Leading Professors: professorial academic leadership as it is perceived by ‘the led’

Linda Evans, Matt
Homer and Steve Rayner,

Universities of
Leeds and Oxford Brookes

‘I would suggest that a collective noun for professors should be "an absence"’. This was one of many negative sentiments expressed recently by non-professorial university staff (academics, researchers and teaching fellows) in an online questionnaire. The questionnaire was part of the Leading Professors research project, funded by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and carried out by a Leeds-Oxford Brookes team. But the findings reveal what is by no means an entirely negative picture, with some academics recounting tales of truly ‘leading professors’ who have inspired and motivated them, while others spoke of professorial colleagues with disdain.

The project’s focus was the perspective of ‘the led’ – a much neglected perspective in the study of educational leadership and management. Through an online questionnaire that has so far yielded over 1200 responses, and 50 in-depth interviews, it examined what people think of their professors, how they interpret the role of professor, and how they evaluate the nature and quality of academic leadership that professors provide.