Research activities

Cluster for Leadership in Education

Our role is to highlight the importance of effective leadership and enterprise workforce functioning through research and practice.

The Leadership in Education research cluster brings together expert researchers and practitioners with knowledge, interest in, and experience of researching leadership in organisational workplaces, including research theories, practices, models, dialogic engagement, vocational training, progression and employment opportunities. Our goal is to focus on strategic and operational leadership and management issues and questions investigating workforce systems and communities of practice, values, trust, social justice, effective functioning, equality and equity, notably in relation to the education, healthcare, human sciences and public sector workforces. As a research cluster within the Institute for Lifecourse Development Centre for Professional Workforce Development, our role is to highlight the importance of effective leadership and enterprise workforce functioning through research and practice, providing insights and problem-solving new knowledge in collaboration with local, national and international partners.

Our leadership and education experts have published widely, developing partnerships across five continents and applying mixed methods, quantitative and qualitative research to investigate and provide solutions for a wide range of leadership and enterprise issues and problems.

Our Specialist Themes

The Cluster for Leadership in Education (CLE) specialises in the following themes:

  • Educational and public sector leadership and management
  • Higher, further, adult, vocational and community education
  • Post-compulsory education and lifelong learning
  • E-leadership/digital leadership
  • Educational technology
  • Trust and leadership
  • Communities of practice
  • Dialogic engagement in knowledge management processes
  • Values, cultures and organizational models
  • Professional developing in coaching and training

Our Experts

Professor Jill Jameson – Chair, Leadership and Enterprise Research Cluster and Professor of Education. Jill is an expert in e-leadership, leadership and management, educational technology, post-compulsory education/lifelong learning, communities of practice, trust and dialogic engagement through knowledge management processes.

Podcasts:

BERA (British Educational Research Association), Digital Leadership and Trust in Education in a Crisis” as part of the Educational Technology and COVID-19 collection.

Research in Leadership in Schools, Early Childhood Settings and Social Care settings podcast collection, Distributed Leadership (no. 2)

Professor Ian McNay - Professor Emeritus for Higher Education and Management. Ian is an expert in strategic management, leadership in higher education, organisational cultures, values, and REF/RAE research assessment.

Professor Gordon Ade-Ojo - Professor of Language and Literacy Policy in Lifelong Learning and Academic Lead for the CPD portfolio. Gordon is an expert in literacy, language, vocational enterprise, employability and project management.

Dr Nataliya Rumyantseva - Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Organisational Behaviour, Faculty of Business. Nataliya is an expert in leadership who explores complex relational organisational dynamics, including trust, conflict, trauma and coping mechanisms.

Dr Minjie Cai – Lecturer in Human Resources and Organisational Behaviour, Faculty of Business. Minjie is an expert in the rationality and irrationality of human resource management from sociological perspectives including ethnicity, workplace inclusion and employee wellbeing.

Dr Marianne Markowski - Research Fellow, School of Health Sciences. Marianne is an expert in co-design processes, digital arts, and older people in technology and the arts, affective experiences, organization and delivery of person-centred care.

Mr Jim Gritton - Doctoral student in leadership in education. Jim is an expert in leadership and management in health and social care and in the criminal justice system.

Research Projects

Building Trust, Visible/Invisible Leadership and Shared Knowledge in a Community of Practice for Dialogic Community-Police Conflict Resolution

Professor Jill Jameson, Dr Nataliya Rumyantseva, Dr Ryan Evans, Lisa-Maria Reiss

Jameson’s longitudinal research on the co-construction of a knowledge-sharing inquiry in a twenty-year participatory multi-stakeholder youth arts community of practice (CoP) is based on work with Second Wave Youth Arts in Deptford, Lewisham.

This long-term dialogic conflict resolution partnership involves Jameson as senior educational research adviser working with Second Wave, local and London-wide schools, the Metropolitan Police, Territorial Support Group, Lewisham, other London Councils, Prevent and Safeguarding staff, volunteers, the Home Office, and Mayor’s Office.

The CoP aims to facilitate sociocultural learning and ‘interthinking’ through dialogic conflict resolution in exploratory talk (Mercer and Wegerif, 2004) linked to youth-centred creative partnership activities such as youth-police Critical Encounters role reversal improvisations of Stop and Search practices in a safe dialogic space (Jameson et al., 2006).

The research team has collected evidence via interviews (n=15) , a forum (n=30), surveys (n=15), testimonials (n=10) and dissemination to schools (n=6,800+), to record the impact of the Challenging Hate Crime Partnership and related underpinning research on building trust, shared knowledge, and leadership, derived from the HEFCE-funded CAMEL and JISC-funded eLIDA CAMEL e-learning CoP model (Jameson et al., 2006; Jameson, 2008) that forms a major part of the long-term dialogic conflict resolution partnership process.

Data collected is demonstrating that dialogic conflict resolution between young people and the police and mutually respectful sharing of tacit knowledge in an intentional community of practice is of crucial relevance and benefit to partners working together to alleviate hate crime in the context of low social trust and fracturing community-police relations.

References

Jameson, J., Ferrell, G., Kelly, J., Walker, S. and Ryan, M. (2006). Building trust and shared knowledge in communities of e-learning practice: collaborative leadership in the JISC eLISA & CAMEL lifelong learning projects. British Journal of Educational Technology. 37, 6: 949-968. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2006.00669.x

Jameson, J. (2008). The eLIDA CAMEL nomadic model of collaborative partnership for a community of practice in design for learning. Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 197-206. http://www.ejel.org/volume6/issue3 Online ISSN: 1479-4403

Kershner, R., Hennessy, S., Wegerif, R., Ahmed, A. (2020). Research Methods for Educational Dialogue, Bloomsbury Research Methods for Education. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

LCPCG (2007). Stop & Search: The Way Forward Conference Report, Jameson, J. for the Lewisham Community Police Consultative Group: Lewisham Council.

Mercer, N., and Wegerif, R. (2004). Is ‘exploratory talk’ productive talk? In Daniels, H., & Edwards, A. (Eds), The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Psychology of Education (pp. 67–86). London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The Visible and the Invisible, Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Claude Lefort, Ed. and Alphonso Lingis, Trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press.

SWYA (2021) Second Wave Youth Arts and the University of Greenwich Challenging Hate Crime Partnership

HIVE-PED: Higher Vocational Education and Pedagogy 

Professor Jill Jameson, Professor Patrick Ainley, Professor Gordon Ade-Ojo, Sharon Smith and Hugh Joslin

Working with experts in higher vocational education and post-compulsory education this Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) Research Seminars Project on Higher Vocational Education and Pedagogy (HIVE-PED) in England, involved a wide range of professors and expert academics/practitioners and policymakers from the Institute of Education, Birmingham University, Huddersfield University, King's College London, BiS, Linking London, NIACE, and numerous other partners in the UK, Europe, the US, Australia and South Africa.

ELITE: Developing Higher Education Leadership in Ukrainian Universities 

Professor Ian McNay, Professor Jill Jameson, Dr Nataliya Rumyantseva and Francia Kinchington

Working with university experts, this TEMPUS-funded leadership in higher education continuing professional development programme develops a range of knowledge and skills in leadership, management and communication in higher education, including strategic and operational creativity, innovation and flexibility. The ELIE programme (Education in Leadership, Intelligence and Talent Encouraging) involves a wide range of partners from across Ukraine and the EU.