MOVING INTO ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP - 2025/6

Module Overview

Many colleagues find themselves moving from a standpoint of focusing on their own academic/professional development, to a consideration of (and responsibility for) guiding and supporting the development of others as they progress in their university careers. This development and leadership role may be as a module or programme leader; head of department; director of teaching, or associate dean for teaching, or in a more central role within a university structure or other learning organisation role, for example, as a full-time academic developer or PVC for teaching and learning or someone involved in others professional development.

 

As there are no set routes into  leadership roles, the trajectories for colleagues entering this field are personal and idiosyncratic. This module will, therefore, focus on participants’ auto-ethnographic analyses of their academic journeys. This will be considered in the context of professionalism, expertise, culture, gender, discipline etc. so that participants may better articulate the origins of their identity as a ‘developer of others’ and how this contributes to their perceptions of their development role. This module focuses on leadership through  activity not on formal management roles.

 

A consideration of issues from participants’ “home discipline” and/or professional context will be used as a starting point to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar; offering a consideration of generic and specific academic issues.

 

Development of leadership is often tied to national education agendas. Participants will be asked to place the role of the leader against a relevant framework (for example in the UK the  Professional Standards Framework).

 

Participants will be guided to reflect on a number of central questions. What is the role of a leader? Should a leader be considered to have technical competence in the field of learning and teaching, or should we be looking towards a more holistic conception of the leader as a particular type of expert/scholar within higher and/or professional education?
 

Are leaders simultaneously insiders and outsiders? What contributes to this dual identity and is this an essential part of the role, or an impediment to the professional role of the leader?

 

Example of summary of links within the module, here with an emphasis on academic leadership:

Module provider

Surrey Institute of Education

Module Leader

LYGO-BAKER Simon (Sy Inst Educ)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 7

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 1

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

N/A

Module content

Although the content will in part be determined by the individual trajectories of the participants it will be focused around the production of an autoethnography. To support this the module is effectively divided into five sections, with topics 2 – 5 relating back to aspects of topic 1:

 

Topic 1: Developing the method for the construction of an autoethnography.

 

Topic 2: Considering development through disciplinary, interdisciplinary and/or professional context lenses.

 

Topic 3: Leadership in a national context.

 

Topic 4: The role of development: to lead or to follow?

 

Topic 5: Leadership and communities of practice.

 

 

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

N/A

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate

their achievement of the learning outcomes. 

 

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

 

A written  assignment or a narrated slideshare/presentation* in which the participants will present an autoethnographic case study (LO1-5).

 

*Narrated Slideshare/Presentations: Participants may opt to produce a more visual representation for their assignment in the form of a slide share or video presentation where this fits more appropriately with the participant’s disciplinary or professional background (e.g. where ‘performance’ may be a key aspect of their context).

 

The opportunity to present information in written or oral form fits with the approach taken by the autoethnographic tradition which encourages the representation of ideas in the format that meets the individual circumstance, it also adopts a key characteristic of the assessment for inclusion approach through the choice of assessment type provided to participants.

 

Formative assessment and feedback

The formative assessments will provide the participants with the opportunity to critique other autoethnographic accounts in preparation for the development of their own summative assessment and to position their assignments in relation to their own professional position/aspirations. There are three formative assessments :

 

Formative assessment: “Winkler and me”

Formative assessment: “Video critique”

Formative assessment: “Leading or following?”

 

Each builds on the previous and supports the development of the final summative piece.

 

The discursive nature of the module supports regular opportunities for receiving feedback on participants’ emerging thoughts.

Module aims

• This module aims to: encourage participants to reflect upon their own academic history and professional activity as a way of contextualising their development and professional identity as a leader and developer of others'.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to:

 

Allow participants to reflect on their role as a developer of others and to articulate an explicit conceptual foundation upon which they can build future professional development.

 

The learning and teaching methods include: Tutorials, Synchronous Seminars, Captured Content, and Guided Learning.

 

The guided study will direct the participants to consider their own identity and to link this to the perceived identities of others. This is based around a set of captured content and additional information.

 

Synchronous seminars will reflect the module content outlined above and there will be a series of guided study tasks linked to the synchronous seminars, the results of which will be posted and discussed online.

 

The published works on national context tends to be very narrow in focus. To overcome this, the further readings list for this module is quite long to include publications that would be of relevance to international participants, whose practice may be informed by a range of regulatory frameworks.

Overall, the strategy employed aims to offer participants the opportunity to develop foundational knowledge through dialogue, related to their own movements in learning and teaching and the aspects related to leadership and how they recognize and define this. The approach is designed to provide a challenge to the participants and through this to offer a significant opportunity to reflect and explore personal information. As a teaching team, we recognise that participants bring diverse experiences to the programme and through developing trust and respect we aim to draw out opportunities to share and reflect on the diversity represented.  The space to enable this is therefore reflected in the independent study hours and the opportunity to share and discuss in online interaction, to share and explore different interpretations.

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: GCAM009

Other information

The MA in Higher and Professional Education is committed to developing graduates with strengths in Digital Capabilities, Employability, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Resourcefulness and Resilience, and Sustainability.  This module is designed to allow participants to develop knowledge, skills, and capabilities in the following areas:

Employability: A key concept that is examined within this module is the notion of leadership. A greater understanding of the notion of how to lead, how this relates to management and the ability to examine and bring greater understanding to individual trajectories provides opportunities to enhance individual professional development. This provides opportunities to enhance future skills by recognizing the approaches taken and how these influence and support both personal and professional development of self and others.  

Digital Capabilities: Although not a significant focus of the module itself the guided learning tasks provide participants with the opportunity to develop or consolidate digital capabilities. Dependent on the role that individuals play it is possible that digital elements may or may not feature more centrally in their autoethnography and through their choice of assessment type (i.e. written essay / presentation / narrated slides).

Global and Cultural Capabilities: As the participants are likely to represent a range of disciplinary, global, cultural, and applied contexts the opportunity to share and compare and contrast the different journeys that have taken place offers insight into the importance of context. Discussions are designed to encourage surfacing and sharing of the variability in practice across these different settings. Participants are asked to explore literature pertaining to global and cultural variability in leadership and consider how different cultural views impact on the role of power, authority and independence of each individual.

Resourcefulness and Resilience:  Examining personal narratives allows each participant to consider areas that have been challenging and required adaptation and the ability to respond often to difficult situations. In this way, the module requires that each participant considers how they have used and developed different resources, adapted and learned from experiences. Much of this is likely to have required perseverance and as such the notion of resilience is likely to be highlighted through the stories explored.  

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2025/6 academic year.