Research
Research Areas
We lead and engage in university-funded and externally-funded research contracts. Our focus is on shaping leadership, policy and practice across a range of settings; for example, education, medical health sciences, policy, and high performance sport
Adaptive Leadership
Deidre Le Fevre
Adaptive leadership focuses on the ability of leaders to respond flexibly to change, encourage innovation, and navigate uncertainty while engaging and empowering others. Our research reveals that effective leadership is not about having all the answers but about creating conditions where teams can experiment, learn, and grow. Through research we gain insight into how organisations that embrace adaptive leadership foster resilience, collaboration, and continuous improvement and highlight the critical role leaders play in shaping culture, leading change, and sustaining improvement. By studying adaptive leadership, we uncover the mechanisms that enable organisations to remain effective in the face of challenges. This knowledge helps inform leadership development and organisational strategy, ensuring that leaders are better equipped to meet today’s challenges. Deidre undertakes research with colleagues across contexts including the European Union and Aotearoa New Zealand to better understand the processes and practices of effective adaptive leadership.
Hāpaitaia te ngākau aroha – Elevate empathy
Frauke Meyer, Jo Smith, Georgia Rudd, Christine Rubie-Davies, Hana O’Regan & Pam O’Connell
Virtual Reality (VR) is potentially a powerful anti-bias tool. In this Marsden-funded project, our team is developing, implementing, and evaluating an anti-bias training that includes an innovative VR experience where teachers ‘embody’ a Māori student facing bias across their school day. The VR experience is aimed at raising empathy and motivating behaviour change for leaders and educators.
Leading improvement using improvement science
Linda Bendikson & Frauke Meyer
The use of improvement cycles is increasingly lauded as a tool for school leaders to facilitate sustained and systematic improvement. We asked school leaders to reflect on three years in which they engaged in an online professional development program (PD) supporting their implementation of the School Improvement Cycle. Our research attests to the effectiveness of its implementation and highlights specific leadership practices and conditions for improvement, providing valuable and detailed insights for schools, leaders, district leaders and professional development providers.
Adapting an Intervention from the Secondary to Intermediate Context: Considerations to Increase Success
Jo Smith, Heather McClure & Rita Svanks
This study examines considerations adapting an intervention from the secondary to intermediate context aimed at promoting a positive school climate where students feel comfortable speaking out about their school experiences, and staff work to build trusting relationships and respond restoratively to student concerns. Findings indicated the importance of school leaders working to build caring relationships and trust with students, the need to consider the developmental stages of middle school students.
Middle leaders and school improvement
Frauke Meyer, Kylie Lipscombe, Darren Bryant, & Chun Sing Max Ho
Middle leaders are perceived as ideal change agents for school improvement, given their understanding of teaching practice and working relationships with both classroom teachers and senior leaders. However, little is known about how principals can effectively engage middle leaders as change agents. This explores the work of schools in New Zealand, Australia, and Hong Kong that effectively engage middle leaders in school improvement. The study highlights specific principal actions to foster this collaborative work.
Systems Theories of Change
Claire Sinnema
Theories of change capture the intended relationships across the activities and impacts of broad-ranging policies and practices. Projects in this space analyse system wide reforms (often curriculum reforms) drawing on documentation and the accounts of those involved and impacted. Drawing together the logic of reform efforts, Claire’s work conveys the interrelatedness of educational initiatives and provides educational leaders and policy makers a basis for robust evaluation and improvement.
Relational Space
Claire Sinnema
In educational policy, research and practice circles, there has been much attention in recent times to the power and potential of social networks for supporting educational improvement. In a number of projects, Claire and her collaborators have investigated the relational space, using social network analysis and other methods, to surface otherwise invisible patterns of relationships across educators within and across schools. This work reveals both problematic and promising patterns and how intervention and leadership practice improve the networks of people that give life to educational aspirations.
Research Opportunities
We host post-doctoral fellows and visiting academics at the university of auckland. if you are interested in these, please contact us through our individual websites or through edleadership
Doctoral Research
We supervise doctoral students. Students focus on a range of research methodologies and research questions.