The role of dialogue and modes of study educational leaders engage with on a Masters degree provided by a UK and a Russian Higher Education Institution.

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to further understanding of educational leaders’ preferred modes of study of an English and Russian Masters-level module in Educational Leadership.We present perceptions of educational leaders’ from Schools, Colleges, Universities and a Ministry o Education regarding one module of the degree, gathered through semi-structured interviews from four different iterations of the course module in England and Russia. Findings reveal that educational leaders id entified lectures, presentations, workshops, and distance learning as modes of study that offered opportunities to examine alternative ways of knowing, acting and being. Reading the evidence through Dimmock and Walker’s (2008) six dimensions society/regional/local culture. The evidence revealed that the Russian and International educational leaders from the four iterations of the module preferred didactic pedagogies where they took a more passive role in the communication. Power was concentrated in the few pedagogues and the leaders potentially replicated these kinds of pedagogies in their professional practice. English educational leaders preferred a more pro-active role in the dialogue where the power was more distributed between the pedagogue and the leaders. These findings have implications for first, the design and provision of international multicultural educational leadership programmes within international spaces and frameworks such as the Bologna process, and second, how educational leaders are inducted into the programmes.