Brown Bag: School Environment & Leadership Research: Methodological Challenges and their Impact for Schools (11/15/22)

Catch up with the recording and slides from RPPL’s November 2022 Brown Bag on research on school leadership.

By Rob Coe | Evidence Based Education

Research on school leadership is abundant and influential. Claims about the characteristics or behaviours of effective leaders, along with streams of advice for leaders, are likewise abundant. Training in school leadership is also big business, supported by substantial government and private funding in many jurisdictions. Amid all this activity, it seems appropriate to ask about the strength of the evidence base that underpins it: How much do we really know about what makes a great school leader? What do we know about how to help school leaders to be even better? In this session, Prof. Coe will argue that a significant part of the school leadership literature, including some of the most cited and influential studies, contains methodological flaws that make its claims untrustworthy. Common practice in measurement falls short of acceptable standards: in defining its concepts, designing and constructing measures to operationalise them, and validating the interpretation of those measures. Much of the plentiful and eagerly attended advice that is given is not clear, actionable, or scientifically verified, and the field is riddled with spurious, often implicit, causal claims that are simply not warranted.