Education in Global Cities

As we set out, we assumed that GenX educational leaders would be most prevalent in urban centres due to a higher turnover of leaders. During the early imaging of our study, we knew we were creating a new evidence-base. We wanted to ensure that our evidence was reflective of the experience and context of young leaders in different jurisdictions. To do this, we knew we needed to conduct our research simultaneously in different countries. To narrow our focus, we decided to work in several Western cities.

Big issues

The following ideas and issues influenced our interest in Global Cities and and our commitment to locating our research in London, New York City, and Toronto.

Global Cities. Global Cities (Sassen, 1991) are seen as internationally important sites of migration, diversity, and innovation providing key settings for researching emerging urban trends. The three cities in our study were selected based on their ranking in the top ten on the 2009 Global Cities Index. Our cities were also chosen because of their population size, location, and educational influence within their own countries and states/provinces.
Educationally interesting cities. English is the primary language of instruction and policy in each of our selected cities. Each city has been recognized and celebrated for its multicultural composition. We also believe each city plays an important role in global educational discussions and has to varying degrees established a global educational legacy and influence.
Value of a Global City comparative perspective. Our Global Cities evidence-base will produce a globally relevant and new analysis of the next generation of educational leaders to support academic theorization of a generational model of leadership based on a robust comparative set of data which identifies patterns between and across cities. As much of the recognized leadership theory has been derived from evidence gathered within a single country or jurisdiction, this research will take a step towards creating a multi-jurisdictional approach to understanding leadership experience and developing theory related to this new generation of educational leaders.
International comparative study. All three cities appeared to have different approaches to identifying and nurturing leaders. Conducting the research across different cities was intended create a more robust evidence base. As GenXers are globally minded, techno-literate, informal, and pragmatic (Zemke et al., 2000), an international component to the project was seen as necessary to attract and retain participants. We anticipated that our international comparative approach would point to any significant contextual and policy-related factors and conditions that were influencing the experiences and aspirations of young leaders.

Work with Schools, Leaders and Advocates

In each city, during the final year of the study, we hosted Global City Leader: Leadership PopUP Events. In partnership with our AGs and a local partner university, these half-day events brought academics and policy and practice leaders together to debate emerging findings from the study. In each city a core team of GCL researchers, Advisory Group members and GenX leaders selected four pressing hot topics for theirown Global Cities. These anchor topics focused conversations and generated ideas for future policy and practice innovations. Each of hot topic sessions was co-facilitated by a young leader, a policy/practice leader, and an academic to create opportunities for different perspectives to be shared and captured.

London. In London, the PopUP focused on the following hot topics: 1) Work/life balance: The global quest for finding balance … and what may happen if young leaders don't find it; 2) Creating sustainable leadership careers: Hiring, developing, and retaining leaders; 3) Leadership, policy, and accountability: Opportunities and challenges of leading in London; and 4) Gender and diversity in school leadership and systems. Please feel free to take a look at our schedule for the event and the hot topics summary.

New York. In New York, the PopUP focused on the following hot topics: 1) Work/life balance; 2) Innovation in urban schools: Challenges and opportunities; 3) Building capacity: Improving teaching and learning; and, 4) Gender and diversity in school leadership and systems. Please feel free to take a look at our schedule for the event and the hot topics summary.

Toronto. In Toronto, the PopUP focused on the following hot topics: 1) Work/life balance: The global quest for finding balance … and what may happen if young leaders don't find it; 2) Creating sustainable leadership careers: Hiring, developing, and retaining leaders; 3) City leading: Improving teaching, learning, and relationships with parents/communities; and 4) Gender and diversity in school leadership and systems. Please feel free to take a look at our schedule for the event and the hot topics summary.

Teaching

Exploring comparative methods: GCL project teaching. We have invited to share our innovative research strategies for gathering cross-city data for graduate-level research methods modules at: University of Malaya; Warwick University and UCL Institute of Education. A short version of our interactive teaching session on comparative city-based research can be found here.

In the press

Our thoughts on Global Cities and education have been featured in the Guardian.

Papers and reports

To build our understanding of the policy and practice context in each city, we conducted light-touch reviews of the previous 10 years of leadership-related policy changes in each city. While each city has experienced shifts since our early analysis was conducted, the original policy studies are available here for London, New York City and Toronto. We have also published a paper in Canadian and International Education on multi-national, multi-layer comparative perspectives for researching leadership. We have also been actively sharing findings related to Global Cities and Education at the following conferences: