Implications For Educational Leadership Research Articles

Students’ perceptions of the quality and utility of assessment feedback: Implications for educational leadership and quality assurance

In this article, the researchers present the results of an investigation into students’ perceptions of the quality and utility of assessment feedback, and implications for educational leadership and quality assurance. A quantitative approach was taken to conduct a survey among a wide representation of students in one academic unit at a University in Jamaica. Data were collected over a 1-month period. This survey was administered online using the students’ group email addresses and allowing voluntary participation. Using a 20-point questionnaire with close-ended items, the researchers investigated student’s perceptions about the methods used to provide assessment feedback, the quality of feedback, timeliness of the feedback, students’ attitude toward feedback, as well as the utility and value of the assessment feedback. The findings of this study were similar to what was found in the literature. For students to value and use assessment feedback, it must be clear, specific, provide directions for improvement, and must be communicated in a timely manner, using the most appropriate method. Both the students’ perceptions of the quality of assessment feedback and their utility of assessment feedback were good. The findings of this study have implications for educational leadership and quality assurance.

Student-Principal Racial/Ethnic Match, Geographic Locale, and Student Disciplinary Outcomes

In-school suspensions represent one of the most frequently employed components of school exclusionary discipline systems, and they are also largely left up to the discretion of principals. The purpose of this study is to investigate in-school suspension disparities across student racial/ethnic groups, with a focus on differences between school geographic locales. We also examine the extent to which student to leader racial/ethnic matching is associated with the attenuation of in-school suspension outcomes for students of color. Drawing on state wide administrative data from Texas, representing over 24 million unique student-year observations, we use descriptive statistics and regression modeling to understand the relationship between student race/ethnicity and in-school suspension outcomes. The findings represent evidence of persistent in-school suspension disparities, specifically for Black students in non-urban school locales. Our findings also demonstrate a small but meaningful reduction in the likelihood of in-school suspension for a Black student in an urban school with a Black leader. We conclude with implications for educational leadership and policy, including a discussion of school leader hiring practices, culturally relevant school leadership, and the structuring of school disciplinary policies towards more equitable student outcomes.

A charge to keep I have: Black women teachers’ spirituality and the implications for educational leadership

ABSTRACT Black educators represent a small percentage of the educator workforce. In this manuscript, we examine the institutional and leadership conditions which contribute to the liminal presence of Black women educators specifically. We nuance the discussion about Black women educators to help educational leaders gain a deeper understanding of their: commitments to Black students, experiences with organizational oppression, and navigational techniques. We outline the ways that four Black women educators center religio-spiritual praxis in their classrooms. We use a phenomenological case study design to explore the narratives and religo-spiritual perspectives of four Black women educators. The authors leverage womanist theology to examine Black women educators’ work, commitments and ways of knowing. This manuscript utilizes interviews, artifact and document collection to paint a holistic picture. There are three major themes: strength, peace and womanist activism. These findings suggest that Black women educators are uniquely positioned to navigate, and help their Black students navigate, oppressive schooling conditions. This manuscript nuances the discussion about Black women educators in three key ways: (1) repositions their expertise in supporting Black students, (2) can increase educational leaders’ understanding of their commitments and realities, and (3) expands the teacher turnover discussion.

School Principals’ Experiences and Learning from the Covid-19 Pandemic in Norway

ABSTRACT This exploratory study present findings from semi-structured interviews with 15 Norwegian school principals elaborating on their experiences and learning from the school closures, transition to digital education, and educational leadership in the first six months of the pandemic. Three main themes emerged from the interviews: (1) “We took a quantum leap into the digital world” addressing how the school principals supported and experienced a rapid transformation to digital education; (2) “We tried to be close, even if we could not be” elaborating on worries regarding teachers and children with special needs; and (3) “We had to adjust” elaborating on the unpredictable and constantly changing nature of the situation. These themes are detailed and discussed in the context of research in crisis management, organizational change, role requirements, and leadership responsibilities. In closing, we discuss how the transformative experiences from the pandemic may have implications for educational leadership in future crisis situations.

The Growing Role of Big Data in Education and its Implications for Educational Leadership

The Growing Role of Big Data in Education and its Implications for Educational Leadership

Do Teacher Status, Gender, and Years of Teaching Experience Impact Job Satisfaction and Work Engagement?

This study explored whether teacher status (full-time vs. substitute) and its interaction with teacher gender and length of work experience had an effect on the linear combination of teacher job satisfaction and work engagement. The study was conducted with 238 full-time and substitute teachers. The findings suggested that full-time teachers’ social engagement, social engagement with students, and job satisfaction were significantly higher than those of substitute teachers, and that female teachers were more engaged with students than their male counterparts and substitute teachers. Length of teaching experience did not have any significant effect on job satisfaction or work engagement. Implications for educational leadership are discussed.

