Educational Leadership
The rationale for my research is related to its contribution in fulfilling the new standard for teachers’ professional development of the Teachers’ Professional Development Expert Group (2016) in their description of effective practice in professional development of teachers:
High-quality professional development requires workplaces to be steeped in rigorous scholarship, with professionals continually developing and supporting each other. (Professional Development Expert Group, 2016, p. Preamble)
Amanda Spielman (2019), the Chief Inspector of OFSTED in her Twitter feed stated:
“Two words sum up my ambition for the framework and which underlie everything we have published today: substance and integrity.”
From this perspective of integrity and focus on substance in education, the Ethical Leadership Commission (2019) in the, ‘Navigating the Moral Maze’, report also highlight values as an integral requirement to retain leaders for the future of schools.
This call for integrity and moral purpose by school leaders in the new OFSTED framework, coming into schools in September 2019, will require space for the development and reflection on the ontological and epistemological values that drive the individual leader’s moral purpose. Within a framework of research, that forms the heart of a practitioner’s professional development, a methodology is needed that enables them to clarify and nurture their own constellation of embodied values and identify the embodiment of professional integrity. Living Theory Research (LTR) methodology (Whitehead, 2010) enables the researcher to identify their life-affirming values and use these as their explanatory principles and standards of judgement when creating their own living-theory and their living-theory methodology. The educational practitioner’s values are clarified and nurtured through the process. As the educational-practitioner generates their own living-theory they find where they are living contradictions (places in their practice where their values are contradicted) or are not living their values as fully as they can, and try to find ways of improving. This can also help to engender the belief of the educational practitioner that they can make an educational difference.
Leadership Living Archive - Spirals
