Primary school heads’ professional socialization and leadership development in Cyprus

This article explores Cypriot primary school heads’ professional socialization (PS), in terms of their preparation for headship. A study in three phases involving a survey and interviews indicates that, to ‘learn what it is to be a head’ prior to headship, Cypriot heads resort to personal initiatives for training and development in school management and leadership; deputy headship, along with practising leadership in small primary schools, also appears to contribute to PS. In light of these experiences, heads take up headship with some preconceptions about the headship role. Upon entry to headship, networking and collaboration, as well as the formal training scheme for newly appointed school heads are also considered as useful, but heads set directions in which this programme could further be enhanced. In view of these findings, leadership development could address the contribution of previous heads, counterparts, colleagues, mentors and trainers to Cypriot school heads’ PS in both preparation as well as induction programmes.     

Gender in Primary and Secondary Education: a handbook for policymakers and other stakeholders by Ramya Subrahmanian,London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 2007

Abstract

According to the literature on school effectiveness and school improvement and the role of the school principal in this regard, the lack of time management skills and abilities among school principals can be regarded as one of the main factors that lead to principal inefficiency and ineffectiveness in the school context. But, how do male and female principals compare in terms of time management and how does gender influence one's decision-making skills in relation to time management? It is clear from the literature that no research has been conducted locally with regard to possible differences in the time management skills and abilities of male and female principals and on the problems that they experience in this regard. This article, based on an empirical study of the perceived differences between male and female principals’ time management skills and abilities in selected Gauteng schools, gives an indication of how both male and female principals rate themselves in terms of their own time management skills and abilities. The findings show that male principals have less effective time management skills and abilities as compared to their female counterparts. In the end, the study would recommend that both male and female principals should set their own priorities and devote sufficient time to these priorities so as to enable them to manage their time more effectively and efficiently in the school context.     

Training Needs Assessment of Heads of Islamabad Model Schools

The professional capacity of managers has always been a crucial factor in enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of any organization. In the education sector, the education managers working at different administrative levels are responsible for the planning and management of educational institutions toward achieving the goals of the education sector. This article attempts to explore the capacity‐building needs of the heads of Islamabad Model Schools in the context of their job requirements. Data were collected from 50 head teachers of Islamabad Model Schools through questionnaires and focus group discussions. In Islamabad Capital Territory, there is no education management cadre; therefore teachers are appointed as head of schools by virtue of their seniority. These heads usually lack the required management skills to manage an educational institution. Moreover, there are no arrangements for building the capacity of these newly appointed school heads to run these institutions. While managing the educational institutions, head teachers have to perform various important functions for which they need managerial skills. It has been discovered that head teachers needed training in different areas of management, including financial management, office management, personnel management, school improvement, planning, community participation, and computer literacy. The head teachers of Islamabad Model Schools need service management training in various areas of management to enhance the knowledge and skills they need to run educational institutions efficiently and effectively.     

Issues in the development of children’s centres on nursery and primary school sites

This paper explores the development of children’s centres in England between 2004 and 2008, focusing on the newly created centres that have been located on primary and nursery school sites. Using both an analysis of policy documents and interview data from three urban local authorities, we examine the use of premises and the differing priorities of centre staff and school heads, particularly in relation to the balance of services between early years education, childcare and family support. We also explore governance issues, focusing especially on patterns of accountability. In so doing, we also examine the tensions that exist between children’s centres located on primary and on nursery school sites and the schools themselves.     

A school leaders’ professional development project The first year: Progress in researching the professional development needs of secondary school headteachers

Ted Wadsworth is a professional counsellor, educator and trainer. He has taught and counselled in schools for many years before taking up his present position in 1976, and has had a long‐standing interest in the personal and social development of adolescents, a sympathy for their teachers and headteachers and a concern for the organizational health of secondary schools. He has concerns also for equity in education and a desire to see much greater participation by minority groups in a more empowering form of education. As a counsellor educator he has had many contacts with schools and headteachers and has worked to integrate counselling and pastoral care within schools as organizations.

This paper describes the first stage of an investigation into the professional development needs of secondary school heads. The time period is November 1986 to November 1987. The aims of the research are to ascertain what professional development needs the heads have and what strategies might be used to meet them. The style of the investigation is ethnographic and action research. The researcher convened and ran seminars/workshops for the heads, their deputies and sometimes other school leaders twice a term for the year, acted as a consultant to two heads and conducted a school development exercise (in the school of one of the heads to whom he was a consultant). Also 12 heads were interviewed in depth about their professional development needs. Finally, a questionnaire was developed from the total findings and sent to all 60 heads in the Waikato, Bay of Plenty and Central Plateau areas. A two‐year programme for school leaders was developed and has already commenced.     

