Preparation Of Educational Administrators Research Articles

Proposed Solutions to Enhance Lecturers’s Adaptation to E-learning in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic (A Case Study at the VNU University of Social Sciences and Humanities – Vietnam National University, Hanoi)

Since March 2020, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, to continue students’ education while controlling the spread of COVID-19, the higher education system has been required to switch from face-to-face learning model to a virtual one. In Vietnam, although e-learning has already been introduced, it has been actively adopted since the COVID-19 pandemic occurred. The transition to e-learning in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak while lacking preparation for this teaching mode has put lecturers and students in a passive position with many difficulties. This article presents the situation of virtual learning adoption and implementation by lecturers at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Vietnam National University, Hanoi) in recent years and their associated challenges. Based on the situation analysis, this article suggests a number of potential solutions to enhance the adaptability of lecturers and improve the effectiveness of e-learning. These solutions will contribute to the better preparation of lecturers and educational administrators for immediate and effective responses to similar adverse events in the future, from that ensure the quality of higher education.
 Keywords:
 Solution, adaptation; lecturer, e-learning; COVID-19 pandemic.
 
 

Growing Your Own Educational Leaders: Implications for Rural School Districts and Institutions of Higher Education

The purpose of this article is to examine a ‘grow your own’ model of leadership preparation and placement of educational administrators in the state of Tennessee. The growing need for school and district administrators in the rural counties of Tennessee mirrors a nationwide issue, and state policymakers and practitioners must respond appropriately to sustain adequate K-12 educational leadership that is representative of state demographics. Recommendations for policy and practice are provided for state and local education agencies as well as principal preparation programs in higher education.

Challenges of a successful first‐year principal in Mexico

PurposeThis case study is an attempt to understand the experience of a school principal, Arnulfo. The research question is: what are the challenges of one first‐year school director in Baja California, Mexico?Design/methodology/approachArnulfo participated in an interview and five focus groups at the Ensenada State Normal School. He kept a journal of incidents completed during April‐July 2006. A team of three researchers helped to write the case study. One researcher collected the data and wrote a summary in Spanish. A second researcher organized the material and translated it into English. The third researcher criticized and reviewed the write‐up.FindingsArnulfo faced a variety of challenges, but the burden of paperwork was the most serious. It can be understood on a number of levels. Bolman and Deal's four frames to understand organizations and leadership help to explain the complexity in terms of structural, human resource, symbolic, and political. The political frame was Arnulfo's greatest strength. He advocated for the school, formed alliances with parents, and took action to get the support of others.Practical implicationsThe analysis, if confirmed by broader studies with larger samples, would lead to several recommendations for educational administration preparation. Principals need to know about the structural tasks of paperwork; maintain relationships with supervisors to assure adequate support; understand the symbolic culture in which they work, and become savvy in the ways of politics.Originality/valueThe International Study of Principal Preparation will compare findings and offer perspective on the extent to which these issues are representative of challenges that directors face in eight other countries.

Supporting Graduate Students of Color in Educational Administration Preparation Programs: Faculty Perspectives on Best Practices, Possibilities, and Problems

Overview: This article presents findings from a study that examined faculty perspectives on how individual faculty members and institutions support graduate students of color in educational administration preparation programs. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify strategies that faculty members and institutions employ to support graduate students of color. The authors were also interested in understanding challenges that face individuals and institutions as they seek to provide such support. Data Sources: Data were collected through a series of focus group sessions and from individual interviews conducted with a diverse sample of faculty members during a 3-year period. Findings: Findings suggested that effective support for graduate students of color in educational administration preparation programs entails proactive yet thoughtful, individual, and institutional work in four areas: (a) recognizing and engaging issues of race in educational administration preparation programs, (b) effective and race-sensitive mentorship, (c) creation and sustenance of multi-tiered and multi-purpose support networks, and (d) establishment of formal and informal support structures.

