed on the two bodies of knowledge, but the authority of those staff with teaching expertise derives from the created inequality between pedagogical and disciplinary expertise.
Another complexity related to the category ‘Knowing what is going on’ which reflected participants’ sense of the need to ‘keep on top of things’. This was shared by senior managers/leaders who expected middle managers/leaders to be able to report back. This was partly about performativity and monitoring compliance but also about understanding in order to enhance interaction and support. Strands included internal or external drivers (knowledge of internal and external politics, government or sector news, internal and external reports, surveys and other data); staff and student views (based on formal and informal feedback) and everyday practice (including compliance with processes and ‘good practice’). It aligned well with Giddens’ (1984) category of practical intelligibility.
My findings suggest that ‘knowing what was going on’ conferred authority in three ways: in a culture of performativity it enabled managers/leaders to intervene if they foresaw problems and also conveyed a sense that managers/leaders knew if staff were ‘non-compliant’; it enabled managers/leaders to build supportive relationships with staff; and it enabled early understanding of highly valued knowledge (such as student survey data) which allowed managers/leaders to ‘know better’ than staff. Huising’s work (2015) supports the contention that this kind of everyday knowledge is valuable
182 in establishing authority: in her study a second set of technicians’ frequent presence in labs enabled them to build positive relationships with academics as well as to identify and correct health and safety contraventions. Technicians’ presence in labs enabled this knowledge to develop which established authority. Effective acquisition of everyday knowledge at Hefton and Rockborough mostly required staff to be present on campus. This was recognised and promoted by senior managers/leaders: the HoS at Rockborough commented ‘We’ve had a big chat about presentism’.
The use of a social practice theory lens, with its focus on knowledge as one element in the practice of authority enabled a finer grained analysis than is usually the case. It revealed layers of complexity and contestation in knowledge that are not normally apparent.