GLOBAL CITY SCHOOL LEADERS: Our goals
We believe GenX leaders represent the future of our education systems – at least for the next two decades! At a minimum, they represent the next generation of leaders who will be taking on important positions in our schools. Our Global City Leaders project team remains motivated by one overarching goal: to understand the work, lives, leadership and aspirations of GenX leaders with an eye to informing policy, practice, and the leaders themselves. Our goals are predicated on the assumption that:
If GenX leaders display the same tendencies as GenX members working beyond education, then they may need a particular set of supports and incentives to remain in post and continue to excel at their jobs. These supports may, in fact, be different from those that previously worked for their boomer predecessors. If policy and practice leaders are not aware of new ways that GenX leaders may be approaching work and future careers, they may not recognize that the system may not be fit for purpose to recruit, develop and retain them. There is little evidence base to guide considerations of working with GenX school leaders even though it is greatly needed.
Our Global City Leaders project creates a preliminary evidence-base to support a greater understanding of the experiences, career trajectories, challenges, and opportunities of a small group of young leaders in our selected cities. Based on the evidence, we work in collaboration with our advisory group members and young leaders themselves to:
- create a wider discussion of the current realities of young school leader experiences in their own contexts;
- inform current discussions about school leadership recruitment, development, and retention;
- develop a larger research agenda exploring generations, leadership, and cities.
What we do
Our Global City Leaders project explores the experiences and aspirations of GenX principals and vice-principals in London, New York City, and Toronto. Our research started in 2011 and continued until March 2015 funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funding. While our core funding and data collection has ended, we continue to work with partners to share and build on our findings and gain additional funds to support our work. During the active phase of data collection, we worked with our city-based advisory groups to reach out to young leaders working in state-funded primary and secondary schools to learn more about their experience, leadership strategies, and future career plans. In each city, we have worked with young leaders in three different ways.
Annual city-based networking events. Each year, we hosted at least one event (often 2 or 3!) in each city for young leaders to get together, learn more about the study, and put in their two cents/pence on how policy and practice frameworks and expectations are shaping their current and future work.
Annual advisory group meetings. Our advisory groups (AG) meet formally once a year to provide guidance on our research and learn about emerging findings ‘hot off the press’ and to debate and discuss the evidence. We continue to meet with AG members individually to chat about specific findings and potential ways to share them widely.
Annual young Global City leader interviews. Our main strategy for gathering evidence on experience and aspirations of GenX leaders has been to via annual one-to-one interviews. We have interviewed between 20 and 25 young leaders annually in each city from 2012-2014.
Our funding
Our original study was entitled: Young Global City Leaders: Building an evidence base in London, New York and Toronto to support the next generation of school leadership innovation. We received a grant from the ESRC (RES-061-25-0532) which ran from October 2011 to December 2014. We received funding from the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS) for our Women in Leadership Event to share our gender and GenX findings and stimulate a wider debate on gender and educational leadership issues in the UK. Building on our findings, we work in partnership as co-Principal Investigators with colleagues at PUCV in Chile to GenX leader work/life balance, leadership and future aspirations in the Global City Region of Santiago/Valparaiso. We remain committed to working with our partners, participants, and others interested in the work, experience, and aspirations of young school leaders. In May 2016, we will start working on our second round of funding applications.
Our Global City Leaders project in numbers
- 3 Cities (London, New York and Toronto)
- 14 research team members
- 49 Advisory Group members
- 130 Young Leaders have participated in at least one element of the project
- 75 Young Leader annual interview participants (120 interviews overall)
- 30 Women Leader interviews