Restructuring Educational Leadership in Changing Contexts: A Local/Global Account of Restructuring in Australia

The 1990s saw considerable structural reform in school education in many Anglophone nation states, marked by trends towards school-based, site-based, self-managing and self-governing schools. This article illustrates through a case study of educational restructuring in Victoria, Australia, how leadership, as a discursive practice, is redefined in the context of spatial and cultural restructuring. Restructuring produced a spatial redistribution of educational provision and individual opportunities as a result of structural adjustment reforms. These same policy moves towards post-welfarism also produced cultural shifts in attitudes to education with the rise of the new instrumentalism and entrepeneurialism. For school principals at the forefront of self managing schools, this meant shifts in resource distribution through new policy mechanisms of managerial and market accountability, and also new priorities impacting on leadership practices with a move from dialogic to decisional modes of management. The question is how recent policy moves towards learning networks and reinventing systematic support with a focus on locational disadvantage are addressing what were increased educational disparities between schools and students. Does this provide scope for more equity-driven leadership practices?     

Some Effects of the National Dispute on the Relationships between Head Teachers and School Staffs in Primary Schools

This paper reports part of a research project on the appraisal of the managerial performance of primary school head teachers. One aspect of the interviews conducted with the head teachers concerned their perceptions of their roles. A number of them expressed the view that the national dispute had affected the nature of their relationships with their staffs. There appeared to be evidence of the development of ‘us and them’ attitudes in primary schools where the heads were increasingly seen as management figures by their staffs rather than as fellow members of the teaching team. Some heads were attempting to resist this trend and some felt uncomfortable at the pressures they perceived to be upon them to move to a different managerial style. Some analysis is attempted of existing methods of management employed by heads in their relations with their staffs in primary schools and an attempt is made to predict ways in which these managerial patterns might now develop.     

Knowledge acquisition in Biochemistry,Physiology and Anatomy within the context of problem-based learning

Abstract

The study sought to examine the current Zimbabwean school system; establish the extent to which it is conducive to students making decisions about the selection of subjects they learn at school; to examine the nature of children's rights and the extent to which these rights are practiced in schools and in the prevailing socio-economic and political milieu. A stratified random sample of 100 pupils, 24 teachers and five school heads was used in this study. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected using a questionnaire, an interview schedule and observing both pupils and teachers. The study found that teachers and pupils seemed to be aware of pupils’ rights to participate in deciding the subjects they studied; and most teachers and school heads felt it was more of their duty to decide for pupils because of their immaturity. Therefore, determining the school curriculum content should involve school heads, teachers and pupils instead of choices being made and the content dictated to pupils.     

A survey of the use of newspapers in science instruction by secondary teachers in Northern Ireland

The purpose of this study was to explore the extent and nature of teachers' use of newspapers in the secondary science classroom. A survey was conducted in 50 schools. Through semi-structured interviews with the heads of their science departments, three broad issues were investigated: the prevalence, pattern and purpose of use, classroom practice and curricular priorities. It was found that a great many teachers use newspapers, in some way, to support science instruction. The majority, however, used the resource incidentally rather than systematically. By far their most common intention was to highlight the link between school science and everyday life. Only a few reported that they used newspapers to develop among their students an aptitude and ability to read and respond critically to science in the media. It is suggested that such findings are significant in the context of current discussion of the school curriculum and 'scientific literacy'.     

Reviewing a Curriculum: First Steps

This survey of 8–12 middle school year leaders' and deputy heads' attitudes to both year leader and deputy headship roles identified the particularly distinctive properties of each. A further analysis revealed, for both roles, a common core of behaviours and, for each role, areas of positive behavioural congruence. These findings tend to suggest the absence of role conflict between year leaders and deputy heads in this type of school with a year group organizational structure.     

Realities and Feelings in the Work of Primary Heads

This article examines the affective nature of day‐to‐day primary school headship. The author points to differences in the kinds of tasks that heads do each day and suggests that these determine their prevailing feelings. A distinction is made between work that merely keeps the school operating and work that helps the head to shape the school. It is argued that the former provides few satisfactions for heads, while satisfactions gained from the latter are often transient. Spending time with children is an aspect of ‘personal work’ that provides heads with their most deeply felt satisfactions. One effect of the government's reforms is to intensify those features of heads’ work that offer little emotional sustenance, while eroding those that do     

Managing senior management team boundaries and school improvement: an investigation of the school leader role

The present study purpose was to investigate the unique role and activities of school principals in managing their senior management team (SMT) boundaries. The study examined how school principals’ internal and external activities mediate the relationship of principals’ personal factors from the Big Five typology, the team and contextual characteristics of functional heterogeneity and goal interdependence to SMT effectiveness and school outcomes of teachers’ absenteeism, school violence and academic emphasis. The results of the structural equation model from a sample of 92 schools indicate that internal activities fully mediate the relationship between principal extraversion and conscientiousness, SMT functional heterogeneity, intra-and inter-team goal interdependence to SMT effectiveness. The external activities were found to fully mediate the relationship between principal extraversion, SMT functional heterogeneity, intra-and inter-team goal interdependence to school outcomes. By concluding that both internal and external activities remain fundamental to overall effectiveness, this study may provide principals with boundary management techniques and practices. The findings may encourage principals to establish priorities and allocate their time, resources and attention effectively both inward and outward the SMT boundary so as to improve SMT and school outcomes.     

