Education Leadership and Management

Leadership, like the world in which we live and work in, is complex and evolving. Leaders need both an awareness and understanding of this complexity so that they develop the knowledge, skills, and tools that they need to be empathetic and effective leaders within the contexts that they lead. This module helps to develop students’ appreciation of issues that can arise in four key areas: educational equity, inclusion within education, diversity within education and excellence in education. Each area will be viewed through multifaceted lenses to ensure that students are developing knowledge of the issue, the debates, and critiques around the issue and the situatedness of the issue in different contexts. Intersectionalities will be explored to ensure that this multifaceted lens considers gender, ethnicity, race, religion and sexual orientation and the impacts that this may have upon our knowing, understanding, and leading through the issue.

The module offers opportunities to consider how principles and practices of social justice might be enacted through the work of leaders in their local educational contexts. Students will develop an understanding of how tools and concepts from thinkers such as Paolo Freire, bell hooks and Michel Foucault might support critical reflection on a range of educational contexts. We will consider the possibilities of change within the constraints and potentials of those contexts through an examination of organisation strategies for improvement. Students will focus on theories and models of learning and school improvement that have the potential to bring about positive change through working dialogically with the diversity of people in school communities.

Students will explore tools and concepts drawn from theoretical and research literature that problematise schools and schooling in ways that support students in critically appraising the institutions in which they work. As the module progresses students will consider the limitations and possibilities of the role of school leaders in creating positive environments for learning and teaching. Students will apply their developing knowledge to a critical appraisal of their local contexts and consider how they might plan to facilitate positive change. During the module students will identify one area of change they would like to see in their current setting and consider how they might work towards that change within its constraints. Seminars will be as participatory as possible and will depend on students engaging in reflective reading beforehand.

Schools, particularly in English and western contexts, have been strongly influenced by the industrial model of education, which ensured that growing populations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries could be effectively and efficiently educated to meet the needs of nations. However, schools and the education systems in which they are a part, have often found it challenging to break free from this model of education despite changing social needs, emerging research, and the desire of stakeholders for reform. Robinson (2009) and Senge (2006) offer critiques of contemporary education systems that continue to conform to factory models suggesting that reforms within the system could lead to change and benefit various participants within the system. Such critiques are in line with the transnational and global nature of education while they can also be levers for change at the local and national levels. In short, schools today rarely exist as solitary education entities, alone and with authority rooted in one leader and situated in one community. Schools, and those who lead schools, groups of schools and education systems, are therefore increasingly challenged to take a holistic rather than an atomistic stance in addressing educational issues.

System leadership is not a different model of leading schools, organisations or systems within a locality, region, or nation, but rather it reflects the mindset that the leader adopts in their leadership practice. System leaders embrace a holistic rather than an atomistic view of organisations recognising that schools and organisations rarely thrive independently today but are embedded within complex systems. This approach is commonly called system thinking. System thinking and system leadership has its origins within business, however, the growth of systems and the interdependence of systems within nations and across nations has seen its adoption in other sectors such as education. The interconnections between schools and organisations and their connections to the wider cultural, social, and political frameworks in nations encourage system leaders to adopt this practice to create change and reform.

The module introduces students to the key issues and dilemmas surrounding research in the broad field of education, while also enabling them to develop a critical understanding of research on policy and practice within their specialist area. The module provides opportunities to engage with the philosophical foundations of educational research and to explore the values, purposes and ethical considerations that underpin research methodologies. Students will also be introduced to and consider the practicalities of planning, conducting and completing a small-scale research study in their specialist area, with an emphasis on common methods of data collection and interpretation that are accessible, relevant and appropriate to students’ needs.

This module, which is cross-listed across the three MA programmes, develops students’ knowledge and understanding of empirically and theoretically based educational research in diverse contexts. The module is designed to cater for a range of students on the MA programmes, many of whom are practicing professionals within educational or early childhood settings. Some students may not yet be practitioners in their fields but will have knowledge and understanding broadly. Moreover, some will have more experience of research than others. This module takes a supportive approach in structuring teaching and learning to scaffold, support and challenge students as needed. Successful completion of the module will provide students with the knowledge, understanding and research tools to enable each student to design and plan their own research project (empirical or theoretical) as part of their Research Project module.

The Research Methods module provides you with an opportunity to research an area of bespoke interest to you within your field of study - Education, Education Leadership and Management or SEND and Inclusive Education* – developing your skills in the design, development, management and delivery of your research project. After developing and honing the research focus for your project, you will work with your supervisor to create the research questions and research design that will underpin the research that you wish to do. Working independently, but in close consultation with your supervisor, you will then carry out the research that you have designed drawing upon key project management skills to move the research from inception to finished product. You will demonstrate your ability to critically analyse, synthesise and make recommendations through the submission of a written dissertation. A key goal of the research project is for you, as a researcher and/or practitioner, to add to the knowledge in the area that you are researching. This knowledge may then be disseminated via your publication in journals, presentation to colleagues or a CPD session in your school or organisation.

Postgraduates, who earn the Master of Arts degree, should have both an advanced and in-depth knowledge and understanding of their field of study, which is underpinned by an appreciation of current practice and scholarly research in the field. Students must be able to demonstrate a critical awareness of issues and developments in their subject area, an understanding of their professional responsibility within the field of study, knowledge of both research integrity and ethics as well as an ability to demonstration reflection and reflexivity as a researcher. These skills will be evidenced in your engagement with the research project, in your Pecha Kucha presentation and in the written dissertation.

*Your project must focus and be clearly linked to an area within the field of your MA degree allowing you to demonstrate in-depth knowledge of an agreed research area.