At its core, the Centre for Leadership, School Improvement and Effectiveness (LSIE) researches ways to deliver better outcomes for students. It has extensive national and international experience in assessing the impact of interventions, programmes and policy changes on educational outcomes in schools, and in Further and Higher Education.
Inequalities in education, institutional improvement and effectiveness lie at the heart of reform in both local and international contexts. This provides a broad base for researching the role of leadership and the nature of education (broadly defined) and learning. Academics at the Centre employ a range of quantitative and qualitative approaches, with an emphasis on mixed-/multi-method research design. The Centre is particularly interested in utilising a wide range of data available in educational settings, and not just measures of students’ cognitive outcomes but also affective, social and political outcomes of learning. Research at the Centre seeks to explore and understand the variation inherent within and between educational institutions, and to avoid the trivialisation of educational effectiveness that sometimes occurs. The centre leads cutting edge research and is a resource for driving educational reform in a global context. It is also home to the Quantitative Methodologies Special Interest group
Major research projects connected with the Centre include studies funded by local, national and European Union government departments and agencies. Our research student projects are wide ranging, including, for example, studies on the effectiveness of schools in Mexico, distributed leadership, gender, student voice and the association between citizenship, democracy and the economic development. We currently have ESRC scholarships, University of Southampton Scholarships and a sponsored PhD project in partnership with the Isle of Wight.
Contact:
Professor Jacky Lumby
Two members of LSIE sit on the board of the International Congress on School Effectiveness and School Improvement, the leading international professional body in the field. We also edit this association’s journal.
Research on citizenship is developed in close cooperation with the European Commission
A member of LSIE is an expert consultant to the National Policy Network on Leadership in Europe. We are engaged in joint research projects with academics across Europe, for example with the universities of Athens, Cyprus, Groningen and Antwerp on an EU project, and have recently collaborated with several European government agencies, led by Lower Saxony, a German ‘Land’.
We also collaborate in research outside Europe, for example in South Africa. We have very good links with colleagues in the USA and are increasingly working with colleagues across Asia and the Arab world.
We have members on the international advisory boards of journals in the UK, Europe, the United States, Mexico and Asia.
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We are keen to collaborate with people and organisations from inside and outside academia. Please get in touch.
| Staff Member | Primary Position |
|---|---|
| Doreen Challen | Senior Teaching Fellow |
| Felix Maringe | Visiting Fellow |