Calculating the power of alternative choices by school leaders for improving student achievement

This paper addresses a wicked problem faced by leaders wanting to be evidence informed in their choices of school improvement priorities and the most productive leadership practices to enact in pursuing those priorities. While local contexts will always be central to these choices, results of research ought to provide useful points of departure. But determining what relevant evidence recommends, local context aside, is far more difficult that the admonition to be ‘evidence informed’ seems to imply and the research community has offered few systematic solutions to the problem. This paper offers one possible solution, the calculation of ‘Power Indices’ using, for the purposes of illustration, evidence about the effects of a selected set of potential school improvement priorities (teachers’ emotions) on student learning, in combination with evidence about the effects on teacher emotions of a selected set of transformational leadership practices. Results argue for the value of a unique line of future research enabling school leaders to make choices about both school improvement priorities and how they might best pursue those priorities that systematically reflect the results of relevant evidence.     

The Adaptation of Chinese Split-Site Business Students to British Classrooms: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Chinese business education differs from British business education in many respects. On the whole, it focuses on the acquisition of theoretical knowledge, whereas British business education places far more emphasis on soft management skills and team-work. This paper examines a split-site business degree program offered by a Chinese international school and a British business school, and explores the attitudes and expectations of the Chinese participants and their Chinese and British lecturers from an “English for specific purposes” perspective. The study conducted classroom observation, semi-structured interviews, and a questionaire survey, and identifies areas of difficulty for Chinese business students in the UK, in particular regarding their beliefs about teacher and student roles, their learning priorities and learning strategies, and their “goal-oriented” approach to discussion, which is at odds with the more collaborative and exploratory Western discussion strategies. The findings have implications for pre-sessional and in-sessional English course design, the management of split-site business degree programs, the teaching of Chinese students, and the enhancement of learning experiences generally in international business programs.     

中小学校长影响策略现状与分析

学校的管理效能很大程度上取决于其管理者尤其校长的影响力,而影响策略的使用,更是直接决定了校长影响力的强弱。但目前我国境内,对校长影响策略的实证探讨并不多见。在影响力定量实证研究方向上作出一定探索,并通过问卷方法,分析和描述了我国中小学校长影响策略使用的现状。     

Big school,small school: Impact of the high school environment

An investigation of the relationship between high school priorities and self-concept was undertaken. Upper and underclassmen from large and small high schools completed questionnaires and the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale. Participation in five activity areas was related to self-concept using a multiple-regression technique. The perceived similarity of each student's priorities with the school's priorities was also correlated with self-concept. The relationships accounting for the greatest proportion of the variance in self-concept scores were found among small-school upperclassmen. The results were interpreted as support for Barker's argument that small school students feel a greater obligation to participate in school activities.     

The Local Context and the Legacy of the Past

This paper draws upon interviews with eight headteachers in ‘Northern LEA’, and examines (a) how the heads perceived their role in relation to the current period of rapid educational change, and (b) how they sought to cope with the increasingly difficult demands which they faced. The consequences of the current situation are considered in relation to a qualitative understanding of ‘high performance’ which recognises the situational complexity of the school as an organisation.

The heads made use of many sources of support; the most important were a network of informal contacts with other headteachers and an increase in the involvement of senior management team colleagues in the stresses and responsibilities of management. The paper concludes that despite the efforts of the heads themselves, the consequences of resource cuts and the Education Reform Act 1988 are likely to make the achievement and management of high performance increasingly difficult.     

The Two Faces of Micropolitics

Twenty six primary school headteachers in the Midlands of England were interviewed about headteacher appraisal at a point when all of them had been appraised at least once and when in most cases they had been involved in the appraisal of other heads. One set of questions related to the benefits heads perceived that they had received from the headteacher appraisal process. The majority of heads did perceive such benefits and this article explores the nature of these claimed benefits. They included the opportunity to reflect on one or two longer term developmental issues, as opposed to the normal headteacher routine of crisis management on a number of fronts simultaneously; the chance to have a second opinion on their managerial practice; the feeling that someone was observing their work with care and could give praise when due; the possibility of making comparisons with the practice of other heads. Some heads felt they gained more benefits from being an appraiser of other heads than from being appraised themselves. Some of the arrangements for headteacher appraisal had involved more mutuality than the government had originally envisaged, but it is argued that this may have also brought about some unanticipated benefits.     

The University of Bath in a National Context

In order to investigate selected aspects of decision‐making in three schools of a South Australian TAFE College, data about modes of decision‐making and extent of involvement in decision‐making and the association of these with biographic variables were obtained from a questionnaire completed by 72 lecturing staff.

The hypotheses tested were:‐‐

1. Teachers will desire modes of decision‐making which permit them to be involved in decision‐making to an extent greater than they currently perceive themselves to be

2. Teachers will desire to be involved in decision‐making to an extent greater than they currently perceive themselves to be.

These hypotheses were supported by the data. Ninety‐four per cent of respondents were found to be in some state of decisional deprivation. Some decisional areas were associated with higher decisional deprivation than others. Whilst different modes of decision‐making were desired for different decisions, the Democratic Centralist mode was most frequently desired for a majority of decisions.

The biographic variable having most association with responses was that of classification, with staff of higher classification being more involved in decision‐making and less deprived than those of lower classification.