Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Educational Management, Volume 23, Issue 2
Welcome to the second issue of 2009 which includes papers from an international perspective from the USA,UK, Netherlands and Israel, with a wide range of educational topics for your consideration. In the first paper Christa Boske introduces a work on children’s spirit-leadership standards and chief school executives, which seeks to increase awareness of the interactions among school leadership standards,cultural competence and decision making practices for chief executive officers in schools. To achieve this objective over 1,000 chief school executives (members of AASA-American Association of School Administrators) completed an electronic survey. Respondents ranked eight leadership standards from least to most important. Respondents ranked the three most important diversity standards that promoted the success of all school age children. Respondents ranked the remaining diversity standards that focussed specifically on marginalised populations as less important. The least important diversity standard was the ability and willingness to reject any arguments of a one to one correlation between race and culture or race and intelligence. Respondents indicated failures in professional development of a culturally responsive nature and that programmes did not prepare them for equity issues emphasised in national standards.
In Professor Oplatka’s paper he assesses a principal preparation programme in Israel. The programme was evaluated using two modes of inquiry-an open ended questionnaire aimed at examining the participants’ perceived benefits of every course, and a semi-structured interview with six participants intended to gain more understanding of the interpretations of the programme’s unique contents. Despite some criticism most participants found the field-based courses and those based on career-stage theories to be of much benefit to their professional development in terms of managerial awareness and identity. In contrast, courses which centred on broad knowledge or focussed on theories and academic knowledge were perceived to be of lesser importance.
The next paper is from the UK by Maringe,Foskett and Roberts, and analyses the new fees regime in the UK for higher education students and looks at their attitude to HE and debt. It is based on a sample of 64 students approaching the end of their A level study (this is a course before entering university) in four Further Education colleges. The research found that whilst the issue of debt was a significant concern for many students,the desire to go on to university remained a strong priority. Overall it was not found that student w ere deterred from participating in a university education.New forms of debt aversion were found in the student population, which universities need to be aware of in recruitment planning.
Asst Professor Matthew Symonds writes on monitoring of students for intercollegiate athletics programme review-this is a paper on the student attitude towards their work programmes and their perceived participation as a tool for programme review. Descriptive analysis revealed that athletes were as engaged as their non athlete peers and suggested that revenue sport participants were not as engaged as their non revenue sport counterparts. Analysis suggested that there were significant differences between both categories of independent variable – athletes/non athletes and revenue/non revenue sport participation.
From Radboud and Amsterdam Universities is presented a paper by Dr Honingh and Dr Oort on teachers’ organisational behaviour in public and private funded schools.The paper compares teachers’ organisational behaviour in publicly and privately funded schools in the Dutch Vocational Education and Training sector. Middle managers in these two types of schools completed a questionnaire measuring teachers’ attitudes, sense of identification and perception of the school climate. Analysis shows that teachers in publicly funded schools report a less curriculum oriented attitude, a lower sense of identification, and perceive a less supportive school climate than teachers in privately funded schools. Thankfully teachers did not cease to have a student oriented attitude in either type. In addition, the anaylsis shows significant effects of teacher characteristics, and disciplinary matters on teacher organisational behaviour.
Dr Samy and Keith Cook from Liverpool Hope University present a study on perceived school effectiveness using a local college as an example.Using a quality effectiveness index which measures effectiveness as seen by the local community the study investigates a Liverpool college’s perceptions of school effectiveness through the quality situation assessment instrument (based on Baldridge). The findings of the study indicate that it is an effective self evaluation tool as the report to the school complements the views expressed by the college’s OFSTED report.
Brian Roberts
