Marlene Morrison

Leadership and leadership development in highly effective further education providers. Is there a relationship

There has been a strong increase in interest in leadership development in recent years, not least in the learning and skills sector. However, little research exists on the relationship between leadership development and actual leadership behaviours in the sector. This study is an attempt to help fill this gap by looking at leadership, leadership development and the relationship between them in 10 case study organizations selected to be amongst the most effective in terms of leadership, but representative of the breadth of the sector. A mixed methods approach was used combining a survey of all staff, focus groups and individual interviews. Findings show that transformational leadership was deemed most effective and that leadership development was relatively uncommon among staff. There was a significant relationship between preferred mode of leadership development and leadership style of respondents.

Leadership and diversity: theory and research

Diversity has become a ubiquitous term within education, often harnessed with a second concept, that of inclusion. Despite heightened interest, theorists in education leadership have remained relatively uninterested in multiple aspects of identity and diversity. This article explores the epistemological and methodological implications of moving forward by considering the symbiosis of how diversity is theorised and researched, and how this relates to existing and future leadership power structures. It suggests that both theory and methodology are currently impoverished and a possible remedy of adopting theoretical and methodological interdisciplinarity. It also explores the structural impediments to progress in the orientation of researchers, practitioners, and those who mandate qualifications and fund research. Finally, it suggests that a concerted and determined effort at multiple levels to move diversity from the periphery to the centre might stand some chance of denting the embedded and disabling exclusion which currently prevails.

Diversity and diversity management: messages from recent research

This article explores a paradox, namely the rhetoric of engagement with diversity and social justice among education leaders, yet the paucity in forward-looking critical theory and practice to develop that engagement. It draws upon relatively new as well as established concepts, including the Capabilities Approach, to suggest how and why diversity management and social justice might be elevated to first-order constructs that inform leadership and its development. The evidence base is recent research for the Learning and Skills Sector, but the implications inform other parts of the education sector in which, as yet, approaches to diversity appear to have changed little. It is suggested that researchers, theorists and policy makers need to join with the education practitioner community to revitalize theory and practice

Partnership, conflict and gaming

Government policy stresses partnership as a critical organizational form of the future to support the development of schooling. This article uses intergroup conflict and gaming theory to analyse data from one partnership. The views of young people and staff are explored to establish the nature and extent of conflict and its impact on the partnership. Gaming theory is used to investigate the engagement and expectations of organizations in the partnership. The article challenges Government rhetoric that suggests that as experience and trust grow, partnership will overcome the barriers which exist as a legacy from previous more competitive and isolationist cultures, to the benefit of service users. It further suggests that the availability of adequate resources alone, if ever achieved, would not in itself create the conditions for successful partnership. Far more attention is required to be given to the complex range of conditions which might support partnership and increase the possibility that the interests of learners would not be subordinated to those of organizations.

Collaborative inter-professional policy and practice: in search of evidence

Collaborative inter-professional practice (IPP) is hailed increasingly by policy-makers and a growing number of practitioners as the new form of professional practice for those working within and across services for children and young people. Based on desk research, and drawing upon an increasingly invasive use of the term ‘collaborative’ at macro as well as micro-levels of the state, this paper interrogates the discursive and organisational forms upon which this ‘new’ advocacy rests and permeates the fields of Education, Health, Social Care, and Social Work, including standards agendas. Definitional complexity is compounded, it is argued, by relative paucity in evidence to demonstrate its benefit to and purposes for users/clients/students and professionals. Summarising evidence from case examples, conclusions draw attention to the need for more rigorous research not only about the benefits and disbenefits of inter-professional education (IPE) and collaborative IPP but also about the purported causal links between them.

