Conflicting priorities: The dichotomous roles of leadership and management at TVET colleges

The notions of leadership and management in the technical and vocational education and training(TVET) sector have become blurred in South Africa. The growing need for responsive and flexibleleadership in the TVET sector has resulted in challenges that can only be overcome with therelevant leadership knowledge and skills. Our findings suggest that the demands of leadershipand management have created conflicting priorities for leaders at the TVET colleges. Leadershipdevelopment in the TVET sector may be one way of addressing these issues. Yet, in South Africa,there are no strategically planned, custom-designed leadership development programmes forleaders in public TVET colleges. A curriculum framework for leadership development should beinformed by these conflicting priorities in order to reprioritise the focus of TVET leaders in SouthAfrica on their core business: that of vocational education. This article reports on current andfuture TVET leaders’ perceptions of how the notions of leadership and management influencetheir practice.