Professor John MacBeath
Position/Status
Chair of Educational Leadership
E-mail Address: jecm2@cam.ac.uk
Phone: 01223 767632
Qualifications
MA, PGCE, MEd (Hons 1st class)
Membership of Professional Bodies/Associations
Honorary Doctorate, Edinburgh University
Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts
Fellow of the Scottish Arts Council
Profile
John MacBeath is the Chair of Educational Leadership at the University of Cambridge and Director of Leadership for Learning: the Cambridge Network. 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 schools 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.
Research Topics
Leadership, school improvement, self evaluation, learning in and out of school, study support.
Current Research Projects
Work continues on the Leadership for Learning (The Carpe Vitam Project) which ran from 2002-2006 and involved 22 schools in seven countries. The follow up to project will be the establishment of a global network in collaboration with members of the Harvard Project Zero team.
Follow up work on the Learning How to Learn TLRP ESCR funded project (2001-2005) is also ongoing.
Course Involvement
MEd
MPhil
Doctoral studies
PhD supervision
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