Leadership mentoring: a survey of early career psychologist leaders

Health service psychology has been slow to create a leadership mentoring model. A survey of former chairs of the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students and American Psychological Association’s Committee on Early Career Psychologists revealed that: (a) early career leaders had at least one mentor who explicitly supported their leadership development; (b) these mentoring relationships were both formal and informal; (c) peer mentoring was invaluable for fostering success; and (d) mentorship relationships were critical in preparing respondents for their roles. A preliminary framework and associated guidance for leadership mentoring in psychology is proposed.     

Using developmental relationships in mentoring to support novice principals as leaders of learning

Mentoring is an established method of supporting principals as they begin their careers; however, early studies focus on how a veteran principal supports a novice principal in acquiring the skills to manage the school. As the role of a principal has evolved from a building manager to a leader of learning, the role of mentoring has also evolved. The purpose of this study was to explore the mentoring experiences of novice principals and their mentors in a school district’s mentoring program, and how developmental mentoring relationships support novice principals to be leaders of learning. The ?ndings suggest that a strong mentoring relationship can support a novice principal in developing skills to be a leader of learning by clarifying the mentor’s role as a leader of learning, focusing mentoring sessions to build the mentee’s capacity as a leader of learning, and a commitment to mentoring sessions that support teaching and learning.     

Out of school: a phenomenological exploration of extended non-attendance

The concept of “extended non-attendance” (“school phobia” or “school refusal”) was distinguished from truancy early in the twentieth century, and refers to children who fear school and avoid attending. Despite much subsequent research, outcomes for those affected remain poor, and their voices remain largely absent from the evidence base. The current study sought to address this by examining the experiences of four secondary-age children with extended attendance difficulties. Data consisted of semi-structured interviews conducted in participants’ homes, subsequently analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Although participants differed markedly in their perception of the causes of their non-attendance, their support experiences appear remarkably similar. Emergent themes include being disbelieved, experiencing fragmented support, and feeling blamed and punished. Implications for practitioners include the importance of ensuring early intervention, the need to consider the individual child, and the importance of making sure that local intervention practices are informed by the evidence base.     

The preparation of Fijian school leaders: a framework for principal preparation in a South Pacific context

ABSTRACT

Increased school autonomy and a greater focus on achieving school effectiveness and improvement has made it essential to reconsider the role of school leaders (OECD 2009, Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments: First Results from TALIS. Paris: OECD Publishing). This recommends that leadership development in this rapidly changing world deserves significant consideration compared to the past. With the increasing interest entrusted to school leadership, this article reports on how school leaders are currently prepared by the higher education programmes offered in two out of three universities in Fiji. Through an extensive literature review as well as through programme documents and policy reviews, this article focuses on current educational leadership post-graduate courses offered at these Fijian universities and highlight areas of strengths as well as suggests recommendations for improvement that are in line with identified needs for effective principal preparation in a Fijian context with key connections made to the larger South Pacific region.     

Getting emotional: a critical evaluation of recent trends in the development of school leaders

Emotion is a growing focus for contemporary thinking about leadership in public policy and corporate arenas. In British education systems, three imperatives are evident: the idea that transformation is essential; leadership succession in crisis; and, more recently, that leaders must be able to run organisations that address the emotional well-being of staff and students. Viewed as a key outcome of schooling, its importance is mirrored in school leadership, especially professional development. This article considers whether this represents a step-change in leadership development praxis or is, instead, an invasive form of emotional engineering redolent of long-established orthodoxies of control and domination. If so, it is argued, leadership development as the advocacy of emotional acumen presents moral technology as a new form for intervening in leaders' emotional selves, thereby distracting them from addressing fundamental aspects of education for which they are primarily responsible.     

Restructuring a traditional student teacher supervision model: Fostering enhanced professional development and mentoring within a professional development school context

The purpose of this study was to pilot an alternative student teaching supervision model at a college of education in a US context. In the study, the collaborators used multiple paired dyads to supervise student teachers with multiple supports from college faculty. This study examined how teachers and university faculty planned the use of paired dyads and how participants responded to the innovation. The findings suggest teachers and junior faculty can undertake bottom-up reform within larger systemic constraints.     

Working together within a system: educative mentoring and novice teacher learning

Using a framework of activity theory, I follow one mentor/student teacher pair through a yearlong student teaching experience, investigating their interactions around the practice of educative co-planning. Evidence from multiple data sources collected over the course of one year is analyzed to understand the role co-planning played in the mentor/student teacher relationship, the experience of being a mentor, and in the development of the student teacher’s practices. Findings reveal the mentor and student teacher used the educative practice of co-planning to productively mediate tensions and navigate their relationship.     

