What you will study
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.