Professor John MacBeath

Position/Status

Emeritus Professor

E-mail Address

jecm2@cam.ac.uk

Phone

01223 767632

Qualifications

MA, PGCE, MEd (Hons 1st class)

Membership of Professional Bodies/Associations

Back to top

Profile

John MacBeath is Professor Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, Director of Leadership for Learning: the Cambridge Network and Projects Director for the Centre for Commonwealth Education. Until 2000 he was Director of the Quality in Education Centre at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. As well as his interest and research on leadership he has, for the last decade, worked with schools, education authorities and national governments on school self-evaluation. Five books on self-evaluation have been addressed mainly to a teacher and senior management readership. These include Schools Must Speak for Themselves, Self-Evaluation in European Schools, Self-evaluation: what's in it for schools? Self-evaluation in the Global Classroom and School Inspection and Self evaluation - all published by Routledge and now in twelve European languages. All of these books derive from collaboration with schools, with teachers and school students, the Global Classroom book being written mainly by school students from eight different countries. Issues in School Improvement, a CD-rom resource for schools in Hong Kong, contains many of these self-evaluation tools in both English and Chinese while a recent addition to self evaluation and inspection Hong Kong is an interactive website illustrating good practice in Hong Kong special, primary and secondary schools.

He has acted in a consultancy role to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), UNESCO and ILO (International Labour Organisation), the Bertelsmann Foundation, the Prince's Trust, the European Commission, the Scottish Executive, the Swiss Federal Government, the Varkey Group in Dubai (Emirates) and the Hong Kong Education Department. He was a member of the Government Task Force on Standards from 1997-2001 and was awarded the OBE for services to education in 1997.

Academic Area/Links

Leadership is a central interest but encompasses leadership at every level within a school from classroom to school and beyond school. Student leadership is of particular interest, and the HCD Student Partnership is now well established, an initiative designed to encourage students to play an active role in teaching/learning and school improvement, and for schools to recognise the latent power and potential that lies within the student body. This links closely to self-evaluation in which students can pay a leading role.

Back to top

Research Topics

Leadership, school improvement, self evaluation, learning in and out of school, study support.

Current Research Projects

The main thrust of his research and development work is with Commonwealth countries, in particular leading a major national initiative in Ghana (http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/cce/projects/leadership/ with the University of Cape Coast, the Ghana Education Service and Unicef. This draws on principles developed in the Carpe Vitam; Leadership for Learning Project (2002-2006) involving 22 schools in seven countries. These principles have been further developed and tested in a Ghanaian context with Professional Development Leaders, Headteachers and Circuit Supervisors (quality assurance advisers).

A study of Recruitment and Retention of Headteachers in Scotland, a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, the University of Glasgow, the University of Edinburgh and The Scottish Council for Research in Education was published in November 2009.

Back to top

Course Involvement

Back to top

Principal Publications

MacBeath, J.; Gray, J.M.; Cullen, J; Frost, D.; Steward, S; Swaffield, S. (2007)
Schools on the Edge: Responding to Challenging Circumstances, London, Paul Chapman

MacBeath, J. (2006) School Inspection and Self-evaluation: working with the New Relationship London, RoutledgeFalmer

MacBeath, J. (2006) Leadership as a subversive activity, Monograph, University of Melbourne, ACEL/ASPA

MacBeath, J; Galton, M; Steward, S; MacBeath, A; Page, C. (2006) The Costs of Inclusion, London, National Union of Teachers

MacBeath, J. and Moos, L. (2004) Democratic Learning: the challenge to school effectiveness, London, RoutledgeFalmer

MacBeath, J. (2004) The Leadership File, Glasgow, Learning Files Scotland

MacBeath, J. (2004) The Self-evaluation File, Glasgow, learning Files Scotland

MacBeath, J.; Demetriou, H.; Rudduck, J.; with Myers, K. (2003) Consulting Pupils - A Toolkit for Teachers, Cambridge, Pearson

MacBeath, J and McGlynn, A (2003) self evaluation: what's in it for schools?, London, Routledge

MacBeath, J; Sugimine, H.; with; Sutherland, G.; Nishimura, M. (2002)
Self-Evaluation in the Global Classroom, London, RoutledgeFalmer

MacBeath, J. and Mortimore, P. (2001) Improving School Effectiveness, Buckingham, Open University Press