Predictive Validity of the GRE and GPAS for a Doctoral Program Focusing on Educational Leadership

Leadership in the public school setting is a topic of interest in the professional literature for a variety of stakeholders. One particular stakeholder group is those responsible for preparing educational leaders, i.e. faculty administering preparation programs. Research addressing the preparation of educational administrators has followed separate but related research streams. One stream focuses on why practicing educators seek administrative positions. To illustrate, some studies address the decisions of teachers to become school administrators (Newton, Giesen, Freeman, Bishop, & Zeitoun, 2003; Newton, Keedy, & Winter, 2000; Winter, Keedy, & Newton, 2001), while other studies explore the decisions of practicing administrators to pursue advance level positions within the public school setting (Pounder & Merril, 2001; 2002; Winter, Keedy, & Newton, 2001; Winter & Morganthal, 2002). In general, these studies use tight experimental designs, manipulate experimentally certain contextual variables purported to influence the attraction of applicants, and advance current knowledge about why qualified job candidates choose either to remain in their current assignment or to seek leadership positions. However, less attention is afforded to how individuals acquire the necessary qualifications/certifications to be considered as a viable candidate for a leadership position. One avenue for acquiring the necessary qualifications/certifications is a doctoral degree in

Student satisfaction with an educational administration preparation program

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to examine the perceptions of graduates from an educational administration program in terms of its effectiveness and impact on their lives and careers.Design/methodology/approachThe perceptions of 23 graduates of a Master's degree program in educational administration in a developing university were examined in terms of personal satisfaction, content, and impact. A qualitative analysis approach was used to interpret the data generated by a four‐part questionnaire distributed to the first three graduating cohorts in educational administration.FindingsPersonal satisfaction was shown to be more related to interpersonal interaction than academic content of the program of study. The findings also showed that criticism of educational administration preparation programs in newly emerging systems is similar to the criticism levied at similar programs in the west four decades ago. The findings are discussed within their relevance to the construction of a global theory of educational administration preparation programs.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the circumstances under which this study was conducted (popular uprising, military violence, etc.) posed limitations on the rigor of its design (e.g. sample size, return rate of questionnaires), it, none the less, offers a significant contribution to the construction of administrative training theory.Originality/valueThis study bears significant ramifications and limitations to the construction of the theory of preparing educational administrators in newly emerging systems.

Rethinking Leadership Preparation: Focus on Faculty Learning Communities

Demands continue for the reform of educational administration preparation programs. Attention typically focuses on the knowledge base, its foundation and relationship with the field. This article raises the pivotal issue of faculty learning through conversation and its role in the development of core purpose to frame the reconsideration of leadership. Insights gained from wide-ranging preparation reform efforts are used to talk about the nature of meaningful conversations and behaviors that lead to “learning to learn” together. Through conversation, existing assumptions, beliefs, and practices can be questioned to create new conceptions of the core purpose in leadership preparation programs.

Professing Educational Leadership: The Value of Listening

This article explores the imperative of fully incorporating the practice of “listening” within educational administration preparation programs. The purpose behind this exploration is to validate and substantiate the need for “open listening” in university classrooms so that those who are to be educational leaders will have models that habituate them to pedagogical social justice. The article begins with an examination of democratic pedagogy and democratic leadership practice, focusing on listening and the relevance of listening for learning and for leadership. The second part of the article is an authentic case study that presents an opportunity to link theory to practice by means of a complex real-life dilemma in which listening plays an important role. The article concludes with a section devoted to examples of learning activities that are designed so that all in the classroom are placed in a position of listening intently and respectfully to one another.

A comparison of the views of educational administration students in the USA and Mexico

This study is an examination of the views of students completing an educational administration preparation program at Southwest Texas State University (SWT) in San Marcos, TX, USA, with those completing a similar program, the Maestria en Administracion y Desarrollo de la Educacion (MADE), at the Instituto Politecnico Nacional (IPN) in Mexico City, Mexico. Focus groups are used to explore perceptions of how students change over the course of the program, what distinguishes them from graduates of other programs, and how they feel about the quality of their experience. The process of pairing institutions for joint study across cultures appears to hold significant promise for gaining insight into current practices and giving direction needed for change.

Doctoral Preparation Programs in Educational Administration: The Status of Reform in Four Midwestern Universities

This study examined reform in educational administration preparation pro grams. A review of literature and telephone interviews with key informants at four exem plar universities identified benchmarks to assess the degree of reform at four doctoral granting Midwestern universities. Multiple methods of inquiry included (a) document re view of programmatic information, (b) telephone interviews with personnel at exemplar programs, (c) personal interviews with twenty-one of twenty-three professors at the four institutions, and (d) four focus groups that included fifty-two students enrolled at the in stitutions. Three major themes emerged from analysis of data: political, professorial, and curricular. These themes provide the framework that describes the extent to which four composite universities have reformed their programs. The four universities ranged from isolation in reform efforts to institutionalization of reform efforts. The article con cludes with considerations for those seeking to reform educational administration preparation programs, discusses the significance of the findings and their relationship to the change process, and identifies needs for future research.

