Ben Gibbs

Ben Gibbs For media enquiries please contact the Press Team
Senior Lecturer Practitioner
Faculty:
Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education and Social Sciences
School:
School of Education
Location:
Cambridge
Areas of Expertise:
Education and teaching , Leadership and management
Courses taught:

Ben is a specialist in leadership development in the education sector, supporting school and college leaders with coaching, facilitation and organisational consultancy. He brings a systems-psychodynamic perspective to the work, enabling leaders to better understand the beautiful complexity of human behaviour in their organisations.

[email protected]

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Background

Following an early career in PR and marketing, Ben re-trained to teach in secondary schools, but found he was more interested in schools as organisational systems than he was in teaching. His eccentric career for the decade thereafter included educational research, UK school policy, independent school marketing and international assessment, as well as voluntary school governance.

Since establishing his own consultancy business in 2010, Ben has consulted on curriculum, leadership, school development and organisational strategy. More recently his focus has been on supporting leadership growth through 1:1 and team coaching, organisational consultancy and the facilitation of opportunities for leaders to shift into ‘higher’ forms of ‘action logic’ and become more effective in increasingly complex contexts.

At ARU, Ben supports several modules on the MBA (Educational leadership and management) programme, and is engaged in the Close to Research Professional Development programme for teachers.

Research interests
  • The psychodynamics of school leadership
  • Resistance to change and complexity
  • Organisational behaviour in schools
  • Systems thinking in schools
  • Transformation of leadership development
Teaching

Ben currently teaches on the following modules:

  • Strategic Management in Education
  • Developing Educational Management Systems
  • Postgraduate Major Project
Qualifications
  • PgDip (Consulting & Leading in Organisations: systems psychodynamic approaches), University of Essex / Tavistock & Portman NHS Mental Health Trust
  • Advanced Award in Organisation Development, CIPD
  • MEd (Leadership and Management), Open University
  • PGCE Secondary English, University of Cambridge
  • BA (Hons) Combined Studies, Anglia Ruskin University
Memberships, editorial boards
  • Chartered College of Teaching: Member
  • Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development: Associate
  • British Psychological Society: Associate