EDUC46430: Effective Educational Leadership

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• To develop a critical understanding of effective processes and practices of leadership and leadership development within and across schools and educational institutions, i to achieve enhanced teaching and student outcomes.

• Effective educational leadership has been recognised to have a vital impact on stimulating professional growth for staff and ensuring continuous improvements in teaching and learning outcomes. Leadership also plays a critical role in building collaborative culture and promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) within and across educational organisations.
• There have been major trends globally, that have influenced our understanding of what effective leadership as well as what the scope and reach leadership should entail. These trends include a focus on attention from a singular leadership approach to distributed leadership, the increased use of networks across schools to drive educational improvement, and the greater emphasis on the use of multiple sources of evidence to inform practice.
• This module is designed to engage with theory and (emerging) evidence on effective leadership practices and processes to promote the impact of leadership on educational outcomes. The module will cover four major and inter-related topics as follows.
• Topic 1. Theories and models of leadership and management.
• Topic 2. Leadership for equity, diversity and inclusion.
• Topic 3. Models of professional learning and networking.
• Topic 4. Leadership development and learning.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Knowledge and critical understanding of leadership and management in education;
• Knowledge and critical understanding of leadership for promoting equity, diversity and inclusion;
• Knowledge and critical understanding of processes and practices of leadership development;
• Knowledge and critical understanding of models of professional learning and networking.

Subject-specific Skills:

• By the end of the module students will be able to:
• Critique key theories of leadership and management;
• Develop strategies to build leadership capacity;
• Identify and address challenges and tensions around professional learning and leadership development;
• Develop strategies to build professional networks;
• Critically reflect upon and challenge the relationship between theory and practice.

Key Skills:

• Demonstrate the ability to research, select, critique and synthesise literature, into a coherent written argument;
• Demonstrate the ability to evaluate educational research;
• Communicate complex ideas effectively;
• Learn independently and collaboratively.

• The module is delivered through a series of interactive workshops that are designed to introduce students to the key theories, concepts and ideas of the module. The format of each workshop will vary but workshops will offer students the opportunity to explore theories, reflect on ideas and discuss with peers and tutors the merits and limitations of current understandings. These workshops will build on preparatory and in class activities and set readings and offer students the opportunity to explore key concepts and construct their own understandings of the relevant literature.
• Classroom teaching and learning is supplemented by a series of preparatory tasks which students will be required to do in time for each of the workshops. These tasks will include, for example, reading specific case studies of change in educational organisations and being ready to discuss the case taking a particular perspective.
• Summative assignment will be developed in a written format of 5000 words. In the summative assignment, students will engage with the literature to discuss and critique, in depth, (an) issue(s) relevant to the topics covered in this module.

The module contains a number of opportunities for formative feedback through the discussions in the workshops and tutor and peer comment on paper summariesand/or online discussion forum. There is a formative assessment task specifically designed to support students in the development of their summative work. Students will prepare an outline, maximum 2 pages, of (an) issue(s) to be discussed in their summative assigment and identify a sample of the relevant literature that will be used to discuss and critique that/those issue(s). Students will receive the module tutor's oral feedback on these outlines in a session/meeting.

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