Prof Phil Riley

Phil Riley is Professor of Education Leadership at Deakin University's Research for Educational Impact (REDI) strategic research centre, where he researches the overlapping space of psychology, education and leadership.

He is the Director and Chief Investigator for the Principal Health and Wellbeing Survey, Australia’s first truly independent research project mapping the occupational health, safety and wellbeing of the nation’s educational leaders. This annual longitudinal survey was developed in response to growing concerns about principal and teacher welfare and is conducted in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and most recently Finland.

For the past nine years I have been the Chief Investigator and Director of the annual Principal Health and Wellbeing Surveys in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and most recently Finland. The research is focussed on OH&S/ Wellbeing issues for principals and aspirant leaders, and has recently expanded to include teachers in the Northern Territory and New Zealand. The research is underpinned conceptually by the Job Demands and Resources (JD-R) Theory. However, I have extended JD-R theory, to include the relationships between school leaders, teachers and students, through combining concepts from Attachment Theory to JD-R. I am particularly focussed on the cognitive, behavioural, affective and existential dimensions of leadership.

1. Occupational health, safety and wellbeing of school leaders and teachers
2. Organisational culture
3. The overlap between leadership, leader-member exchange and psychological processes
4. Interpersonal relationships within the classroom and in the staffroom
5. The impact of Attachment Styles on the leadership of teachers and students
6. The “secure base” as a mediator between school leadership and teachers’ coping

I strive to allow the benefits of my research findings to flow out into industry and the community rapidly, by producing detailed annual reports released into the public domain. The reports have generated significant discussion among policy makers (substantiated by invitations to brief every department of education in the country annually since 2014) and the general public see Media Impact below). My knowledge translation strategy is to deliver the important findings and new knowledge rapidly, through industry publications and keynote speeches, while the slower process of producing high quality academic outputs progresses.

To this end, the strategies I repeatedly use to achieve my research goals are to:

1. Secure sufficient funding through industry collaboration around significant projects;
2. Find the right research collaborators to conduct the work;
3. Rapidly produce significant research outputs for industry partners and highest quality outputs for the academy; and,
4. Produce high quality academic publications.

These strategies are now the Australian federal government’s preferred research career model. I am therefore extremely well placed in the current milieu. My track record of identifying and addressing telling research questions drawn from on-going industry collaborations has created the platform for a significant international expansion of the work and will help to position Deakin University at the forefront of this important development. Pursuing this strategy has brought national and international recognition as an eminent authority in school principal health and wellbeing, and I provide intellectual leadership beyond this specific area of research, through increasing recognition as a public intellectual, evidenced by over 70 keynote addresses in six countries, and regular contact by journalists for comment on these and related issues.

To summarise: I am recognised as an international research leader who garners high levels of engagement from industry partners, and produces research that creates significant industry impact, participant benefit and academic recognition.

Advisory panel memberships

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (School Leadership Roundtable)
Queensland Department of Education (Teaching Queensland’s Future Program)
South Australian Department of Education (Principal Health and Wellbeing Strategy Reference Group)
Victorian Department of Education and Training (Principal Health and Wellbeing Strategy Reference Group)

Board memberships

FuelEd Schools, USA
Creating a Safe School Environment CASSE

Professional memberships

Research for Educational Impact (REDI)
American Psychological Association (APA)
American Educational Research Association (AERA)
Australian Psychological Society (APS)
Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE)
Golden Key International Honour Society (Deakin Chapter)
Imaginative Education Research Group (IERG)
Learning in Depth (LiD)
National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU)

Academia

ORCID

ResearchGate

Scopus

2017 Australian Council for Educational Leadership Researcher of the Year Award

2015 International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) Award for Outstanding Article of 2014 (with Andrea Gallant): Early career teacher attrition: New thoughts on an intractable problem