Prospecting for support in a wild environment: investigating a school-to-school support system for primary school leaders

This paper draws on data collected from a series of semi-structured interviews with head teachers and other stakeholders on the impact and effectiveness of the introduction of a Primary School Improvement Group (PSIG) by the Local Authority (LA). The PSIG was introduced as a response to concerns expressed by the Department of Education about the perceived levels of underperformance by some primary schools in the city. Operating against a background of national policy developments, the LA developed a programme that enabled head teachers of highly effective schools to support senior staff in schools facing difficulty.     

The preparation of cognitively agile principals for turnaround schools: a leadership preparation programme study

The purpose of this study was to examine the ability of two educational leadership university programmes to improve the cognitive agility of their graduates. The research looked to discover whether the aspiring principals exited the programmes with an increased ability to employ cognitive agility – the ability to use the multiple thinking skills of systems thinking, reflecting, and reframing – when engaged in their professional work and solving problems. Both Masters programmes were in School Leadership, offered through the same university department and following the same core curriculum leading to Level 1 educational leadership certification. The results indicate that of the two programmes studied, the Principal Rapid Orientation and Preparation in Educational Leadership (PROPEL) programme, designed to prepare leaders for turnaround schools, produced more cognitively agile graduates than the traditional Master’s programme. The mediating variables of participants’ years of experience and budget responsibility increased the level of cognitive agility of both programme’s graduates.     

Assessing impact: the role of leadership competency models in developing effective school leaders

The purpose of this case study is to examine the impact of the development and design of a district leadership competency model on leadership development outcomes in one Georgia school district. Specifically, we seek to illuminate the importance of Leadership Competency Models for (1) increasing clarity among aspiring leaders about the expectations for leadership within their system; (2) increasing shared understanding among school leaders and district administrators about the core elements of leadership required for success within their system; (3) increasing uniformity of practice in the identification and selection of candidates into the Aspiring Leader Program; and (4) improvements in the development and support provided for aspiring school leaders. As districts continue to work towards systemic improvement in leadership development nationwide, our findings have real-world implications for districts interested in identifying and developing aspiring leaders within their own systems.     

Caregivers of school children with epilepsy: findings of a phenomenological study

Epilepsy is one of the most frequently diagnosed neurological disorders among children. Epilepsy is continuously linked with academic underachievement and social challenges. Despite the implications that these difficulties have for a child's educational success, little is known of how children with epilepsy experience school. Understanding how to best support and accommodate these children can contribute to their positive adaptation and quality of life. The purpose of this phenomenological study by Jillian Roberts and Cheryl Whiting of the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, is to understand the school experiences of children with epilepsy. Data was gathered through open‐ended, semi‐structured interviews. The caregivers' narratives were transcribed and analysed to elicit the essential experiences of school children with epilepsy. Five categories were elicited from the families' narratives: (1) health‐related issues, (2) family coping, (3) academic experience, (4) social belonging, and (5) awareness. This information will be particularly useful for teachers and allied professionals serving the needs of children with epilepsy – as well as those with other chronic health conditions.     

Building the mentoring relationship: humanism and the importance of storytelling between mentor and mentee

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we describe a mentoring program designed to help prepare high school seniors at Arizona State University Preparatory Academy for postsecondary education. Specifically, we address the usefulness of ‘humanistic mentoring,’ a form of mentoring that stresses the importance of reciprocity, mutuality, and empathy in the mentor/mentee relationship. We further describe how sharing stories was useful in developing such humanistic relationships. Based on etic-thematic coding of interviews from 13 of the mentees, a humanistic lens for mentoring and sharing personal stories is productive for both developing relationships and passing on knowledge.     

A mentoring programme based on competency development at a Spanish university: an action research study

This article describes an action research (AR) project for designing and implementing a structured mentoring programme in a Spanish university. A student affairs unit, a team of researchers, faculty-mentors and student-protégés worked together on three cycles of AR. The result is a programmatic mentoring programme for the development of non-technical personal and professional competencies for undergraduate students. This paper describes the original situation that sparked the project, the iterative process followed, the tools and guides developed and the final programme designed. In addition to the increase in the level of satisfaction perceived by the entire university, the paper outlines the five critical factors that emerged from the AR project: the competency development process, programme value added, trust between mentors and protégés, the prominence of the student-protégé in the improvement plans and the continuous improvement culture generated.     

