Abstract
Welcome to the July 2021 issue of Management in Education (MiE). This is my first issue as Editor-in-Chief (EiC), a role I have taken over from my predecessor, Dr Jacqueline Baxter, who did a wonderful job during her tenure, introducing a range of new features and raising the profile of MiE both within and beyond the educational research and practice communities. I would therefore like to extend a huge thank you to Jacqueline for her hard work, dedication and innovation over the last 4 years and wish her well in her future endeavours. I also want to say how grateful I am to Jacqueline for overseeing the review process for the articles in this issue.
Furthermore, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the MiE Advisory Board, who have made me feel most welcome and who play such a vital role in the organisational and strategic leadership of the journal.
A few words about your new EiC. I have worked in educational research and academia since 2005, mostly at the University of Manchester (where I am presently based) but with stints at University College London and the University of Nottingham. During that time I have worked with various stakeholders including national, regional and local government on a number of different projects across the educational spectrum. I have also spent time overseas learning about different educational systems and contexts and developing international networks. I should also mention my longstanding association with BELMAS on whose Council I will shortly be assuming a co-opted position. As many of you will know, MiE is a BELMAS publication and so the opportunity to work more closely this organisation is an important one for the journal's ongoing growth and development.
Regular readers will note this is not my first foray into the editorship. Alongside Stephen Rayner, I joint-edited the April 2021 Special Issue of MiE on the theme of school business leadership (SBL). That issue highlighted a group of professionals working in education who have previously been neglected in academic literature. Moreover, it also served to highlight the diverse nature of the leadership and management community within education and the range of professionals that practise and research within this territory. We have been delighted by the response to that special issue, both from the SBL community and from our core readership.
Broadly speaking, my research concerns educational leadership and management (in all its forms) and the means by which professionals engage in collaborative practice and activity. From my perspective, MiE sits at the nexus of all these things, occupying the space between research and practice and between scholarly debate and informed opinion. This, as my predecessors in the EiC role have alluded to, is a difficult balance to achieve and maintain (Baxter, 2021). At the same time it is a challenge that MiE has risen to again and again over the years, evolving to meet the needs of its loyal base whilst building and broadening its readership without losing sight of its fundamental principles and identity. I hope you will continue to support the journal during this next phase of its journey, a phase I look forward to stewarding it through.
This issue contains nine fantastic contributions that showcase the international diversity of the journal. These include three research articles, two opinion pieces, two reflective pieces, an interview and a book review.
We begin with a reflective piece from Kerry Jordan-Daus and Lacey Austin who explore peer coaching through doctoral study. In so doing they draw on their own experiences and trajectories as working professionals combining work and study against the backdrop of Covid-19.
We then have a research paper from Maureen Cassidy, Ximena Burgin and Teresa Wasonga who report on survey research with aspiring superintendents from Illinois through which they consider gender differences in perceived barriers to leadership. Their analysis identifies some intriguing discrepancies between male and female participants and provides an important stimulus for further research and policy in this area.
In the next contribution, Masaaki Sato and Eisuke Saito offer an opinion piece from the Japanese context through which they explore the existing educational inequalities that have intensified as a result of the global pandemic. In doing so they draw on a set of proposals from an expert practitioner to ensure equality of opportunity for every learner.
We follow with a research paper from Oliver Seale, Patrick Fish and Birgit Schreiber. They pick up the gender and leadership baton this time reporting on research from South Africa exploring women’s access to leadership positions in the university sector. While citing systemic and cultural barriers to progress in this area they also draw attention to a growing appetite and motivation among women for leadership development and growth within this context.
In the next article we head to Vietnam where Huong Xuan Ho and Angelina Nhat Hanh Le share their research into benevolent leadership and the organisational citizenship behaviour of academic staff. Findings from a survey of lecturers within the Vietnamese higher education sector identify the mediating effect of leader-member exchange whereby university leaders exercising benevolence can facilitate citizenship behaviours among academic staff.
We then head to Australia where Alison Jones, Nayia Cominos, Narelle Campbell and Chris Rissel offer an opinion piece in which they discuss some of the positive consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for leadership in education. In doing so they provoke us to think about how large-scale disruption can often prove the catalyst to necessary change compelling us to re-evaluate cultural habits and discourses in constructive and purposeful ways. A timely reminder then that, despite the terrible consequences of Covid-19, we need not always view the pandemic through a deficit lens.
The following article is from the “new” middle leaders section that was introduced in the January 2021 issue. Here Eleni Pavlopoulos draws on both her own professional experiences of middle leadership and postgraduate research into this area of practice to explore the challenges of leading from the middle but also the means by which such challenges might be overcome.
Our interviewee in this issue is Paul Campbell, senior school leader in Hong Kong and MiE Advisory Board member, who was interviewed by Jacqueline Baxter (former MiE Editor and Project Lead on UKRI project Strategic leadership of online learning during Covid19 and beyond, about his experiences and perspectives of blended learning during Covid, and the implications for the future of education. A fascinating and insightful discussion that is well worth a read.
We conclude this issue with a review by Deborah Outhwaite of Exploring Teacher Recruitment and Retention: Contextual Challenges from International Perspectives, a thought-provoking examination of international perspectives on understanding and addressing the shortage of teachers.