Research Methods in Educational Leadership and Management

Ann R J Briggs, Marianne Coleman, Marlene Morrison, Ann R J Briggs, Marianne Coleman, Marlene Morrison, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781446200445, 9781446200438
• eBook ISBN: 9781446260487
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Research in Education

This classic guide continues to be the leading Research Methods text that specifically deals with Educational Leadership and Management. The collection boasts an array of high-profile international expert contributors, covering a wide range of specialisms, emphasising the importance of the critically engaged practitioner.

Accessible and user-friendly, this edition has been fully revised and updated to take full account of online research. It features new authors, more case studies and examples, and brand new chapters on:

- research Design

- grounded research

- ethnography

- discourse analysis

- narrative / Life history

- student voice

Whether you are postgraduate, an academic, or a practitioner researcher, if you are investigating Research Methods, Leadership & Management or Educational Research, this is the book you will need.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Ann R.J. Briggs, Marianne Coleman and Marlene Morrison

Chapter objectives

This third edition of Research Methods in Educational Leadership and Management has been written specifically for researchers in the area. Many will be Masters and Doctoral students in educational leadership, and others will include the increasing range of practitioner-researchers in education throughout the world. In this introductory chapter, we have the following aims:

• To consider the nature of educational leadership and management research.
• To introduce the book as a whole.
• To give an overview of the process of designing and undertaking research in this field.

We welcome a new editor to the team – Professor Marlene Morrison – and many new authors, who have substantially added to the range of perspectives and subject matter presented in the chapters.

We have introduced in this third edition website materials, where you can find additional material for five of the chapters. The website is at: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/briggs

Introduction

This book offers insight and guidance concerning research paradigms, research methodology and research practice which are relevant to any social science researcher. However, our primary focus is on the field of educational leadership and management, and the book draws extensively upon research in this field. In this third edition, we have further strengthened the international focus of the book, and drawn in new international writers. With the increasing use of international comparators for school achievement, and the interplay of policy and practice between countries across the world, there is a worldwide consideration of what constitutes effective leadership and management of educational institutions. Although specific local contexts differ greatly between countries, there are shared concerns about how to lead effectively for the best possible levels of student achievement.

In many countries, there is currently a strong focus upon school and college improvement being addressed through small-scale empirical research, potentially providing a direct link between research and practice. This book has therefore been designed for readers with a range of research experience and levels of theoretical and practical knowledge, and we hope that the various sections and chapters provide a stimulus for thought and action across this spectrum of experience. All of our authors have their own insights and areas of research expertise, and one of the strengths of this and earlier editions of this text has been the range of author voices presented. We hope that the spectrum of approaches, writing styles and individual voices which you will find in this edition enable you to consider your research from a wide variety of perspectives. In addition, this edition has a companion website, where you will find supplementary data and worked examples to support individual chapters.

What is educational leadership research?

Educational leadership research may be seen as twin-focused. It is a systematic enquiry that is both a distinctive way of thinking about educational phenomena, that is, an attitude, and a way of investigating those phenomena, that is, an action or activity. The published outcomes of educational leadership research form the bedrock from which most postgraduate researchers start their own research journeys. Tendencies towards academic elitism, the inaccessibility of research outcomes and the perceived irrelevance of educational research may have left some education leaders, managers and teachers in ‘a vacuum, with the so what? or what next? factors failing to be addressed’ (Clipson-Boyles, 2000: 2–3). The growth of professional doctorates and research-focused postgraduate degrees is seen as a counterpoint to such tendencies. Educational leaders might now feel that they have an ownership of research knowledge and practice. Yet, becoming researchers rather than research recipients brings other challenges.

One potential stumbling block is training in educational research that is almost totally associated with the narrow acquisition of research skills that enable individual small-scale researchers to collect, process and analyse research data. If educational leadership research is both an attitude and an activity, then the task of this book is to invite readers to consider and re-consider educational research not just as a ‘rule-driven’ means of ‘finding out’ what educators did not know before, but as an approach to skilful and intellectual enquiry that is rooted in and shaped by a number of research traditions, and by multiple ways of viewing the educational worlds we inhabit.

Why undertake research into educational leadership and management?

Educational leadership and management as a research field is relatively new, having been developed over the past 40 years (Bush, 1999). It draws upon theory and practice from the management field and from the social sciences. The fields of leadership and of management overlap to some extent, but educational management research may be taken to be a study of the organisational structures of educational institutions, and the roles and responsibilities of staff in organising and directing the work of the institution, including ‘work activities, decision making, problem solving, resource allocation’ (Heck and Hallinger, 2005: 230). Educational leadership research involves analysing the concept of leadership itself, the types and styles of leadership and their relevance to educational settings. Ribbins and Gunter (2002) claim that two important areas of leadership research are under-represented: first, studies of leading: ‘what individual leaders do and why they do it in a variety of specific circumstances, how and why others respond as they do, and with what outcomes’ (Ribbins and Gunter, 2002: 362). Secondly, Ribbins and Gunter call for more studies of leaders: ‘what leaders are, why and by whom they are shaped into what they are, and how they become leaders’ (Ribbins and Gunter, 2002: 362). Thirdly, we might also call for more studies of leadership and management as perceived by those who are most affected by their decisions and actions, for example, learners, an issue pursued by Jacky Lumby in Chapter 16. Finally, we need to move beyond what leaders and others say they think and do, towards more ethnographically centred observations of leadership practices, within and beyond institutional locales.

