Abstract
Welcome to the January issue of MiE and a very happy, productive and peaceful new year to all of our readers.
As we begin the year I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of our reviewers for their hard work and support. The number of submissions is steadily on the increase and the feedback you give to authors is invaluable. I would also like to offer thanks to our Associate Editors and Advisory Board for their ongoing support in continuing to develop the journal. Finally a thank you to our authors for their excellent contributions, we look forward to reading your work throughout the coming year.
In September 2018, for the first time almost two decades since its inception, education ministers met at the G20 to discuss global education trends and policy challenges, finally giving formal recognition to the fact that education is absolutely core to international development. Representatives from international civil society organizations focusing on education presented ministers with key papers, one of which focused on the thorny issue of how to create a highly motivated and professional teaching force. As those of us in education are well aware, the issue of teacher retention and recruitment is now at critical level worldwide: According to a recent UN report 3.3 million more teachers will be needed by 2030. With Sub-Saharan Africa facing the largest teacher gap, it will need a total of 17 million primary and secondary teachers by 2030. (http://www.unesco.org).
With this in mind, Management in Education begins 2019 with a set of research articles that all lend insight to teacher motivation and retention and the ways in which they impact learner outcomes and organizational climate. The link between employees and organizational culture is well-established in the field of organizational studies, and the ways in which they affect one another is well-documented in works such as O’Reilly, Chatman and Caldwell (1991).
Our first article by Saturnin Dandala argues that the implementation of human resource policies such as Teacher Performance Appraisal (TPA) is a disturbance to a school organizational climate. Based on the author’s examination of both school managers and teachers’ discourse, the article suggests that a new leadership approach needs to be developed at school level in order to effectively coordinate TPA implementation in a way that it can enhance teacher professional growth. As she points out, numerous books and refereed articles have been written about the implication of HR policies in corporate organizations, but it is still unconventional to find scholarly papers that deal with the issue of HR policy in educational organizations. Moving on from teacher appraisal and its effects on teacher professional growth, Karleric Naslund and Branco Ponomariov examine in our next article whether labour practices in American Charter Schools, diminish the negative effect of teacher turnover on student achievement and graduation rates. They begin by arguing that the unifying assumption behind the dismissal of underperforming teachers is that in so doing, student achievement rates will rise.
In our third research article Alfonso J. Gil, Francisco Xavier Carrillo and Eduardo Fonseca Pedrero explore how schools are defined as learning organizations. Arguing that being a learning organization is particularly important for schools, aiding innovation and driving significant and positive changes for the organization overall. The study looks to validate a questionnaire that covers the basic dimensions of a learning organization in a school context, in order to provide an analysis tool for educational organizations that look to create positive changes with their culture and environment. The questionnaire contains four basic dimensions, which relate to learning and non-tangible aspects of the organizations’ strategy; the empirical study takes as its sample a number of secondary and high school teachers in the province of Valencia in Spain
Our final research article by Huu Kuong Nguyen examines professional development within higher education, arguing that it should be present on three levels − micro, meso and macro. Beginning with a conceptual analysis of theories relating to professional development, the paper then reviews professional development for teachers, institutional leaders and finally, educational policy makers. Based on this, the article discusses these findings and provides a set of recommendations which emphasize, in particular, the importance of professional development policies and practices for educational leaders and policy-makers.
The final section of this issue turns to culture in the wider, geographical sense, as Michael Jopling’s thought provoking opinion piece looks at whether the rhetoric about a North-South divide in performance between schools in England, is justified. Beginning with what he terms ‘the catalyst’ for this rhetoric, Sir Michael Wilshaw’s final annual Ofsted reports in 2015 and 2016, the article traces how the divide rhetoric has been assimilated into popular discourse by the media and subsequent policy reports. The article uses regional school performance data to examine whether claims about the divide are convincing, focusing on the North East which has been recognized as an outlier in both primary and secondary performance.
Our issue concludes with another interesting addition to a series of interviews carried out by our Interviews Editor, Chris Oates. This time she speaks to John Widdowson CBE, who believes passionately in giving people the space to manage and lead. John is Principal and Chief Executive of New College Durham. He chairs the Mixed Economy Group (a working group of 40 colleges that offer higher education courses in addition to their FE provision) and was a member of the HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) board for six years, chairing its participation committee for four of those years. In 2010 he was awarded a CBE for Services to Local and National Further and Higher Education. In this piece he talks to Chris about his approach to leading and managing HE in FE and the challenges this presents for the leadership of these organizations.