100% Online MA Educational Leadership

Dr Catriona Oates is a Lecturer in Education and Programme Leader for the MA Education Leadership at Queen Margaret University. A former languages teacher, she has worked across primary and secondary schools, four Scottish universities and national education agencies. Her experience spans languages policy and curriculum development, leadership development and teacher education.

She completed her PhD at the University of Stirling in 2021. Her research interests include leadership development, teacher educators' experiences of workload and wellbeing, dialogic teaching in higher education, and the professional learning of teachers and educators in practice.

Alongside her academic role, Dr Oates contributes to sector development through governance and professional organisations. She is a trustee of Scran Academy, a social enterprise supporting employability training for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and serves as Chair of IPDA Scotland and Vice Chair of IPDA International.

Dr Kendall Jarrett is a Senior Lecturer in Education Leadership with global experience of exploring, promoting and leading learning across a range of higher education settings. Having taught at primary, secondary and tertiary levels in Australia, Japan and the UK, his experience in education has been equally shared between the university sector and the school system.

His research interests sit at the intersection of higher education teaching and learning, educational leadership, and sport pedagogy, with a particular focus on game-based approaches and the development of pedagogical practice. He is co-author of The Practice of Leadership in Higher Education: Real-world Perspectives on Becoming, Being and Leaving (Routledge, 2020).

He currently combines teaching and supervising Master of Educational Leadership Students with national and international consultancy work across the higher education sector.

Dr Suzie Dick is a Lecturer in Teacher Education within the Division of Psychology, Sociology and Education at Queen Margaret University. Although originally a teacher of Geography and Outdoor Education, her move to higher education followed many years in school leadership and management — latterly in Scotland, and previously in the independent sector and in Ethiopia.

Her doctoral research explores how undertaking a small-scale practitioner enquiry during the first year of teaching can influence the formation of probationer teachers' professional identity and their classroom practices. Her broader research interests centre on rural and place-based education, practitioner enquiry, and equity of access to professional development opportunities.

Dr Suzie Dick holds professional recognition from the Institute of Outdoor Learning and continues to organise and lead expeditions overseas as a member of the British Association of International Mountain Leaders. She serves as Vice-Chair of IPDA Scotland and is a Chartered Geographer and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Professor Alan Bainbridge is a Professor of Education in the Division of Psychology, Sociology and Education at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. Having previously taught in secondary schools in Kent for 18 years, he began working in higher education in 2001. He is a Chartered Psychologist (Teaching and Learning) and Doctor of Clinical Science.

He uses psychoanalytic theory and broadly narrative-based research methods to explore how life history influences the development of educational professional practice, and the transformative nature of human and more-than-human relationships. His active research interests include supervision as professional learning and wellbeing, the commodification of higher education, and education as an ecological response.

Professor Bainbridge is committed to the role of the public intellectual, actively campaigning for socially just education, particularly the abolition of the 11-plus — and has been invited onto the Comprehensive Future Steering Group and the Fabian Society Education Policy Group. He is co-coordinator of the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults Life History and Biography Network and holds a Visiting Readership in Education and Sustainability at Canterbury Christ Church University.

Don Ledingham has had a lifelong interest in education and leadership. His career began as a teacher, university lecturer, headteacher at Dunbar Grammar School, and Executive Director of Education in East Lothian and Midlothian Councils.

Professor Ledingham's long-term research has focused on the leadership behaviours and cultures associated with high-performing organisations. Emerging from this work, he developed the Seven Sides of Educational Leadership, which evolved into the Ceannas Leadership Index® to help chief executives identify and benefit from marginal leadership gains.

He has practical leadership experience from a wide range of senior executive positions, including responsibility for over 4,500 staff, a budget of £250 million, and a range of high-stakes public services as Scotland's first executive director to simultaneously work across two local authorities. Between 2007 and 2013 he wrote a monthly column for the Times Educational Supplement on leadership and appeared in the top ten global educational influencers on two occasions. He is currently Chief Executive of Ceannas, the international leadership consultancy.

Dr John Loughton BEM is Chief Executive of leadership training company Dare2Lead, Founder of education charity Scran Academy, and one of the UK's most sought-after motivational speakers and facilitators. He is a social entrepreneur, campaigner, youth worker and leadership coach with a background in community education and social transformation.

He has spoken to over one million people, worked across 65 countries, and helped raise over £12 million for good causes. Dare2Lead has trained over 70,000 people across 130 client organisations. He has addressed the Scottish Parliament, the White House, the UN General Assembly, TED Talk events, and the European Commission, and was appointed by the Prime Minister to serve on the Calman Commission.

In 2024, he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the West of Scotland for services to young people and social enterprise and was awarded the British Empire Medal in the Queen's Honours List 2020.