Emeritus Professor Colin Evers

My Teaching

All of Prof. Evers teaching is in the Master of Educational Leadership program.

Postgraduate courses
Semester One
EDST5438 Leadership Theory, Research and Practice. (Co-Teaching with Dr. Kerry Barnett)
Develops students’ understanding of leadership theories, current research and practice. Considers the major approaches to leadership such as trait, behaviour, contingency and transformational leadership theory. Also considers current research and practice in the context of education.

EDST5459 School Based Management and Accountability.
Provides a systematic study of the theory and practice of school based management, its background, central features, and characteristic accountability mechanisms. Particular emphasis is placed on autonomy versus accountability, and prospects for such reforms leading to improved student learning outcomes.

Semester Two

EDST5433 Organisation Theory in Education (Co-Teaching with Dr. Kerry Barnett)
This course will focus on organisation theory for educators. It draws from the full range of literature on organisations, but it focuses that literature on the specific experiences of education.

EDST5462 Teacher Leadership.
Offers an account of the nature of teacher leadership, and how it can be developed and exercised, from the broad perspective of leadership as a form of influence as opposed to the narrower perspective of administrative role. Teacher leadership is construed as a form of distributed leadership, with the boundaries of influence extending beyond the immediate workplace.

Current Research Projects

Teacher Leadership: This project, led by Dr Kokila Katyal at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, looks at the role of teacher-leaders in the light of the rise of autonomous student learning as fostered by the internet. In addition to some papers published as work in progress, the results of the project are now being written up to be published as a book (Routledge, 2013).

Realist Inquiry in Social Science: This is the title of a book that offers a particular philosophical perspective on some key aspects of research in social science. The lead author is Brian Haig (Professor of Psychology, University of Canterbury) with myself and Professor Mark Constas (Cornell University) as co-authors. It will be published by SAGE, London, in 2014.

Canadian Principals Learning Network: Led by A/Prof Stephanie Chitpin at the University of Ottawa, this project explores principals’ decision-making and options for the creation of collaborative networks. Current funding: C$100,000. The project makes use of some theoretical ideas developed by Prof Chitpin and myself in some earlier joint and individual publications. We are currently developing a book proposal for an edited book on principals’ decision-making. Work in progress from the project will be presented at a two-day symposium at the University of Ottawa in October 2012. The project has a website: http://www.cpln.ca/

Conducting Research in Confucian Heritage Cultures: The first version of this project was published as a Special Issue of the journal Comparative Education, 47(3), 2011. The various authors explored particular aspects of research methodology that were influenced by the Confucian heritage culture of particular east Asian countries. The Special Issue editors – myself, Dr Kokila Katyal, and Dr Mark King - are now developing an expanded version of this project to cover a larger range of research aspects and countries.

Emotion and Cognition in Educational Decision-Making: This is a project of particular interest to Professor Gabriele Lakomski (University of Melbourne) who is the lead investigator and first author of a number of our papers on this topic. Her focus is on the neuroscience of emotion.

Leadership as Critical Learning: This is my main ongoing research project, the aim of which is to develop a systematic perspective on educational leadership. It reflects the general theme of my papers on leadership published over the last dozen years. I aim to put it all together in a book of the same title.