MA Educational Leadership / Course details

MA Educational Leadership is the ideal programme if you are - or aspire to be - an educational leader, school-based practitioner or educational policymaker. You will be taught by internationally renowned academics in the fields of leadership, management, and school improvement, as well as senior educational experts such as headteachers and policymakers.

This range of voices - and the creative pedagogies we use - will equip you with the knowledge, skills, insights and capabilities to become an inspirational and impactful leader within Education, in any context.

• Examine current theories for examining education policy and practice from a leadership perspective.
• Develop your understanding of the key contemporary leadership issues that influence teachers' performance.
• Enable colleagues to identify issues and develop appropriate school improvement strategies.
• Consider some of the issues of equality, diversity, inclusion and accessibility that enable and constrain leadership practices.
• Develop a range of transferable employability skills which integrate current research and best practice.

• Education has been a discipline of study at Manchester since 1890.
• Our students come from all over the globe, and our qualifications are recognised across the globe.

The course is taught by a teaching team of world-leading academics who focus on the realities of professional practice within their research. This includes:

• Dr Amanda Heffernan (Course Unit Leader of EDUC70531 Examining Education Policy), who is a former public-school principal and an expert in the contemporary challenges that face future and current leaders, policymakers, and international researchers, in ways that highlight the important and complex work of educational leadership today;
• Dr Bee Hughes (Course Unit Leader of EDUC70331 Contemporary Issues in Education Leadership), who is a former headteacher, and an expert in school structures, leadership, and critical policy studies;
• Dr Claire Forbes (Course Unit Leader of EDUC70882 School Improvement), who is an expert in school-community relationships, and how schools might work more collaboratively with local communities and wider agencies to support school effectiveness and improvement;
• Dr Catherine Atkinson (Course Unit Co-Director of EDUC70372 Educational Leadership and Diversity), who is an expert in diversity in education, particularly around gender and sexuality);
• Dr Tee McCaldin (Course Unit Co-Director of EDUC70372 Educational Leadership and Diversity), who is an expert in assessment and examinations, student leadership and research methods.).

Course units are delivered through a range of methods, including lectures, tutorials, group work, case-based approaches and enquiry-based learning. Comprehensive training is provided in the use of electronic resources.

We encourage both individual and co-operative learning and research, in ways that will foster an ethos of lifelong learning.

We aim to build on the expertise of our students, many of whom are experienced teachers, and who bring with them a wealth of knowledge and practical experience from a range of different countries.

Assessment is by eight 3,000-word assignments, or the equivalent, and a dissertation of 15,000 words.

The course is taught by the Manchester Institute of Education (MIE) which has its own Student Hub. Here you'll find all your teaching staff and support staff as well as a place to relax with fellow students.

MIE is based in the University's Ellen Wilkinson building, which is centrally located on the University's Oxford Road campus, close to the Main Library, Alan Gilbert Learning Commons and the Students' Union.