Educational Leadership and Management MBA

Core modules

• Strategic Management in Education

  This module will focus on developing a deeper understanding of effective strategic planning in order to achieve organisational aims. Students will need to be able to make clear links between the strategic planning and the strategic vision of their institutions. They will engage with theoretical models that will encourage them to evaluate and review existing provision and to consider planning for improved management within their institutions. They will combine independent reading and wider research with focused work based learning to draw from real context experience and practice. They will develop an implementation plan in the form of a presentation complete with rationale and reflective commentary.

• Leading Educational Change and Improvement

  Within this module students will engage in theory and wider research in relation to performance evaluation, leading change, and improvement planning and change management. Students are required to use metrics and their knowledge and understanding of benchmarking performance in order to identify an area of practice that would benefit from improvement they will produce a critically reflective commentary that will provide the underpinning rationale for the action plan, linked to models of good practice. The commentary will be required to evidence a deep level of understanding of change management and include proposed strategies for mitigating against any perceived barriers to change.

• Developing Effective Management Systems

  This module will enable students to engage in a process of critical evaluation and analysis to focus upon systems for managing information, relationships including staff and stakeholders, communication and reporting. Ensuring knowledge is managed effectively in order to provide comprehensive information that will facilitate efficient leadership and management in relation to staff, stakeholders, finance, facilities and measures for dealing with wider policy issues. This module encourages students to focus on internal and external systems in order to engage in a meaning review of their own organisation whilst drilling down to evaluate procedural systems and the effectiveness of information management. The module will concentrate on programme rather than project management and students will not only review and evaluate their own systems and processes, but also engage in wider research by comparing and contrasting management systems across other organisations; either from education, associated disciplines such as health or social care or from industry.

• Professional Enquiry in Education

  This module offers students the opportunity to develop specialist knowledge and expertise in an area of personal and professional interest, relating to education. The notion of enquiry used in this module is broad and is intended to reflect the contributions which students bring to advanced study of education from both their academic and professional contexts. Students may pursue individual or small group enquiries or a larger group of students may work, with a specialist tutor, to enquire into an agreed subject area together.

• Research Methodology

  The module examines diverse approaches to educational research and explores research ethics, methodologies, methods and design. The module will draw upon a range of research literature and theory so that students are exposed to the idea of challenging existing theoretical stances and philosophical aspects of educational research. The module is designed to support the needs of postgraduate students who are ready to prepare a major project proposal. This module will incorporate peer group and tutor-facilitated discussions and observations plus tutor inputs and small group and whole group study.

• Major Project

  The Major Project is central to the Masters award and enables you to demonstrate your ability to synthesise learning from previous modules. You will use this learning as the basis for planning, conducting and writing up a research or work-based project. This is the opportunity for you to demonstrate the ability to raise significant and meaningful questions in relation to your chosen topic and a critical understanding of research methods and their relationship to knowledge. You will also be in a position to develop solutions to ethical dilemmas likely to arise in your research or professional practice and to expand existing knowledge to contribute to the development of best practice.

Please note that you will need to complete all of the above core modules. This course does not have any optional modules. Modules are subject to change.