Vanessa Cui, Senior Research Fellow in the faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences, discusses research with Education Lecturer and Researcher, Dr Abdullah Sodiq.
VANESSA CUI
Senior Research Fellow in Health, Education and Life Sciences
Vanessa Cui: Who are you and what does your research focus on?
Abdulla Sodiq: I am a lecturer in education with 24 years of teaching experience. I currently research educational governance: the governance of educational institutions such as schools, colleges, and universities, with a specific focus on the professional status of educators as academic staff governors (ASGS) at their institutions.
Vanessa Cui: Looking at your research through the lens of impact, what are your overall goals?
Abdulla Sodiq: I’d say my work aims to elevate the professional status of educators in educational governance. Through my work, I intend to develop the governance work of academic staff governors and ultimately make their contribution more meaningful to their institutions, to begin with in the UK, and in the long-term embed this focus into my research internationally into educational governance.
Vanessa Cui: Why does governance practice in education need to be elevated? Is this something from your research?
Abdulla Sodiq: It is known in governance circles that ASGs as staff members may have a rather restricted role as governors because of the conflict of interest as staff members. They may struggle to challenge their senior leaders in a governance context. My doctoral research completed in 2017 produced evidence of this at top-performing colleges in England. Going back 20 years, there is evidence of this in schools from the research conducted by UCL’s now Emeritus Professor Peter Earley’s work found proof in the governance of British schools.
My research attempts to establish this in contemporary and changing educational governance practices across the educational sector. The question is, is this restricted role prevalent in all educational institutions, and therefore what exactly is the role they can play in this scope?
Vanessa Cui: Why is it important to elevate the professional status of governance practice? How does this matter to better educational experiences?
Abdulla Sodiq: ASGs or Academic Staff Governors are important knowledge facilitators in our schools, colleges, and universities. I often hear lay and non-staff governors saying that they want to be informed by ASGs on how the system they govern works in practice, they want to hear such information from ASGs as they are slightly removed from the Senior Leadership Team.
Vanessa Cui: Let’s talk about your ultimate goals. Who will benefit from your research?
Abdulla Sodiq: Direct beneficiaries of my research are governors, ASGs, and educators and indirect beneficiaries are learners.
Vanessa Cui: And how do you envision the benefit from your research?
Abdulla Sodiq: If ASGs can be an added voice in informing governors on the school system within their governance conversations, governance can do their work with a richer perspective than just from the Senior leadership and hence, improving governance decision-making at the institutions overall. At the same time, through my research new ways of how ASGs use their remit to improve governance will come to light, thus improving ASGs’ roles too. Through improved governance, the governance will ensure an improved overall quality of educational experience for pupils and students at various educational institutions.
Vanessa Cui: Thanks for sharing your research and impact vision. It would be helpful to use some examples from your ongoing research work to contextualise some of the points you made so far. Can you tell us about what you are currently working on?
Abdulla Sodiq: My current project focuses on the professional roles of educators such as teachers, lecturers and professors in the governance of schools, colleges and universities in Birmingham so in a localised context. My research team with Dr. Andy Allan (s governance consultant) and Bernadette Reilly (a BCU doctoral student and experienced governor and chair of a school governing board), are using a mixed methods approach first to examine perspectives of the ASGs’ role from members of four institutions, a university, a college, a secondary school and a primary school in Birmingham. After having done that, we interviewed the four ASGs at the institutions.
We aim to identify the ways ASGs contribute to governance and what professional capital they rely on in performing their role within the context of democratic governance. The project will identify role enhancers and barriers in the role and identify effective practice from the perspectives of the ASGs as well as lay and external governors. We are now analysing the data with a focus on a number of themes from the relevant literature on governance and educators as professionals. These themes include educators’ professional nature of their role, and how it is perceived and performed.
Vanessa Cui: So for this project, what you aim to change or influence about governance practices?
Abdulla Sodiq: We aim to identify and highlight the most effective ways ASGs can make meaningful contributions to governance given the restricted role they have. We want to make the public and the ASGs, educators at schools, colleges, and universities become aware of the potential capacity they have to play a meaningful role.
Vanessa Cui: how do you plan to achieve this? And how would you know if your research made such a change or influence?
Abdulla Sodiq: We will engage with the wider professional organisations and the wider institutional governance experts through a national workshop. We will run events at schools, colleges, and universities sharing our findings. At these events, we will canvass with participants’ views on the findings and how they link to their practice in governance or as educators
Vanessa Cui: You shared about your current project, how does this connect with your overall research impact goal?
Abdulla Sodiq: The current practice is very much a small-scale project. I hope to connect to the wider educational governance practices by conducting a larger survey covering institutions across the current focusing on the themes and findings from the project. I will then take the practices identified to an international project to identify ASGs’ practices globally. I already do social science research internationally so there is scope to do this.
Vanessa Cui: When you design your research activities, what are the key factors you consider when it comes to planning for research impact?
Abdulla Sodiq: Methodological considerations on how to involve key people and how can influence policy and practices. It’s important to plan post-project activities and impact pathways through a variety of activities using diverse delivery modes and events that allow the facilitation of target beneficiaries to engage at a personal level with the project’s findings and the issues raised.
For example, I completed an international project in the Maldives in 2020 and after the research report was released last year I designed its impact pathway. Part of this impact pathway included working with a media company to record a series of TV programmes in which experts in the fields hold a discussion panel. Each programme focussed on one theme of the research report. The main panel discussions have been completed and we are getting ready to finalise the videos to be aired in May this year in the Maldives. This is about communicating the research using platforms and methods that are accessible to potential target audiences.
Vanessa Cui: So far, what’s the most challenging/tricky experience you’ve had when it comes to creating change/influence through your research?
Abdulla Sodiq: It is about convincing the target audiences the research is worth engaging with and worth giving up their time for. This is particularly difficult if you are relying on them volunteering their time. To make this process easier it’s important to have a stream of research outputs in the public arena (blogs, podcasts, project updates etc.) so that different stakeholders continue to stay informed of how the research is developing and impacting the beneficiaries.
Vanessa Cui: And any particular approach you’ve used in your work that you find helpful for generating meaningful impact?
Abdulla Sodiq: It’s important to plan impact early when designing the project. It’s also important to share the plans with the funders, the research team, and the beneficiaries early on. Our international public health (public policy project, Maldives in a multidisciplinary team, Maldives Research) has this element built in. The main advantage is that funders and stakeholders know that this is more than a one-off research project but with a long-term goal with societal impact.
Vanessa Cui: Thank you Abdulla for sharing your research impact work experiences and reflections.
A selection of Abdulla Sod's publications:
Sodiq. A. (2022-2024) “E-EDGE series: The Birmingham Educational Governance Project”, (Research Blog) CSPACE, E-EDGE Series, BCU.
Sodiq. A. (2022) “Academic staff governors’ power and professional status in the governance of further education colleges in England.” Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 27(1), pp. 98-127.
Sodiq. A & R. Di Biase (2022) “We Cannot Do away with Exams - Parents Believe in Them, so Does the Wider Community”: Reimaging the Examination System in the Maldives”, Prospects, 51, pp. 701-719.
Sodiq. A & Abbott, I. (2018) "Reimagining Academic Staff Governors’ Role in FE College Governance". Research in Post-Compulsory Education & Training, 23:1, 138-157.