LAUSR

When seeking to answer the question as to how the articles in this special issue contribute to understanding educational leadership, there is much to say, not least from their international scope (including studies in English, Maltese and Trinidadian contexts) and range of participants (from pupils, teachers, curriculum leaders, school principals, policy makers and academics working to support school leadership). Together, the articles provide a glance into a range of innovative and fascinating methods of collecting data for a range of educational leadership focused research projects. What is notable is the range of ways complexity is handled and the manner in which theory and method has been applied across the articles. As such, this special issue reengages the reader with an interesting, yet challenging, conversation as to the way in which educational leadership research could be conducted. The articles move us away from the perhaps more traditional approaches to educational leadership research to slightly riskier alternatives. With this comes a need to pay attention to the ethical considerations, which we also reflect on in this editorial. Moriah’s article is perhaps the most traditional in its use of a mixed method approach with a sample of 16 school principals, but makes its methodological contribution by powerfully applying an interpretive phenomenological analytical approach to examining principal perspectives. The thrust of the article gives voice to school principals’ views of what is crucial for inclusive practice to take place in their individual schools. The framework evolves around interconnecting questions about what a leader felt they were good at, what they loved doing, what needs they felt they could serve and what they considered they should be doing. Using such philosophical questions is a good way to introducing the following five special issue articles. Outhwaite’s article provides the reader with the opportunity to see the development of the methodological approach that took place when examining the process for the expansion of the International Baccalaureate Diploma programme in England. This article shows the author’s sheer resilience and determination to continue with the research to ensure that the voices of curriculum leaders were heard. This article allows insights the reader into what it is like to be a researcher when things do not work out as intended. This is an exciting article, which makes you think and reflect on your own research journey. Reid and Koglbauer’s and Hidson’s articles are arguably the most creative and innovative approaches methodologically in this special issue. Both articles alert the reader to possible approaches to collecting data to further understanding of (a) leadership curriculum and (b) leadership practice. Reid and Koglbauer’s article untangles any myth surrounding curriculum development and offers a different lens of visual methodology into the way in which the curriculum can be used to develop head teachers. Hidson’s presents the use of video observation as a powerful way to stimulate and then analyse responses to recorded practice, as a resource to support teaching and learning for future leaders. Poultney and Fordham’s article offers a time-efficient self-reporting tool; well suited for use by school leaders with hectic and busy schedules to analyse their research leadership. The methodology is illustrated through a pilot by a primary principal and university academic who took the opportunity, through critical discussion of the data generated, to examine their evolving school – university partnership relationship. Introducing the reader to the conscious quotient inventory could inspire others to review how such a tool could gather initial data and then look at a wider range of research instruments to offer further data. At first glance the final article in this issue, by Pulis, might not appear to be of relevance to researching educational leadership until one appreciates its purpose. Valuing the voice of pupils as a contribution to educational leadership is often omitted. The article uses a mixed method approach, which offers not only methods for gathering the views of pupils about what constitutes quality in schools, but also methods for gaining insights about how school leaders and policymakers view giving voice to pupils in the role of assessors. This design could have been extended by developing pupils as researchers to take on the further work of integrating pupils’ voices into educational leadership (Kim et al., in press; Thomson and Gunter, 2006). As noted earlier, ethicality is an important part of both research methodology and professional practice, yet is not always highlighted in research articles. The articles are discussed in the light of four key dimensions to ethical appraisal of a study (Stutchbury and Fox, 2009): consequential, ecological, relational and deontological. Starting with a consideration of a researcher’s aspirations for their study to be of value, consequential ethical thinking looks to its anticipated consequences – positive and negative. All the articles in this special issue spell out their aspirations to make contributions to academia and, ultimately, to the profession (as educational research is surely meant to do):