Dr Meng Tian

School of Education
Associate Professor in Educational Leadership
School of Education Global Engagement Lead

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0) 121 414 4864
Email: m.tian@bham.ac.uk
Twitter: @MengTian84046806

Address: Educational Leadership Academy
School of Education
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Meng Tian joined the Educational Leadership Academy, Department of Teacher Education in 2021. Her teaching and research interests lie in distributed leadership, social justice leadership, leaders’ and teachers’ professional development, and educational leadership policy-making. Currently, she teaches in the MA Educational Leadership DA Programme and MA Education Programme (Leadership pathway). Her latest research, on Cultivating Global Citizenship, aims to transform research-based global citizenship teacher CPD training into tangible teacher competencies while nurturing a heightened sense of global responsibility among youth.

On top of her teaching and research work at the University of Birmingham, she also holds appointments as the co-Convenor for the Network 26 Educational leadership at the European Educational Research Association (EERA) and Associate Editor for the Sage journal Educational Management, Administration & Leadership.

LinkedIn profile

ORC profile

Qualifications

Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
PhD in Educational Leadership (Institute of Educational Leadership, University of Jyväskylä, Finland)
M.A. in Educational Leadership (Institute of Educational Leadership, University of Jyväskylä, Finland)
B.A. in Educational Administration (Faculty of Public Administration, East China Normal University, China)

Biography

Before joining the University of Birmingham, Dr Meng Tian held positions of Centre for Research in Education in Asia (CREA) Co-Director and Associate Professor in Educational Leadership and Management at the University of Bath, UK from 2019 to 2021.

From 2017 to 2019, she worked first as a Postdoctoral Researcher then as a Senior Researcher at the University of Teacher Education Zug, Switzerland. During those two years, she conducted several systematic reviews mapping the development of educational leadership, administration and management research.

Meng received a Bachelor’s degree (Educational Administration) from the East China Normal University, Shanghai, China. From 2007 to 2017, she completed both a Master’s and a PhD degree (Educational Leadership) at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her doctoral thesis explored and compared distributed leadership practices in Finnish and Shanghai schools.

Teaching

Current Teaching

Programme Leader MA Educational Leadership DA
Programme Leader MA Educational Leadership Non-DA and Pathways

Modules

Understanding School Improvement
Dissertation

External Examination Appointments

External examiner for the University of Northampton 2019-2023

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Tian, M 2023, Arts-based research methods for educational researchers. Qualitative and Visual Methodologies in Educational Research, 1st edn, Routledge. <https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003196105>

Woods, P, Roberts, A, Tian, M & Youngs, H (eds) 2023, Handbook on Leadership in Education. Elgar Handbooks in Education, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. <https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/handbook-on-leadership-in-education-9781800880412.html>

Xing, X & Tian, M (eds) 2022, Impact on Higher Education Transformation and Leadership Development: Overseas Leadership Development Programmes for Chinese University Leaders. East-West Crosscurrents in Higher Education, 1 edn, Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0067-9

Article

Tian, M 2024, 'Embracing complexity: rethinking education inspection in England', Educational Review. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2024.2325660

Tian, M 2023, 'A critical friend or the sword of Damocles: Headteachers’ use of micropolitical strategies in inspection', Educational Management Administration & Leadership, pp. 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432231222719

Tian, M 2021, 'Power bases and power tensions: a critical analysis of education inspection policies and practices in China', Leadership and Policy in Schools , vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 6-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2020.1833940

Tian, M & Nutbrown, G 2021, 'Retheorising distributed leadership through epistemic injustice', Educational Management Administration & Leadership. https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432211022776

Tian, M & Virtanen, T 2021, 'Shanghai teachers’ perceptions on distributed leadership: Resource and agency', ECNU Review of Education, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 808-829. https://doi.org/10.1177/2096531120921051

Kameshwara, KK, Eryilmaz, N, Tian, M & Sandoval-Hernández, A 2020, 'Teachers’ Pedagogical Autonomy, Professional Development and Students’ Digital Skills: New Evidence from Italy', Autonomie Locali e Servizi Sociali. https://doi.org/10.1447/98729

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Youngs, H, Roberts, A, Tian, M & Woods, PA 2023, Disrupted leadership in education. in PA Woods, A Roberts, M Tian & H Youngs (eds), Handbook on Leadership in Education. Elgar Handbooks in Education, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 517-535. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800880429

Woods, PA, Roberts, A, Tian, M & Youngs, H 2023, Introduction: leadership in education: an inherently fractured field? in PA Woods, A Roberts, M Tian & H Youngs (eds), Handbook on Leadership in Education. 1 edn, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 1-12. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800880429.00006

Roberts, A, Tian, M, Woods, PA & Youngs, H 2023, Part I: Conceptual Issues Concerning Leadership in Education. in PA Woods, A Roberts, M Tian & H Youngs (eds), Handbook on Leadership in Education. Elgar Handbooks in Education, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 13-15. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800880429.00007

Tian, M, Roberts, A, Woods, PA & Youngs, H 2023, Part II: Social Justice and Leadership In Education. in Handbook on Leadership in Education. 1 edn, Elgar Handbooks in Education, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 186-189. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800880429.00020

Youngs, H, Roberts, A, Tian, M & Woods, PA 2023, Part III: Researching and Developing Leadership in Education. in PA Woods, A Roberts, M Tian & H Youngs (eds), Handbook on Leadership in Education. 1 edn, Elgar Handbooks in Education, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 375-378. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800880429.00034

Chapter

Tian, M & Lan, X 2020, Policy-practice decoupling: Education inspection reform in China. in Neoliberalism and Education Systems in Conflict. Routledge.

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