Developing Educational Leadership: Using Evidence for Policy and Practice

Citation

Holyoak, L. (2004), "Developing Educational Leadership: Using Evidence for Policy and Practice", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 308-309. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437730410531092

Developing Educational Leadership is one a series of volumes directed at leaders of schools. The book originated from a conference and it aims to examine the role of good quality research evidence in informing educational policy and practice. On the way it takes in the debate about whether current research on education is good, and whether the analogies drawn between education and health (the basis of the emphasis on evidence informed policy) are sound. Rather than being a book about how to develop leaders in the sense of training them, this is a book about the search for good evidence that can be used to make decisions about policy in educational leadership.

The book is arranged in two parts, after a brief introduction by the editors. Part one (comprising five chapters) is about the need for evidence informed policy, and how we gather that evidence. The first two chapters set the scene of Government thinking in this area: the reasonable suggestion that policies should be informed by evidence (at all times being careful to draw a distinction between evidence‐based and evidence‐informed policy). The remaining three chapters examine where that evidence can come from, and deal in particular detail with systematic reviews as the method of choice. The second part deals more with application. The first contribution is on the experience of carrying out a systematic review. Then follow two chapters dealing with the issues for practitioners, including those carrying out research into their own, or their school's, practice. A rather brief chapter deals with the particular issues surrounding research about the learning and skills sector, and is followed by the only chapters contributed by practising school leaders. The final chapter is a fairly critical review of an aspect of systematic reviews.

Although, I was initially drawn into the arguments the contributors were making, I was quite glad when the book ended, albeit rather abruptly. I cannot quite put my finger on where it started to cease to appeal: was it the repetitive nature of some of the contributions on the theme of systematic reviewing, or was it the feeling that I was drowning in abbreviations, or maybe it was because I eventually felt like an outsider? The early chapters could appeal to anyone who has an interest in research, but after that it needed a bit more inside knowledge of the schools system than I had, to fully understand it. There is little here about leadership of organisations in general. In fact it is only very close to the end of the book that something is said about this, and then it is in the findings of a small‐scale survey of head teachers, which (amongst other things) concludes that head teachers do not see themselves as organisational managers. I might have been left with a more positive feeling about the book if it had included a concluding chapter by the editors to bring it all back together. It often seems to be the case with edited books, that although the editors feel obliged to set the ball rolling, their presence is not felt at the close of proceedings; almost as if they have slipped away while the reader was not looking and gone to do something more interesting instead. I am sure this book will appeal to a particular audience, but I think there is little here that would attract someone interested in organisations in general.