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A image to illustrate Educational leadership: concepts, change and challenges module
This module challenges ideas about what it means to be an educational leader, whatever your current role. Through interactive materials, guided readings, audiovisual case studies, and interviews with practitioners and experts, you'll compare models of leadership. This will help you reflect on your own experience and professional goals and develop new and critical perspectives on leading learning, influencing change, and current leadership debates.
You will study diverse ways of approaching educational leadership challenges around the world in different sectors. Each section of the module is clearly signposted with time for reading, preparing assessments, resources to get to know the library, and a digital bookshelf for a choice of independent reading. As you progress you will be guided to manage your own study, expected to participate in module and tutor group discussions, and prompted to record your professional goals and improvement in leadership practice.
Section 1: Introduction
This is an orientation to the module and to the broad interdisciplinary field of educational leadership. You will start to engage creatively with module themes and postgraduate ways of working with advice from tutors and students. You'll reflect on your professional thinking and practice through a learning journal and forum discussions with other students from diverse international settings.
Section 2: Concepts
This section introduces key concepts, including influence, power, agency, identity, collaboration, culture, and the shape of organisations. As you encounter different theories you are encouraged to question and challenge as you explore what happens if we view leadership in a particular way. You'll consider where ideas about educational leadership come from and how leaders work in organisations especially education and health. You will apply this through activities, case studies and the digital bookshelf and find out about library skills.
Section 3: Change
You'll explore leading for educational change with a focus on what happens before, during and after change initiatives. You'll think about the contemporary drivers for educational change, locally and globally, issues of leadership and gender, how models might help explain change and how change can be sustained. Through activities, readings and audio and video case studies you will explore the role of leadership in supporting change processes and the people involved. You'll think about plans for change in a setting or situation of your choice.
Section 4: Challenges
In this section you'll think about global and local challenges and how educational leaders and organisations may respond and adapt to challenging contexts. One challenge is moving towards sustainability in an era of climate change. Other case studies include providing education for refugees, leading education in a young offender unit, and the wider context of accountability and performance. You'll also investigate the challenges and opportunities of engaging with research on educational leadership. There is an opportunity to explore an aspect of interest through literature and your ability to use concepts and theories within the module to analyse practice.
Section 5: Looking back, looking forward
The closing section provides the opportunity to review and critically reflect on the module, pulling together the strands that have been addressed, in preparation for the end-of-module assignment, which accounts for 50% of your overall grade.
You will need some experience of working with learners either through a teaching, tutoring, training, or professional development context, but it's not essential that you have access to, or currently work in, an education setting. This module will enhance your professional development and practice in the leadership of learning and support your ability to provide educational leadership within your organisation or sector. Students come from a wide range of sectors and backgrounds.
You will have a tutor who will help you with the study material, offer advice and guidance, and comment on and mark your work. You and your tutor will primarily communicate with each other through email, forum threads, and tutorials. Tutorials are offered via online meeting rooms.
Course work includes:
All study materials are provided on the module website, which includes:
EE841 is an option module in our:
Sometimes you cannot count a module towards a qualification if you have already counted another module with similar content. To verify any excluded combinations with this module, check with an adviser before registering.
Educational leadership: concepts, change and challenges starts once a year – in October.
This page describes the module that will start in October 2026.
We expect it to start for the last time in October 2031.
As a student of The Open University, you should be aware of the content of the academic regulations, which are available on our Student Policies and Regulations website.
You should be prepared for study at postgraduate level and have the minimum of a bachelor's degree (in any subject) from a UK University or an equivalent professional qualification. We warmly welcome applications from students who have an undergraduate degree level qualification from universities outside the UK and which is deemed equivalent to a UK higher education degree.
You need to be able to spend approximately 15-18 hours per week on studying this module.
The module website will be available to registered students two weeks in advance of module start. You may find it helpful to explore the guidance entitled ‘supporting your study' that includes activities designed to develop familiarity and confidence with some of the tools you will encounter in the module’s online environment. On registration, you will also have access to the Masters degree in Education website which has a range of resources and introduces you to some postgraduate induction materials.
Written transcripts of any audio components and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) versions of printed material are available. Some Adobe PDF components may not be available or fully accessible using a screen reader (and where applicable: musical notation and mathematical, scientific, and foreign language materials may be particularly difficult to read in this way). Our resources have been accessibility checked and information to support accessibility of these resources will be found on the module website, which is available during study. This includes alternative formats of the module materials where available, which may be extended in the future.
Where possible, we can make reasonable adjustments to facilitate your participation where a learning difficulty or disability may impact studying.
StartEndRegister byEngland fee
03 Oct 202630 Jun 202717 Sep 2026£2,950
If you study this module as part of an eligible qualification, you can apply for a postgraduate loan to support your study costs. To find out more, see Postgraduate loans in England.
Studying with The Open University can boost your employability. OU courses are recognised and respected by employers for their excellence and the commitment they take to complete. They also value the skills that students learn and can apply in the workplace.
Over 30,000 employers have used the OU to develop staff so far. If the module you’ve chosen is geared towards your job or developing your career, you could approach your employer to see if they will sponsor you by paying some or all of the fees.
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Please note: your permanent address/domicile will affect your fee status and, therefore, the fees you are charged and any financial support available to you. The fee information provided here is valid for modules starting before 31 July 2027. Fees typically increase annually. For further information about the University's fee policy, visit our Fee Rules.
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