Learning to make change happen in Chinese schools: adapting a problem-based computer simulation for developing school leaders

School leader training has become a critical strategy in educational reform. However, in China, there still exists a big gap in terms of how to transfer leadership knowledge into practice. Thus, tools that can integrate formal knowledge into practice are called for urgently in school leader training. This paper presents the results of a research and development (R&;D) approach to adapt an existing online computer simulation, Making Change Happen?, for use in Mainland China. The paper describes the process used to inform and assess our cultural adaptation of the simulation, as well as the response of Chinese principals to learning through this innovative method. Results affirmed the necessity for cultural adaptation of ‘Western’ curricula and tools for use in the Chinese context. The positive response of the Chinese school principals to learning via an online computer simulation suggested future potential for employing technology-facilitated, active learning modes in China. Implications are outlined for theory, research, and practice.     

The career paths of primary school principals in Ireland

The key purpose of this paper is to offer an exploration of the career paths of a number of Irish school principals. The information presented is part of a comparative study in the area, involving three island states: Cyprus, Malta and Ireland. The study provides an insight into how individuals become principals and how they perceive themselves in the role. The information is sourced through personal narrative. Qualitative in-depth interviewing is employed as the primary method of data gathering. Participants are posed a range of open-ended questions about their personal lives and about their initiation into their professional responsibilities. The results show that participants offer a variety of reasons for becoming teachers initially and a variety of reasons for seeking and achieving promotion to the post of school principal after a time. Family members and family experiences have an important function in influencing the lives of prospective leaders. With no formal training to prepare newly appointed principals for their roles, most report significant difficulties initially, particularly with managerial tasks and bureaucracy. In spite of these difficulties nonetheless, all participating principals report that they enjoy their roles. The results of the study demonstrate that the Irish principals interviewed in this research, experience similar challenges and rewards to those interviewed in earlier and concurrent studies internationally.     

Technological self-efficacy among school leaders in Oman: A preliminary study

There is more need today for school leaders to be up-to-date with technology and its various uses in education. Enhancing self-efficacy in the use of technologyis an expected role of educational leadership preparation programmes. This study investigated technological self-efficacy of a group of educators in leadership positions while participating in a leadership preparation programme at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. The findings show that these educators had high technological self-efficacy. There were also significant, positive relationships between technological self-efficacy variables, academic achievement and age. Age was negatively correlated with general learning self-efficacy and also with one indicator of academic achievement. In the qualitative analysis, the study used the framework of the Theory of Margin (TM) to identify the factors affecting technology self-efficacy. Results indicate that, while participants with a high power-load margin (PLM) reported a higher number of internal and external powers, those with a lower PLM reported a higher number of internal and external loads.     

This way please! Improving school leadership: the OECD way

In August 2008, the OECD published Improving School Leadership Volume 1: Policy and Practice and Improving School Leadership Volume 2: Case Studies on System Leadership. The main objectives of these reports were to compare school leadership policy between participating countries and to identify innovative practices and options for policy development. As part of the preparation for the final report, a background report on school leadership in the Republic of Ireland was prepared by the Department of Education and Science in 2007. This report will be analysed in this paper in order to identify the degree to which the background report achieved the objective of capturing the current and emerging issues facing school leaders in Ireland. A critique of the ‘one size fits all’ approach to policy in the area of school leadership detailed in Volume 1 of the OECD report follows. This critique contests that some of the policy recommendations contained in the report are based on a narrow and selective range of supporting evidence. A number of these are a cause of some concern particularly when considered in the context of specific features of the schools in the Republic of Ireland.     

The teacher as co-creator of drama: a phenomenological study of the experiences and reflections of Irish primary school teachers

Classroom drama in the Irish primary school context remains a relatively new endeavour and is largely under-researched. The knowledge base for all aspects of teacher education should be informed by rigorous reflection on teachers’ experiences in the classroom. This paper reports on a phenomenological study conducted with seven Irish primary school teachers which focused on their experiences of co-creating drama with their students. Co-creating drama is held in this work to be the coming together of teacher and students in a collective creative enterprise during the drama lesson. The term proposes a partnership whereby they operate as co-participants and co-artists in the drama experience. The ‘creating’ aspect of co-creating can be considered the artistic enterprise of making drama in a way that is new and unique to the group. In considering the teacher as a potential co-creator of drama, the paper probes the emergent and changing ontological attitudes of the participants throughout the process: the values, attitudes and perspectives that informed their teaching. The paper illuminates the phenomenon of teachers co-creating drama in all its complexity, and seeks to reflect on the meaning of this for the teachers.