About the Leadership Research Group
The Leadership Research Group (LRG) focuses on research into educational leadership, how it is distinct from other leadership roles, the specific forms of leadership in educational contexts and what makes it effective.
LRG carries out research that covers a broad range of issues in school leadership, including principal preparation and professional development, educational policy and its effect on school leadership, the link between educational leadership and valued student outcomes, and leadership skills, particularly interpersonal leadership skills that are crucial to effective leadership.
Key themes of our research include:
- Effective leadership practices
- Leadership capabilities
- Leadership dispositions
- Open-to-learningTM approaches
The Leadership Research Group is committed to generating high quality research that is informed by practice and contributes to the improvement of practice. As such the research generated by the Leadership Research Group is used across a range of development contracts and activities run under the auspices of the Centre for Educational Leadership. The Centre for Educational Leadership has since 2002 run the national induction programme for first-time school principals and offers further professional development programmes for educational leaders.
Current Leadership Research Group projects
Current research projects of the Leadership Research Group include the evaluation of the effectiveness of specific leadership practice, the teaching of leadership skills required for effective instructional leadership and the analysis of leaders’ goal setting practices.
Some key research themes that we are currently working on are:
- Theories of interpersonal skills in effective leadership
- Qualitative and quantitative methods to measure leaders’ interpersonal skills
- Interventions that improve leaders’ interpersonal skills by teaching the skills and values of Open-to- learningTM Conversation
- Interventions that focus on school leaders’ interpersonal skills and their relationship with student outcomes
- Measurement of leaders’ problem-solving abilities
- The relationship between problem solving and Open-to-learningTM Conversation
- The effectiveness of leaders’ goal-setting practices
- The relative difficulties of specific instructional leadership practices