An interview with Eric Addae-Kyeremeh about his views on the pressing question ‘What makes useful evidence for educational leadership practice?’ as advice for leaders in educational settings

Addae-Kyeremeh, Eric

Fox, Alison

English

Eric Addae-Kyeremeh

Alison Fox

Crossref

Management in Education

What makes useful evidence for educational leadership practice? An interview

Open Research Online (Open)

Open Research OnlineThe Open University’s repository of research publicationsand other research outputsWhat makes useful evidence for educational leadershippractice? An interviewJournal ItemHow to cite:Addae-Kyeremeh, Eric and Fox, Alison (2018). What makes useful evidence for educational leadership practice? Aninterview. Management in Education, 32(1) pp. 53–55.For guidance on citations see FAQs.c© 2018 British Educational Leadership, Management Administration Society (BELMAS)Version: Version of RecordLink(s) to article on publisher’s website:http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1177/0892020617748155Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyrightowners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policiespage.oro.open.ac.ukInterviewWhat makes useful evidence foreducational leadership practice?An interviewEric Addae-KyeremehFaculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UKAlison FoxFaculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UKI’m interviewing Eric Addae-Kyeremeh about his views onthe pressing question ‘What makes useful evidence for edu-cational leadership practice?’ as advice for leaders in edu-cational settings; so, welcome Eric.Eric is Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Managementand a Chartered Fellow of both The Chartered Manage-ment Institute and BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. Heis currently the Associate Head of School  Innovation inthe School of Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport withoverall responsibility for teaching and learning innovation,business development, and staff professional development.He is also an active member of BELMAS.So, Eric what counts as evidence and here we’re talkingabout specifically that which is relevant for educationalleadership practice?Well, evidence will encompass a range of data types andinformation used to support or contradict a claim, assertionor even a hypothesis as you find mainly in the sciences.Unlike anecdotes or an individual’s opinion, evidence isbroadly supposed to provide some objective basis to helpus make decisions and draw some sensible conclusions. Sowhat actually counts as evidence I think requires you to usea critical eye to look at what actually will help you makethose informed decisions, because that’s what it’s all about.Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) present an interesting per-spective that can be used as a lens for looking at what couldcount as evidence or useful intelligence and knowledge tosupport educational leadership practice. So, firstly theydescribe ‘knowledge for practice’ which refers to the kindof formal knowledge that is often located in what peoplecall academia. So, we’re researching practice to be able toprovide this huge spectrum of knowledge or evidence thatwill inform practice going forward. Some of this type ofevidence can be contestable but in the main is very helpfulin numerous ways from thinking about micro innovationsthat have impacted pupil attainment to much more systemlevel evidence that have been generated as part of large-scale change or quality improvement. Then there’s ‘knowl-edge in practice’ which is what we as educational leaderswould have experienced over the years through our ownpractice leading and evaluating change, implementingimprovement plans, evaluating innovative approaches tolearning, dealing with difficult situations, making sure thatwe are communicating effectively with our teams and soon. Then there’s ‘knowledge that would be brought inbased on the practice of others’ that we work with, withinthe same educational setting. So, we’re looking at thingshappening in the school’s classrooms, things around theschool boundaries - all informing our practice. So, usingthis lens gives us an idea of how different types of evidencecan be used to inform our practices.So, what different sources of data are available to edu-cational leaders for them to be able to use as evidence?A first source of evidence could be what I’ll describe asexperiential evidence or practitioner expertise which, in aschool for example, would reside in collective knowledgeof what works and what doesn’t. In some cases leaders mayhave worked from first-line management to middleCorresponding author:Eric Addae-Kyeremeh, Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and LanguageStudies, Stuart Hall Building (level 3), The Open University, MiltonKeynes MK6 7AA, UK.E-mail: e.addae-kyeremeh@open.ac.ukManagement in Education2018, Vol. 32(1) 53–55ª 2018 British Educational Leadership,Management & Administration Society(BELMAS)Reprints and permission:sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/0892020617748155journals.sagepub.com/home/mieMiEmanagement and progressed to senior management andthrough all those years gathered a lot of evidence in termsof what works and what doesn’t work so practitioner exper-tise for me could provide a useful evidence base, when cap-tured. The professional and decisional capital that resides inthe school or educational setting is valuable evidence thatmust not be forgotten. I am aware some academics might notshare this view, and would argue that this is problematic as itis rooted in specific personal views but I think a great num-ber of practitioners base their