Authority, power and distributed leadership

A much greater understanding is needed of power in the practice of distributed leadership. This article explores how the concept of social authority might be helpful in achieving this. It suggests that the practice of distributed leadership is characterized by multiple authorities which are constructed in the interactions between people. Rather than there being a uniform hierarchy (relatively flat or otherwise) of formal authority, organizational members may be ‘high’ in some authorities and ‘low’ in others, and people’s positioning in relation to these authorities is dynamic and changeable. The article maps different forms of authorities, provides illustrations from educational institutions, and concludes with implications for educational leadership. A key conclusion is that everyone is involved in the ongoing production of authorities by contributing to who is accepted as or excluded from exercising authority and leadership.

Pedagogies That Explore Food Practices: Resetting the Table for Improved Eco-Justice

AbstractAs health threats appear with increasing regularity in our food systems and other food crises loom worldwide, we look to rural areas to provide local and nutritious foods. Educationally, we seek approaches to food studies that engage students and their communities and, ultimately, lead to positive action. Yet food studies receive only generic coverage and tangential attention within existing curricula. This article, reporting a pilot study located at Canada's geographic and cultural edge, focuses on local knowledge about past and present food practices. Objectives are to test pedagogies that bring all students greater opportunities for engagement and learning about their physical environment and food history, and that can be applied to rural and, with modifications, urban settings. Three critical, place-base pedagogical approaches — experiential, discovery and arts-based — to classroom teaching and learning are discussed, as well as implications for educational leadership, teacher training and curriculum development.

Students’ Evaluation of Frame Factors and Teaching Process: Implications for Educational Leadership

Students are seeking university education that may help them enter in the job markets and they are selecting universities which meet their own standards. The idea of economic self-sufficiency and commodification of higher education have also depicted students as fee paying customers and universities are switching from teacher-centered to student-centered approaches for attracting and retaining students. To explore the situation in local universities, the study investigated perceptions of students about frame factors and teaching process in terms of administrative frames, curriculum frames, teacher attributes, learning facilitation, and quality of feed-back as sub-scales. How students were viewing these factors; which factors were relatively stronger; which universities were performing better or otherwise; and what implications of these conditions educational leaders may face were the main questions answered in the study. A spectrum of 600 students taken 25 from each of the sample department of three public and two private universities of Lahore selected on 30% stratified random sampling technique constituted the sample. Data were collected through self-constructed survey scale which was found reliable at 0.9150 Cronbach's alpha. Principle Component Factor Analysis extracted five factors namely administrative frames, curriculum frames, teacher attributes, learning facilitation, and quality of feed-back. Mean scores and correlations were calculated for these sub-scales. One-Sample t-test, Independent samples t-test, and one-way ANOVA were employed for significance and variance analysis. The study concluded that students were not fully satisfied with the administrative frames, curriculum frames, teacher attributes, learning facilitation, and quality of feed-back available at sample universities. Teacher attributes were relatively stronger whereas quality of feed-back was at the lowest count. The situation in public universities was little better as compared with private sector universities. This situation reflects unsatisfactory performance of local universities in terms of administrative frames, curriculum frames, teacher attributes, learning facilitation, and quality of feed-back. Rigorous initiatives on the part of educational leaders to improve upon the situation included in the major recommendations.

Explaining Teachers’ Instructional Use of State Assessment Data: A Multilevel Study of High School Teachers in Washington State

Accountability policies imply much about high school teachers’ abilities and willingness to use state assessment data to improve instruction. This study asked what teacher- and school-level variables best predict how frequently teachers use state assessment data and how much instructional benefit they derive from use of data. Research has identified several potential predictors at multiple levels of analysis. This study used hierarchical linear models to analyze data from a survey of high school teachers in western Washington. The results carry several implications for educational leadership and future research.

Trends in Technology Planning and Funding in Florida K-12 Schools

This empirical research investigates trends in technology planning and funding in Florida’s K–12 public schools between the 2003–04 and 2005–06 academic years. Survey items that focused on funding and planning issues on Florida’s statewide school technology integration survey were analyzed using logistic models. Results indicate a significant increase in the number of schools revising their technology plans on a regular basis; a significant increase in the frequency with which Florida’s K–12 public schools are seeking funding for technology-related initiatives; a significant increase in parent, administrator, teacher, and student involvement in the technology planning process; and a significant decline in adequate funding for software and hardware needs. In addition, schools with low proportions of economically disadvantaged students sought and were awarded significantly more funds from donations and federal and state grants. Implications for educational leadership and policy are provided.

Democracy and spiritual awareness: interconnections and implications for educational leadership

This article sets out theorisations of developmental democracy and spiritual awareness formulated in previous work by the authors. These are used to explore collegial leadership in a case study Steiner school, with the aim of illuminating and illustrating the transformative demands of developmental democracy and its interconnection with spiritual awareness. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for imbuing democratised educational leadership with spiritual energy and fashioning and leading a school environment that reflects the model of developmental democracy.

