Experiencing educational leadership development : a phenomenological impact study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to conduct an impact evaluation of the Master’s in Educational Leadership (MEL) program at Tampere University of Applied Sciences to understand whether the program had impacted the leadership and change leadership capacities of program participants. This study additionally aimed to understand how the phenomenological research approach could provide insights into the study of leadership development more generally.

This research used ten semi-structured participant interviews and phenomenological analysis to explore the impacts of the MEL program regarding changes in the participants’ constructs related to leadership, the social con-texts of leadership actions, and conceptions of participants’ own leadership capacities. The relevant object of investigation was the study participants’ experiences with these constructs and whether these constructs were seen or understood differently as a result of participation in the MEL program.

The findings here show that the MEL program significantly impacted participants’ understanding of leadership and their self-concept. Participants de-scribed significant shifts in their own leadership constructs, attributed these to experiences within the MEL program, and were able to articulate new ways of seeing and experiencing leadership. In addition, the research highlights ways the phenomenological approach can capture emergent, user-side data to understand learning impacts of leadership development programs.