Continuum Evidence-Informed Leadership in Education

This is a research monograph exploring the importance of evidence-based practice and the thinking skills of critical analysis, reflection and reflexivity for evidence-informed leadership in education. In the past three decades politicians, journalists, researchers within the academy, and neo-liberalist critics of state schools have articulated that educational research is neither meaningful or worthwhile. Yet empirical evidence has revealed that research plays a key role in informing decisions made by educational leaders. This book explores the tools needed to conduct ethical educational research, and the contribution post-graduate research might make to the training and development of educational leaders and their thinking and practice within educational settings. Recent debates position the production and use of ethical educational research as important for western governments; Alison Taysum investigates the thinking tools required for such research and examines what good practice looks and feels like. Supported by international case studies, including those from Russia and Pakistan, the study approaches and engages with the role evidence-informed leadership might play in making the Every Child Matters policy contained within the social justice agenda become reality, and the implications for the No Child Left Behind policy in the US and other international educational policies. Review 'Insightful guidance for educational leaders seeking to transform the narrow dictates of national policy directives into opportunities for ethical, collaborative, self-aware, community-engaged approaches to teaching and learning...she demonstrates that social justice commitments can open possibilities even in highly constrained contexts and offers important lessons for leaders across the professions meeting basic human needs in education, health, and social welfare.' Ronald David Glass, Associate Professor of Education, University of California, USA'This book is far more than a philosophical defence of a different mode of thinking about leadership. It is soundly rooted in practice itself and, true to its general message, in the author's own self knowledge. There is a wealth of examples through the case studies.' Richard Pring, Lead Director of the Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training and Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford University, UK About the Author Alison Taysum is Lecturer at the University of Leicester, UK.