Biography
John West-Burnham works as an independent teacher, writer and consultant in leadership development and is also Professor of Educational Leadership at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham.
John worked in schools, further and adult education for fifteen years before moving into higher education. He has held posts in five universities and is currently Visiting Professor of Educational leadership at Queens University, Belfast and the University of Bristol.
He is author of Managing Quality in Schools; Rethinking Educational Leadership; co-author of Education for Social Justice; Systems Leadership; Spiritual and moral development in schools; Schools and Communities; Personalizing Learning: Making Every ChildMatter, Effective Learning in Schools, Leadership and Professional Development in Schools and co-editor of Performance Management in Schools, EducationalLeadership and the Community, The Handbook of Educational Leadership and Management and 12 other books and over 30 articles and chapters.
John has worked in Australia, Belgium, Cyprus, The Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Qatar, the Republic of Ireland, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey and the USA. He was a coordinator of the European School Leadership Project.
John is Leadership consultant to CBE Nederland in Amsterdam; Senior Adviser, Centre for Relational Learning, Santa Fe, New Mexico; and consultant to the Leadership Development Schools project, Ministry of Education, Republic of Ireland.; he is Visiting Professorial Associate at the Regional Training Unit, Northern Ireland. He is chair of the trustees of the Southern Educational Leadership Trust.
His current research and writing interests include the learning centred school, transformational leadership, leadership learning and development and educational leadership in the community.