decisions on experiential evi-dence. The second type is general management andinformation data collected or generated within the schoolor college environment or a Higher Education Institution(HEI). For example, we’re increasingly gathering a lot ofinformation and evidence about classroom practice; infor-mation about performance, progression across a year group,progression through Key Stage one and two, etc. we arelooking at spending that has gone on pupils with free schoolmeals and other measures linked to ’pupil premium’ fundingand how that is impacting the work these children are doingin the classroom. In every setting we’re probably looking atdisadvantaged groups or we’re looking at those with specialeducational needs and other groups of students and how tosupport them based on the data we collect about what ishappening in relation to measures of their learning and prog-ress; then we’re making what we consider to be appropriateinterventions. So that is a massive evidence base that we useto inform our practice. A third type is academic, researchevidence that is available; that which you and I are involvedin generating. That sort of work, where we’re researchingand examining what works in various different areas of edu-cation in schools, Further Education settings and HEIsthrough to non-formal education, is trying to bring outenough evidence in terms of what people are doing as toilluminate effective practices that people have tried. Some-times research is about asking broader, very difficult ques-tions around issues of social justice, race and gender, specialeducational needs, inclusion and our own leadership prac-tice. There’s a fourth type – mainly relevant reports thatinform our practice - the kind of other published work or’grey literature’ which would not be published in an aca-demic or peer reviewed journal. So, any publication that maybe coming out of government like policy directives from aMinistry of Education for any specific country and fromstakeholders (including professional associations, the unionsetc.) who contribute to the improvement of schools and edu-cational settings. These organisations commission all sortsof enquiries and publish all sorts of information, which pro-vide evidence that we can draw on to inform our practice.How can these different data sets be useful to educa-tional leaders?I’d say this will depend on the type of evidence we aretalking about. I say so because some of the evidence drawnfrommanagement information data held in various formats inthe educational setting are much more straightforward tointerpret and use than others. For example, evidence we gen-erate about attendance and progression of students will beuseful in developing and targeting specific interventions forthese students or groups of students. Educational leaders willalso gather evidence around their institution to inform deci-sions around quality improvement plans and to assure stake-holders that they have clear strategies in place to continuouslyimprove. These data sets are readily available. However, thedata sets and evidence that reside in published journals canalsohelp direct practice and how resources are used. So,whenwe know from research evidence that particular strategieshave worked elsewhere in a similar setting to ours, we cansupport our staff to try those strategies they aren’t usingalready. But I must say evidence around the quality of learn-ing, teaching, and assessment is complex because sometimesour ability to draw associations with particular variables canbe elusive.Mainly because it is often challenging to establishcausalitywhenweknowanumber of issuesmaybe impactingonwhy a pupil is not learning effectively for instance, or whystudents find a particular subject difficult. These are impor-tant questions that leaders are always interested in but themanagement information evidence can only tell part of thestory. So, the educational leader may want to draw on othersources as well, including research conducted by others thatare peer-reviewed and published. But then one has to be care-ful when drawing on such evidence because sample size,scope, scale and the context within which the research wasconducted could impact on the findings and the conclusionpresented by the researcher(s).There’s also an issue about easy access to such rigorousresearch studies for educational leaders and practitionersworking in non-HEI settings in many countries. There isnow a movement towards ways we make some of thesepeer-reviewed papers available through open access jour-nals and, where possible, share some of the outputs of ourwork through other open forums. ResearchGate and Academia.edu are both examples of channels where we’re begin-ning to see lots of publications appearing and need to bepromoted to practitioners. There are also other repositorieswithin various HEIs because we are being encouraged tomake our work available more openly. Whilst you may notget access to the full peer-reviewed paper, very oftenabstracts of it are being made available in the publicdomain but this is still the biggest challenge - to makeknowledge open and freely available. Very often that’swhat practitioners within schools and colleges needbecause within a HEI we do get access to that but withouttheir registering on HEI courses how can practicing leadershave access to that wide range of resources that are avail-able but located behind a subscription wall? A school orcollege may not have money to support leaders to registerwith a professional association but that would at least givesome access. Then the next challenge is, because of thebusy schedules that people have, not having the time toread but, in the main, I think the main issue is one