Context-specific leadership and the governance of work-integrated learning in Alberta's higher education policy

Abstract

Educational leadership in higher education increasingly unfolds under conditions of policy ambiguity, governance complexity, and reform pressure. Leaders are required to interpret indeterminate mandates, negotiate competing institutional and political logics, and sustain higher education's civic and educational purposes amid growing demands for market alignment. This study examines how leadership is enacted as context-specific policy work within Alberta's postsecondary system, focusing on the implementation of work-integrated learning (WIL) under Alberta 2030: Building Skills for Jobs strategy. Drawing on a contextual-interpretive framework of leadership enactment, the study conceptualizes leadership as a set of interrelated processes - interpretation, mediation, translation, adaptation, and reflection - that traverse macro, meso, and micro contexts. Based on interviews with fifteen leaders across universities, colleges, and polytechnics, the findings show that leadership emerges through sense-making, relational governance, moral judgment, and ongoing redesign rather than through positional authority or formal control. The study advances the context turn in higher-education leadership by offering a mechanism-based account of leadership enactment, highlighting how institutional actors construct coherence, equity, and purpose within uncertain and evolving policy environments.