ICTR 2007

Chicago Illinois

PROPOSAL SUBMISSION FORM

Presentation Information:

Title of Session: Setting new standards: explaining how we exercise our educational leadership for sustainable social transformation

Type of Session:

□ Strand 1

□ Interactive Presentation

□ Workshop

□ Symposium

□ Roundtable

□ Strand 2

□ Interactive Presentation

□ Workshop

□ Symposium

□ Roundtable

□ Strand 3

□X Interactive Presentation

□ Workshop

□ Symposium

□ Roundtable

Presenter Information:

Lead Presenter Information:

Name	Jean McNiff
Position	Professor of Educational Research
E-mail	jeanmcniff@mac.com
Address	St Mary’s University College Waldegrave Road, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, TW1 4SX, UK
Telephone	+44 1202 748768
Fax	+44 1202 748768

Additional Presenter 1:

Name	Jack Whitehead
Position	Lecturer
E-mail	A.J.Whitehead@bath.ac.uk
Address	Department of Education, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK
Telephone	01225 816816
Fax

Additional Presenter 2:

Name	Margaret Farren
Position	Lecturer
E-mail	Margaret.Farren@dcu.ie
Address	Department of Education, Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin, Ireland
Telephone
Fax

Additional Presenter 3:

Name	Yvonne Crotty
Position	Lecturer
E-mail	Yvonne.crotty@dcu.ie
Address	Department of Education, Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin, Ireland
Telephone
Fax

Presentation Abstract

This interactive symposium has two purposes: first, to act as a validation event in which four presenters test the validity of their multimedia evidence-based research claims to exercise educational leadership for sustainable social transformation; second, to act as a forum in which the experience of engaging in the validation process will enable all participants to perceive how they also are engaging in generating their living theories of educational leadership through their critical educational engagement.

Presentation Summary

This proposal is for an interactive symposium in Strand 3, ‘Collaboration/Professional Learning Communities. The symposium is organised around the theme of showing how practitioner researchers, who are positioned as educational leaders, can claim justification to be exercising their educational leadership for sustainable social transformation. A key methodological feature of the presentation is to articulate the living standards of judgement used to assess the quality of research-based practices, and to produce appropriate live evidence to support those knowledge claims. The symposium will act as a validation forum for the presenters, as they test the validity of their claims to knowledge, by drawing on the feedback of participants. Through this same process, the symposium will also become a research exercise, in which participants will be encouraged to generate their own living theories of educational leadership.

Aims of the symposium

The aims of the symposium are therefore two-fold. First, we are hoping that the symposium will act as a live validation event in which we present the findings of our collaborative research and test our research claims as educational leaders who are aiming to influence sustainable social transformation. To test our claims, we will organise the symposium so that participants have maximum opportunity to scrutinise our evidence, and offer feedback that will help us to ensure that our research meets the requirements of the UK Research Assessment Exercise, as potentially world leading in terms of its originality, significance, and rigour. This will involve also testing with symposium participants the appropriateness of the methods we develop to test the validity of our claims, as we explain how we transform our values into our living standards of judgement, and present a multimedia evidence base to show the living reality of our claims. We shall also video our live practices in the symposium event itself, to show how we aim consistently to live our values in our practice in all our educational encounters. This will bring us to our second aim, that by involving research participants in this validation exercise, they will come to see how, through the process, they are able also to exercise their potential for educational leadership as they lead us, and themselves, to deeper understandings of our and their own research practices, and offer their explanations for how they do this by generating their own living educational theories of educational leadership practices. And so the symposium becomes a context for the development of reciprocally influential communities of educational research practice, in which all can become educational leaders.

Issues to be addressed

We four presenters are seeking feedback to the following questions:

Do we show how we can justify our claims to be engaged in research that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance, and rigour?
Do we articulate the standards we use to judge the quality of our research-based practices?
Do we explain how we ground these standards in our values, and how the values transform into living standards of judgement? Do we show, through our multimedia evidence base, how our ontological values transform into our social values, and how these guide our practices as educational and visionary leaders?
Do we explain how we have influenced the education of social formations, by engaging with issues of how research can influence cultural and social transformation? Do we produce sufficiently robust evidence to justify our claims that we have done this, in national and international contexts?
Do we show how we engage in inclusional practices at global level by encouraging full participation at the micro-level of the symposium, by creating opportunities for all participants to engage in our, and their own, living research processes?
Do we provide a context, through this symposium, that enables all to claim that theirs is a transformational practice of reciprocally-influential educational leadership?

Anticipated session outcomes

We are hoping that the experience of participating in this symposium will enable all participants to appreciate how they also can generate their own living educational theories as educational leaders by conducting their action enquiries, and test their research-based claims that their research, too, may be judged in terms of its originality, significance and rigour. We are hoping that, collectively, participants can agree the kind of values-based living standards of judgement that are appropriate for judging the quality of practice-based educational leadership research.

Presentation Descriptors

Educational leadership, living educational theories, reciprocity

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