Youth perspectives: schooling, capabilities frameworks and human rights

Interviews with 14–19 year olds in England and Wales are analysed to explore young people’s perceptions of the experience of school and of alternative settings for learning such as further education colleges or work‐based learning. Many experience school as oppressive, suggesting a defeasance of their rights as human beings. The paper posits that conceptualisations of childhood, rather than offering protection, may lead to vulnerability, and that in secondary schools there are negative and disabling relationships between teachers and learners. If secondary pupils are conceived as vulnerable and marginalised, frameworks to address issues of social justice and inclusion for disadvantaged groups may be relevant. A capabilities approach to assuring the well‐being of young people is explored as an alternative theory within which to evaluate schooling and to adjust relations between young people and staff.

Exploring identities and cultures in inter-professional education and collaborative professional practice

Although the concept of multi-agency working has been pursued and adopted as the most appropriate way to improve childcare provision and health workforces in recent years, both in the UK and more globally, research suggests that participation in such work can be problematic. This article examines current developments in inter-professional education and collaborative professional practice. Drawing on desk research across the fields of Education, Health and Social Care, it applies a critical lens to re-examine inter-professional working using well-established concepts of profession, identity, culture, career, and training/work transitions. The article uses theoretical hooks to look for similarities and differences in the promotion of inter-professionality across the Education, Health and Social Care sectors, alongside those which occur within each. It looks towards a re-invigoration of knowledge creation and application through research. This is viewed as especially urgent in times of fragmentation, transformation, and arguably, disintegration, in the services its professional and academic educators and workers seek to serve.

Is leadership observable? Qualitative orientations to leadership for diversity. A case from FE

Currently, ethnographic interest in leadership is relatively sparse. This papers focus derives from research about integrating diversity in leadership, and how some leaders are included and excluded from organisational influence in Further Education. Specific interest is in methodological opportunities to research leadership as observed behaviours in sensitive contexts of diversity. Three issues are foregrounded. Firstly, it is argued that notwithstanding the importance of interviews and biographies, research without observation underestimates the significance of whether what leaders do in relation to diversity is what they say they do. A second issue lies in considering whether data collected over seven months during intensive two-day case site visits, might legitimately be labelled ethnography. Thirdly, the ethical issues in defining and researching the diverse characteristics of actual and potential leaders are considered. Conclusions confirm a need to research leadership ethnographically not least to prevent critical perspectives about leadership, diversity and equality being air-brushed from studies of educational administration.

Constructions of diversity. Research among staff leaders in the learning and skills sector

This paper explores the rhetoric of engagement with diversity in post‐compulsory education and discovers paucity in research‐informed practice to develop that engagement among staff and leaders. The paper draws upon new and established concepts to consider how and why leadership development, linked to diversity, might be elevated to first‐order constructs. The evidence base for constructions of diversity is derived from published literature and from staff respondents in recently completed research for the learning and skills sector (UK) in which the author was team member. Findings suggest that first, issues of diversity and diversity management were not of great interest to participants in the study; second, that definitions of diversity were mixed and, where considered, were viewed predominantly as issues of concern for providers located among ‘diverse’ rather than homogenous populations; and third, where it existed, organizational action to promote diversity was episodic, and dominated by outdated concerns to monitor representativeness. Parallels are drawn between this research and studies recently completed in higher education. Research findings inform needs for researchers, policy‐makers and practitioners to penetrate the performance cultures of post‐compulsory education in order to pursue, with emotional intelligence and labour, the strategies required to effect action, revitalize theory, and engage iteratively with diversity.

Equality audits in education: exercises in compliance or frameworks for inclusion?

Ethnography is used sparingly in audits, giving ‘richness’ to phenomena which are preferably measured rather than interrogated. This paper considers the development of qualitative tools for equality audits in education settings, drawing upon an equal status review conducted in Ireland during 2005–2006 with dual interests in anti-discrimination legislation and social inclusion. The focus is on three questions: do equality audits provide frameworks for promoting inclusion? Are prospects for use enhanced by mainly qualitative tools? Are tools applicable more widely without compromising the bases upon which they were originally devised? Conclusions suggest that audits provide helpful starting points in areas of equality legislation that have been previously neglected, provided they are considered alongside other approaches and beyond their litigious implications. Embedding equality is seen as a long-term persistent strategy in which audits exemplify commitments to equality as action rather than rhetoric.