Research activity seeks to extend our knowledge, and a typology for educational leadership research offered by Gunter (2005: 166) enables us to distinguish between different approaches to knowledge. She offers five such approaches:

• technical – field members log the actualities of practice
• illuminative – field members interpret the meaning of practice
• critical – field members ask questions about power relations within and external to activity and actions
• practical – field members devise strategies to secure improvements
• positional – field members align their research with particular knowledge claims.

The type of knowledge sought links closely with the purpose of the research. For example, a technical study could be undertaken with the purpose of producing a rich description of leadership or management practice, an illuminative study would seek to interpret meanings from the data collected, whilst the purpose of a practical study would be to use the knowledge gained in order to achieve organisational improvement. A critical approach would examine the power relations within the leadership or management activity, for example taking diversity into account, and a positional approach would assess practice against a particular theoretical framework. These different approaches to knowledge affect the type of data collected and the analysis to which the data are subjected.

Research in educational management and leadership is often focused upon potential improvements in leadership activity which could impact positively upon learner achievement. At the very least, undertaking research contributes to the professional development of the individual, but it may also encourage small changes in practice, such as the development of a policy; it may even underpin a major change in the ethos that affects the whole institution, particularly where multiple research projects are involved (Middlewood et al., 1999).

Challenges in researching educational leadership and management

Research in this field presents challenges, and this short section introduces some of them. The educational research field has been criticised for its lack of relevance to the work of educational organisations (see Gorard, 2005: 155 for a summary of these criticisms). In addition, leaders and leadership relationships are difficult to define, and causal factors associated with leadership and management practice are complex, presenting problems for the small-scale researcher, and the range of different types of research undertaken can make it difficult to draw upon previous findings. An insider researcher may have difficulty in accessing the views of more senior staff, particularly in high power distance cultures (Hofstede, 1991).

The educational leadership researcher encounters difficulty in defining who are leaders, who are ‘followers,’ and what their relationship is. Is leadership a construct of the leader (or leaders), created by those whom they lead? And how do we take account of the intricacies of leadership and management of schools, colleges and universities, where an individual may be a leader in one context and a ‘follower’ or team member in another? It is important to acknowledge these complexities, and not to adopt simplistic definitions of leadership too readily.

A further problem met by researchers in the educational leadership and management field is the difficulty (especially for the small-scale researcher) of linking causal factors: for example, linking leadership or management activities to improvement in student learning. The meta analyses undertaken by Hallinger and Heck (1998) and Witziers et al. (2004), which reviewed 40 and 37 research studies respectively, found only weak or indirect effects of leadership on student attainment in the studies reviewed.

However, the literature offers researchers some indication of likely areas for investigation, and two examples are offered here. Firstly, Robinson and her colleagues (2009), in their Best Evidence Synthesis (BES) of literature on the relationship between school leadership practice and student outcomes, identify five leadership dimensions which are perceived to have a direct impact upon student outcomes. They are listed here in order of magnitude of their perceived impact, with the greatest at the top:

1	Promoting and participating in teacher learning and development
2 =	Establishing goals and expectations
2 =	Planning, coordinating and evaluating teaching and the curriculum
4	Resourcing strategically
5	Ensuring an orderly and supportive environment

It is of particular interest in the context of this book that teacher learning and development – which includes the activity of practitioner research – is seen as having a strong impact upon student outcomes. The BES document offers substantial guidance to educational leaders for acting on these findings, and the five dimensions quoted above indicate areas of leadership activity which could usefully form the focus of institutional improvement research.

A much broader conceptual framework is offered by Leithwood et al. (2010: 14–26), who propose four paths of leadership influence on student learning:

The rational path, where variables are rooted in the knowledge and skills of staff about curriculum, teaching and learning.

The emotional path, which encompasses factors affecting the emotions and morale of staff, and thereby their efficacy as teachers.

The organisational path, where variables include the organisational structure, culture, policies and standard operational procedures.

The family path, where influences such as home environment and parental involvement in school are located.

Leithwood et al. discuss the need for leaders to be aware of their potential to influence variables positively across all four of these paths. Educational leadership researchers could usefully examine variables from one or more of the paths to understand better their effect on learner achievement.

Finally, as this book exemplifies, research in the educational leadership and management field encompasses a wide range of possible purposes and approaches. Heck and Hallinger (2005: 232) warn that:

Researchers employing different conceptual and methodological approaches often seem to pass each other blindly in the night. They ask different questions and base their enquiry on widely differing epistemological assumptions. For the field as a whole, greater diversity has not added up to greater accumulation of knowledge.

In considering your own research design, therefore, do not limit your reading and thinking to researchers who ‘think like you’. Through reading papers by investigators who have adopted a particular stance towards their research, or have collected and analysed data sets unlike your own, you will broaden your insight into your own investigation, its conceptual basis, purpose and methodology.

Designing your research: focus and purpose

Gunter (2005: 168) suggests the following interests which educational leadership and management researchers might have:

Learners: who are they, how do they experience learning, how do they progress, and why?

Staff: who are they, how do they experience their work, how are they developed, and why?

Organisation: what formal structures are there in the division of labour, how do they function, and why?

Culture: what informal structure...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword Robert Burgess
• 1 Introduction Ann R.J. Briggs, Marianne Coleman and Marlene Morrison
• PART A: THE CONCEPT OF RESEARCH
• PART B: APPROACHES TO RESEARCH
• PART C: RESEARCH TOOLS
• PART D: ANALYSING AND PRESENTING DATA
• Author Index
• Subject Index