Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Educational Management, Volume 24, Issue 6
I bid you welcome once more to this sixth issue of the International Journal of Educational Management. On this occasion, there are authors from the UK, the USA, Spain, Australia, India, Uganda and Oman. In the first paper,Anabel Corral Granados and Genoveva Granados Gámez of Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Almeria, respectively, write on key issues for successful Spanish school principals. What constitutes sustainable leader and the qualities of sustainable leadership are covered in the paper, and these are critical for a school’s success. Four phases of work which aid the organisation to develop sustainability are defined as discovery, diagnosis,design and implementation. Implementing these is a complex process with the sustainable leader required to take the necessary action to achieve sustainability-resources need to be planned and design has to be put in place which takes into consideration the three aspects of success for organisational sustainability, i.e. the social, environmental and the economic.
Mohan Raju Pamu offers a piece on the implications of teachers’decisions to quit their careers. The study declares that up to 30 per cent of new entrants leave early and by their fifth year this increases to 50-60 per cent. The purpose of the paper is to identify, in Ethiopia, what job-related,individual and profession-related variables cause this early departure to occur. An underdeveloped nation needs to address this situation say the authors and making teaching an attractive career and retaining those trained is a key area for those exercising responsibility. The admissions policy and development of“teacher identity” through more rigorous teacher education programmes could be an “immediate and tangible” measure.
John J. De Nobile and John McCormick contribute a joint work on the occupational stress of Catholic Primary School staff. The study investigates the relationships between biographical variables of gender, age, experience,employment position and the occupational stress in the Catholic Primary Sector in New South Wales. The findings show that age, gender and position were found to be related to three out of four identified domains of occupational stress as well as overall occupational stress. Male staff experienced higher levels of general occupational stress than their female colleagues. There are implications in the study for teacher retention, school organisation and gender issues and further work on teachers’ aides is recommended.
James Kagaari of Kyambogo University and John C. Munene and Joseph Mpeera Ntayi of Makerere University Buisness School, Uganda, give a paper on performance management practices linked to employee attitudes and managed performance. “Public universities in Uganda are facing challenges such as reduced funding from the government, restructuring, downsizing and reengineering”. They also have to run as profitable organisations so that programmes are commercially motivated. The aim of the study is to demonstrate the need for managers and universities to give attention to performance management practices and employee attitudes to achieve successful managed performance. The study shows that the older the university becomes, the more it fails to deliver its expectations.
In the next offering, A. William Place, Julia Ballenger, Teresa A. Wasonga,Joyce Piveral and Carole Edmonds contribute on the “Principles’perspectives of social justice in public schools”. In this nationally based study, it confirms that principals are concerned with social justice and identified that some principals do not explicitly discuss issues that relate to social justice. Principals who raised social justice issues felt that leaders should be courageous enough to make decisions that are best for children even though they may not be popular. The term has come to be used increasingly in the USA, although there is little research on the practical implications. The subject is complex as the paper demonstrates as it is not always appropriate to treat all groups the same in order to achieve social justice because of the diverse nature of the school population. Principals should apply both academic excellence and social justice principles.
The final paper is from Narayanan T. Ramachandran from the Sultanate of Oman. The paper is on the marketing framework in higher education, particularly in relation to the aspirations of students. The need to provide value for money to students and to be responsive to their needs has necessitated higher education institutions in general and marketing units in particular to look beyond marketing theories and to look at benchmarking against measurements. Where quality assurance agencies exist, accreditation is gaining momentum, giving a robust higher education product which supports a learning environment and a student friendly campus.
Brian Roberts
