Sustainable Leadership in a Post Pandemic HE World

This article describes the DREAM Educational Management and Leadership professional development programme delivered over the past two decades and the qualitative research analysis of teacher participant reflections that has continuously informed the refinement of the DREAM model and the programme’s structure and methodology.The first part of the article gives a brief overview of the 2007 DREAM Management and Leadership approach and the 12-module programme’s content and methodology with pre-session readings and viewings, weekly synchronous and asynchronous Discussions, applied tasks in the participant’s work context, and final module reflections, linking the approach to the seven principles of Sustainable Leadership [1].The second part of the article briefly describes three research projects undertaken over the past decade whilst delivering the professional development programme. The first of these research projects used categorization to determine whether the initial module structure could be mapped effectively to a model of teacher knowledge development that states teacher knowledge is developed through a cycle of four stages from Knowledge Seeker through Knowledge Discusser and Knowledge User to Knowledge Provider [2]. The research used these four categories and mapped them onto participant communications to determine whether the model could provide a sound theoretical structure for the delivery of the programme. The second research project used a lexical analysis of participant communication to further inform the tutor’s interaction with those taking the course. The research used eleven keys to effective web developer communication [3] as the linguistic markers for the segmentation of the data collected from participant email discussions to produce a set of clear guidelines for tutor communication on the programme. The third research project used Burton’s reflective typology [4], [5] to analyse participant reflections, and the outcome informed revisions to the reflective tasks and the ways in which the tutor should give feedback [6].The final part of the article concludes with an updated overview of the DREAM Educational Management and Teacher Leadership professional development programme as it will be delivered in 2021-2022, so the reader can appreciate the changes made based on the research. The author then argues for the value of research on our daily course delivery and ongoing curriculum development, and the importance for all teachers to view themselves as pedagogical researchers. Finally, the author concludes by stressing the need for structured professional development on teacher leadership that is grounded in on-going research throughout the higher education sector, so that educational leadership can be truly sustainable.