Making all children winners: confronting social justice issues to redeem America's soul

Purpose“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound with mine, then come, let's work together”. These words of Lill Watson, an indigenous activist, frame the context for this article. The purpose of this research was to examine the historical evolution of “grassroots movement leadership” model and its incarnation in the present time. A corollary purpose focused on how this model can transform urban schools by focusing on “movement” efforts of one large urban school district that espouses the values of this form of leadership. As part of a larger reform effort, the district engaged students, parents, teachers, school leaders and communities in becoming equal partners in urban school reform in an effort to co‐create schools and communities that might lead all of us toward liberation and learning.Design/methodology/approachTheory and practice come together through the lens of three researchers who operate from a similar philosophical stance for educational transformation, best described in the words of grassroots leader Ella Baker, who said, “We are the people we have been waiting for”. Qualitative research procedures (i.e. interviews, field notes and observations) were used to generate data on a “movement model” for grassroots leadership. This model is best demonstrated in various youth‐oriented initiatives (i.e. Student Exhibits, Action‐Research Projects, Algebra Project) within a local urban school district. This model, influenced by Civil Rights legend Robert Moses, has implications for educational leadership and urban school reform and simultaneously grounds our scholarship and research in liberation epistemology.FindingsIt is argued that children are often the victims of ideas, structures, and actions that come to be seen by the majority of people as wholly natural, preordained, and working for their own good, when in fact they are constructed and transmitted by powerful minority interests to protect the status quo that serves those interest. The words of Ella Baker epitomize the authors' struggles to steer away from models of hierarchal leadership in education and stay connected to the practice of excavating community wisdom through the “Movement Model”.Originality/valueThis study bears a substantive argument for community leadership efforts that focus on “grassroots leadership”. It further fosters new insights and propositions for future research in the form of a “Movement Leadership Model”.

Educational leadership and a new language of learning

This article explores discourses of leadership and learning within a Norwegian context. It is inspired by critical discourse analysis. The analysis draws upon, and compares, some findings from two studies. The first is a textual analysis of policy documents. The second is a case study of school leadership and how principals and teachers talk about leadership and learning. One claim made here is that a language of education has increasingly been replaced by a language of learning which also has implications for our understanding of educational leadership. As educators, we have contributed to the focus on learning within the discourse of education. Bringing this concept into play has also allowed for a reinterpretation of the educational process in terms of an economic transaction. The Norwegian discourse of learning and leadership at a policy level echoes the international discourse of learning and leadership. However, at the school level a different discourse still seems to dominate. In the discussion, I raise the question about how long the local school will be able to resist complying with an economic way of thinking about education, and highlight some implications for educational leadership.

A democracy of all learners: ethical rationality and the affective roots of democratic leadership

This article contends that it is important for educational leaders to understand and reown the historical roots of modern democracy. In particular, it highlights a foundational human capacity for shared ethical insight which characterizes the rich conception of democracy that can be traced in this historical development. Implications for educational leadership are considered and the idea of recentring school cultures on the narrative and ideals of developmental democracy is elaborated.

The suppression of ethical dispositions through managerial governmentality: A habitus crisis in Australian higher education

‘Fiscal’ and other so‐called ‘crises’ in Australian universities are more fundamentally, it is argued in this article, crises of government decision and ‘governmentality’. Using an illustrative ‘morality tale’ drawn from their working knowledge of the Australian university sector, the authors take a critically reflexive perspective, working from the sociological concepts of Pierre Bourdieu, to explore the significance of shifts in governance practices in the field of universities. The paper examines the crisis as it is lived and experienced at an inter‐subjective level: what Bourdieu calls ‘habitus’. It is argued that new ‘rules of the game’ are creating severe conflict within the dispositional constitution of professional identities, especially in the suppression of dispositions to be ethical agents in the everyday life of our own field of work. It is suggested that this analytical approach offers important directions for further research in the area of understanding organizational change, with implications for educational leadership.

Changing Schools in Changing Times: Implications for Educational Leadership

Changing Schools in Changing Times: Implications for Educational Leadership

In Pursuit of the Good Life: High School Students’ Constructions of Morality and the Implications for Educational Leadership

In this interpretative study, the authors analyze the construction of three moral values in the context of inner-city high schools experiencing widespread poverty and racism. These values are trust, respect, and care. The authors demonstrate how the processes of social and discursive construction of morality differentially influence lived moral experiences for African American high school students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Differences are largely explained by the articulation of a strong African American tradition (racial-ethnic pride) in the magnet school, “City High.” By contrast, a profound lack of trust and respect for this tradition seems to hinder student voice and the pursuit of “moral equality” and access to quality public schooling in the comparative school, “Neighborhood High.”

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow: a postpostmodern purview

This article surveys critically the cultural and educational context of the period 1960–2020, and seeks to analyse the implications for educational leadership. Sources range from early contributions of Donald Willower to the latest prognostications of experts in Cambridge and the USA. Both general and special conclusions are drawn and a new test, the A3M3, is introduced as part of the presentation.

The emotional politics of teaching and teacher development: with implications for educational leadership

This paper explores the emotions of teaching and teacher development in times of rapid change. It treats the emotional lives of educators not only as matters of personal disposition or commitment, as psychological qualities that emerge among individuals, but also as social and political phenomena that are shaped by how the work of teaching is organized, structured and led. The paper develops a conceptual framework of seven interrelated elements that are formed by sociological and social‐psychological literature, to cast light on how emotions are located and represented in teachers’ work and professional development. The paper closes with ten implications and recommendations for leaders and policymakers to embrace and engage the emotions as part of their own and other educators’ work.