BELMAS, The British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society conference 2019 was the best opportunity for me. Being an early career researcher to meet scholars and colleagues from all over the world was a great experience.
The three day conference from Friday morning 12th July to Sunday afternoon 14th July, had incredible energy and terrific buzz. It was packed with programmes covering a broad range of extremely exciting sessions from keynotes to entertainment. All the sessions were extremely well attended, involving high-profile international speakers along with a range of national experts’ speakers.
The registration process at the beginning was well organised and I got to know delegates over tea and coffee, which made me feel not isolated but with friends. After lunch,
delegates had the chance to meet the editors of MIE and EMAL Professor Tony Bush, Dr Jacqueline Baxter and Dr Stephen Rayner. They went through the process of writing and submitting papers, which was very useful. There were lots of questions from colleagues
who were anxious to start writing and submitting to BELMAS’s prestigious journals.
The first day was fantastic, starting with a presentation of a summary report on Review of UK Education Project, which Professor Philip Woods led with his colleagues from England, Wales, Scotland and North Ireland. Everyone was beyond impressed with their presentations, the content could not have been more spot on with the project’s aim “to develop a shared understanding of the current state of educational leadership and administration in the United Kingdom.
Delegates wanted to hear and learn about the similarities and differences among policy and leadership approaches in use in each of the four jurisdictions and their trajectories, which the 5 presenters clarified fantastically.
The day ended with a terrific cool atmosphere in the international karaoke. My colleagues and I had lots of laughs. Singing along with delegates from all over the world, from USA to Iraq, was great fun. The best part was getting a BELMAS karaoke badge put on your lanyard.
Saturday morning, I had the honour to chair two presentations, the first one was on Collaboration - the ubiquitous panacea for challenges in education by Mr. Paul Campbell who is an Ed.D student at the University of Glasgow and a teacher leader at ESF Sha Tin Junior School, Hong Kong. Paul explored the complexity of collaboration conceptually and the implications this has on education in Scotland and beyond. Paul’s great interaction, engagement and connection with the
audience were full of energy.
The second presentation was on Examining Collaborative Leadership Development across a U.S. High School by Professor Philip Woods who is former Chair and current Council Member of the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS), Professor of Educational Policy, Democracy and Leadership at the University of Hertfordshire where he is also the Director of the Centre for Educational Leadership, and the author of over 120 publications. Professor Woods was joined by Dr. Jill Bradley-Levine who is an assistant professor of educational studies at Ball State University. They both explained how to explore student and teacher perceptions on how a leadership workshop affected school leadership structures and practices across the school. Both presenters
where excellent speakers and the study was fascinating to listen to, I could see this through the audience eyes when listening to Philip and Jill, and through the questions that the audience asked at the end of the
presentation. The presentations were wonderful! I couldn’t wait to share my insights with my colleagues at the University of Leicester.
Sunday, the last day of the conference, was when we had our symposium East meets West. My colleagues and I presented our papers that we have been working on with help from Dr Alison Taysum, who is a PhD supervisor and MSc Educational Leadership Programme Leader at the University of Leicester. The East meets West presentations were presented jointly by different
colleagues. It started by Dr. Janet Orchard who is the Director of the School of Education's EdD programme in Hong Kong and her MA student Sally Wan. Then followed by Dr Alison Taysum and her PhD student Hong Qian form China who talked about “value, hope, and scepticism in teacher leadership”. The third part was on “Using drawing methods in studying teacher
leadership: A systematic review” presented by Sally Wan and Suzannie Leung Kit-ying, MA students from Hong Kong followed by a
presentation on “Teacher Leadership in South Korea and China” by Yoonjeong Lee a lecturer in MSc Educational Leadership Programme and Nan Wing a PhD student at the University of Leicester.
Finally, it was my presentation on Empowering Inclusive Iraqi Teacher
Leadership; Languages of New Technologies Opportunities and Risks. I was so happy to be presenting my paper that I have been working on for over a year in front of experts in teacher leadership and I am thankful for their feedback. The paper is on Iraqi teacher leaders, Mosul teachers to be more precise, who are struggling to find their identity as professional educators and make their voices heard in a post-war context. The teacher leaders are finding barriers in modernising Iraqi curriculum with inclusive processes and
practices regardless of race, ethnicity and faiths. I loved the way the audience interacted with my presentation and it was lovely to see their tweets. I am grateful to all of them as their tweets are read by people from all over the globe. People had the chance to see what we teachers had to go through when ISIS occupied Mosul in 2014 and the curriculum that we were forced to teach or face death penalty. When ISIS left the city in 2017, teachers like me have been racing against time to bring back the children to school and to make schools environment safer and suitable for the children to pursue their learning.
The conference was great and extremely useful. I would like to thank the organisers for all of their hard work in ensuring the conference was a big success.