Abstract
In this issue of Management in Education, our main focus is on international and cross-cultural education. In recent months, our colleagues at SAGE have reported a significant increase in our international readership. We are delighted that the journal is extending its reach across the world. As usual, we bring you a range of content, including research articles, an opinion piece, an interview and a Research Interest Group report.
The authors of our first research article are currently based in Kuwait and Qatar. Meznah Saad Alazami and Huda Saleem Al-Kubasi report on their study of principals in public schools in Kuwait. Their specific theme is the economics of school leadership, where principals must manage the tensions between social demand for educational services and the constraints of education budgets at national and local level. In addition to the significant conclusions and recommendations, the authors also contribute to a methodological discussion by illustrating the use of Delphi method to generate data about the perceptions of school principals in Kuwait on diversifying sources of school financing.
Our second research article is by Haim Shaked and Chen Schechter, who are based in Israel. Their work on systems thinking – ‘the ability to see the whole beyond its parts’ – explores new concepts of school improvement within educational systems that face rapid change and increasing complexity. The authors challenge simplistic understandings of school improvement that rest on the agency of a single, ‘transformational’ leader. They recognise the power and potential of teacher leadership and distributed leadership at both organisation and system-wide level. The concept of input and output, with a straight line between them, is problematic. Instead, there is a need to understand school improvement as multidimensional.
In our opinion section, Peter Earley discusses how we can ensure the continuing effective performance of educational leaders while they are working within a culture of high-stakes accountability. Peter asks how head teachers and other senior leaders can be equipped to ‘survive’, ‘thrive’ and ‘revive’ in the current performative educational landscape in England and other jurisdictions.
Our interviewee in this issue is Elena Lenskaya OBE, Research Director of the Centre for Education Policy Studies at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Elena has worked in educational leadership at institutional and government level in Russia for more than 30 years. I interviewed Elena in Moscow earlier in the year and our wide-ranging conversation covered the years from President Gorbachev through to President Putin. Elena discusses her work with international institutions, including the British Council and the World Bank. One of Elena’s current projects is Teach for Russia, an initial teacher training programme that has much in common with Teach First in England and Teach First Cymru in Wales.
It is the turn of the BELMAS Gender and Leadership Research Interest Group to provide a report on its recent activity. This is an extremely active research group, which has attracted a series of leading international researchers and authors to lead and present at its well-attended events, culminating in the 2019 international conference: Ways of seeing women’s leadership in education: stories, images, metaphors, methods and theories. The report raises important issues of intersectionality, particularly in addressing the distinctive challenges faced by women in educational leadership in different parts of the world.