This free course, Exploring educational leadership, provides a brief introduction to the field of educational leadership.

It explores the relationships between management and leadership, the scope of the field and different world views that underpin educational leadership research and practice. You will also learn about some key concepts such as agency, power and authority. You will explore the differences between concepts, models and theories, and be introduced to some questions that will help you evaluate different educational leadership theories and models.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course EE811 Educational leadership: agency, professional learning and change, which is the first course in the Leadership and management route within the Masters in Education qualification. Studying this short course will give you a flavour of what to expect if you decide to progress to postgraduate study on EE811.