of access.How can these different data sets be useful to educa-tional leaders?Evidence is essential for leaders and for, much morebroadly, practitioners. We’ve heard a lot about this in thenews about the public sector. We often hear that publicsector workers should use evidence-based practice as is54 Management in Education 32(1)commonly found in the practice of law, medicine andsecurity services. These professions use evidence in avariety of ways to make decisions but I think it’s mainlyabout what I’ll describe as knowledge or what some woulddescribe as intelligence say in the security world forinstance. We need to ensure that the judgments and thedecisions that we make as leaders, and as practitioners, arefounded on some really, really useful information andevidence base that can be used to help us bring aboutschool improvement and better learning outcomes for thestudents, for the pupils that we’re working with. Asleaders we always have to be very careful in terms of ourreliance on any one type of evidence because we have tolook at it with a very critical eye. We have to make sure thatthe evidence base is robust. Also, very often evidence caneasily be contextualized and sometimes what works in onecontext may not necessarily work in the context that youmay want to apply it to. So, we’ve got to be very carefulin terms of what we are selecting. Mainly what educationalleaders want to be able to do as practitioners is to use thisevidence to inform their day-to-day decision making aboutimproving standards and pupil outcomes. That’s the keything that educational practitioners want to be able to do.What would you say was the way forward for harnessingthe power of evidence for informing educational leadershippractice?As part of quality assurance and condition improvementdemands from various stakeholders, you will find thatschools and other educational settings are making use ofa broad range of evidence to inform practice and manage-ment decisions. But in many of these schools and collegesettings there’s over reliance on management informationdata as a main source of evidence. Sometimes the expertevidence available within the institution is forgotten so youfind that external consultants are drafted in every now andthen to complement the evidence generated by the manage-ment information sources but without really capturing whatis already known.Many schools and colleges also don’t have access topeer-reviewed journals which in my opinion is hugely dis-appointing as knowledge and evidence that resides there isinvaluable. So I’ll say the direction of travel will be to makemore knowledge, intelligence and research openly accessi-ble. And I think there’s been some movement about this inthe last couple of years with the emergence of many openaccess journals. I think that’s one of the things that will go along way to help educational leaders and practitioners interms of their gaining access to peer-reviewed publications.Of course publishers have to generate some revenue to keepthe publishing houses operational so you wouldn’t expectpublication to be freely available but making more peer-reviewed evidence available is important for our practice asleaders: For me that’s one of the things that needs to bedone.The question is whether the open access movement isdoing enough or whether the state should get involved andthis remains to be seen. For example, I understand in Scotlandteachers registered with the General Teaching Council ofScotland have access to online resources through EBSCO.So the question is, is it something that has to be picked upacross various countries to ensure that teachers are actuallygetting that level of access to published work? That’s the keyknowledge and evidence base that is missing for them. Froman academic point of view I think most universities are mov-ing in that direction by making some of their scholarship andresearch available on their own institutional portals like openresearch online (ORO) from the Open University as well asencouraging academics to publish in open access journals.Then there’s the use of social media so through Twitter, forexample Twitter chats and through blogging. An examplewould be, among other places, the BELMAS blogs forinstance and BELMAS tweets. Lots of colleagues within theBELMAS community do tweet their work and you can findsome of their work on the BELMAS blogs and also on Academia.edu.When you connect to these individuals very oftenthey’ll be talking about some of the new findings from veryinteresting pieces of work they’ve been doing; so, I think it’slooking promising.There are a lot of resources out there but again, back towhat I said earlier on, you’ve got to look at this evidencewitha critical eye and not assume that something thatwas tried in aclassroom of 18 will work in a school setting where you’vegot 30 pupils in a class or in even in some of the countrieswe’veworked sub-SaharanAfricawhere youget over 60chil-dren in a class with fixed seats that can’t be moved aroundeasily for group work, etc. So, although there are lots ofavenues or platforms for knowledge sharing, care has to betaken about our choice of what counts as evidence.Alison: thank you very much for your time and for yourinsights, Eric.Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respectto the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.FundingThe author(s) received no financial support for the research,authorship, and/or publication of this article.ReferenceCochran-Smith M and Lytle SL (1999) Relationships of knowl-edge and practice: Teacher learning in communities. Review ofResearch in Education 24: 249–305.Addae-Kyeremeh and Fox 55

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