Management in Education

This article reports on a seminar by the Critical Educational Policy and Leadership Research Interest Group in June 2012. The article reports on the papers and our engagement with the need to use theory to develop descriptions and understandings.

In many jurisdictions school leaders are being placed under increased accountability and stress, which then affects their ability to address the real issue of education − improving students’ learning. Flow Theory, developed by the Hungarian−American psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, has a high degree of relevance to the issue of the way modern school leaders carry out their roles. A purposive sample of school leaders (N = 8) was interviewed about their Flow experiences, in both in-school and out-of-school situations. The nine dimensions of Flow (Jackson and Csikszentmihalyi, 1999) were used as a conceptual guide in the e-interviews. Each of the school leaders gave powerful descriptions of their memorable out-of-school deep-Flow experiences, but their in-school experiences of Flow appeared to have far less impact. The data analysis showed that with this sample of school leaders only four of Jackson and Csikszentmihalyi’s nine dimensions of Flow were identifiable in their in-school experiences. The misfit of Csikszentmihalyi’s dimensions of Flow is important, and needs re-interrogation in future research. Importantly, the moral dimension of the school leaders’ job was identified by the respondents as the most important facilitator of Flow in both public and private schools, and this may provide the key to improved school leader resilience and motivation.

Superintendents from eight southeastern United States school districts self-described their leadership styles across the choices of autocratic, laissez-faire, democratic, situational, servant, or transformational. When faced with this array of choices, the superintendents chose with arguable equitableness, indicating that successful leaders can display any of these styles. Their choices, however, seem unrelated to any discernible personal, professional, or district demographic variable. The authors propose that, regardless of leadership style, authenticity within the style may be needed for effectiveness. They discuss the implications for this in terms of professional preparation programs, administrative careers, and selection, professional development, and assessment processes for governing boards.

In October 2005, the Maltese Government embarked on a new phase of its national educational reform, which focuses on state compulsory primary and secondary schooling. A central part of this reform was the creation of state-maintained colleges. By February 2008 all state primary and secondary schools on the Maltese Islands were clustered into ten provisional colleges. This article aims to show the nature of collaboration that is required to sustain the establishment of school networks. It analyses the nature of collaboration in a policy context that requires joint working within and by individual schools and the formation of a partnership with parents and the community at large. Data collected from face-to-face in-depth semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and documented material have underpinned the importance of the theme of collaboration as a core aspect of this case study. This article reports the results of phase 1 of a larger study that was undertaken in one college.

The February 2011 Canterbury earthquake was a dramatic reminder of the need for schools to have emergency management plans in place. A number of other disaster and hazard events have historically caused New Zealand schools to close temporarily, and often within a short time frame. At such times principals must act decisively and communicate clearly with their communities in complex and difficult circumstances, carrying risk for student well-being. Here we present two hazard-specific New Zealand case studies, pandemic (H1N1) and adverse weather (snowstorm) − both precipitating instances of temporary school closure. Lessons taken from the case studies offer an opportunity for management staff to reflect on how to best plan for and manage environmental hazards precipitating temporary school closure in order to mitigate immediate and long-term risk to pupils and the wider school community.

The trend towards gender equality in principalship appointments continues to interest researchers, especially when it appears in traditional societies that maintain patriarchal, anti-feminist attitudes and values. Arab society in Israel is undergoing transition from traditionalism to modernism. Arab women hold the majority of Arab school teaching positions, but patriarchal opposition erupts when they aspire to attain principalship positions. This article reports on a study that examined attitudes of teacher colleagues towards the appointment of women principals.  The findings indicated that women principals were perceived as creating a pleasant atmosphere at school, yet all the teachers agreed that women had inferior abilities to conduct relations with external bodies. Male teachers expressed significantly more patriarchal attitudes than female teachers. Surprisingly, teachers with higher-level education expressed more resistance to female leadership than those without academic degrees. The discussion suggests ways to achieve gender equality in the appointment of school principals in Arab society in Israel.

This article presents a review of current leadership practices of principals in further education colleges and suggests that principalship is more than a two-dimensional functional model comprising internal or externally focused activities. During the past 20 years further education leadership has become more demanding, with greater accountability imposed by a state-controlled system and, as Hargreaves and Fink (2005) suggest, this has impacted on the number of individuals entering senior leadership posts. In light of these changes it is appropriate to review the role of the principal and what is known about the way the role has changed. As a result of the way in which principalship has evolved, this article introduces a tri-dimensional model of principalship − first by reflecting on leadership practices of college principals and identifying the key elements of their role, and second by suggesting that college principalship compasses three theoretical aspects: a public, an internal–public and an internal–private.