Performance Assessment in the Preparation of Educational Administrators: A Journey

This article describes a process to assess student performance in educational administration preparation programs. In 1992, faculty in a Midwestern university developed and began testing a leadership expertise performance assessment system. The system includes five performance rubrics, job-related criteria, and multiple evidences for determining leadership expertise. Applications of the faculty's use of the performance assessment system are presented.

Improving educational administration preparation programs: What we have learned over the past decade

The past decade has been one of great ferment for those of us concerned with the preparation of educational administrators. The press for educational reform that began in the early 1980s with the National Commission on Excellence in Education's (1983) report, A Nation at Risk, soon spread to the recognition of the need to improve leadership in our country's schools. That demand inevitably led to concerns about how these leaders were being prepared. The University Council for Educational Administration, which represents many of the leading higher education leadership preparation programs, highlighted these concerns when it established the National Commission on Excellence in Educational Administration (1987). The commission concluded that preparation programs were marked by of a definition of good educational leadership ... lack of collaboration between school districts and universities ... lack of systemic professional

Uninformed but Interested: Findings of a National Survey on Gender Equity in Preservice Teacher Education

Professional and popular media have recently given welcome attention to gender equity and education. For example, national news programs and newspapers across America featured The AAUW Report: How Schools Shortchange Girls (American Association of University Women, 1992), a review of over 1,100 research studies from the last 20 years documenting gender gaps in educational persistence and achievement, especially in mathematics and science. For over two decades, researchers and program developers have produced a steady output of work on gender equity in education. The Women's Educational Equity Act Publishing Center publishes a 25-page catalog listing hundreds of gender equity materials, nearly all I intended for K-12. A 52-page bibliography lists hundreds more gender equity resources in mathematics, science, and technology (MST) for classroom teachers, most of which were developed for the K-12 level. The American Association of University Women (AAUW) report How Schools Shortchange Girls (1992) contains reviews of numerous studies and articles on gender equity in education in Grades K-12. Gender equity in teacher education has received much less attention. Sadker and Sadker (1980), in their analysis of common teacher education texts, found that one third contained no mention of sexism; none included materials on nonsexist teaching. In a study of education foundations textbooks reviewed for attention to gender equity, Titus (1993) concluded, I found little discussion of gender equity, suggesting low interest in this area by educators (p. 38). Several authors have included general recommendations to teacher educators on incorporating gender equity, described the need and suggestions of how to include equity in professional preparation of educational administrators, and offered a description of a course they developed for preservice students on gender equity (Eckart & Tracy, 1992; Rose & Dunne, 1989; Shakeshaft, 1990). The National Science Foundation funds few projects dealing with gender equity in teacher education; a notable exception is the Teacher Education Equity Project, funded by the National Science Foundation, IBM, Hewlett Packard, and AT&T from 1993 to 1996. Authors of the AAUW (1991) report, Stalled Agenda: Gender Equity and the Training of Educators, concluded that gender equity in teacher education amounted to a stalled agenda. Some professional groups are devoting attention to gender equity in teacher education. The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) has a study group on gender equity, a standing committee on women's issues, and a program for leadership development for aspiring female leaders. AACTE was an early participant in the Sadkers' projects and included results of their research in annual meetings a dozen years ago. The Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) has a commission on gender equity in education. The 23 teacher education institutions of the Renaissance Group have an affinity group for sex equity. Professional associations directly concerned with gender equity have given attention to teacher preparation as well. The National Coalition for Sex Equity in Education has a task force on teacher preparation, and Research on Women in Education, a special interest group of the American Educational Research Association, devotes sessions to gender equity at its annual meetings. However, teacher preparation is not a primary focus for either group. The conjunction of teacher education and gender equity is relatively sparse. Omission of gender equity at the preservice level means that new teachers may enter the classroom not realizing how their behavior and the educational materials they use may inadvertently harm girls' performance and aspirations. If classroom teachers encounter in-depth, high-quality K-12 gender equity projects during their careers, such as Lawrence Hall of Science's EQUALS (Kreinberg, 1989), they may unlearn harmful patterns and learn beneficial ones. …

Managing information systems in the school

This paper describes the issues surrounding information systems (IS) in the school, in particular the concerns which need to be considered when generating a comprehensive strategy for the implementation of an educational integrated IS. The paper reviews both IS strategy research and innovations in educational technology, and reports on two studies of the problems in IS strategy of educational professionals. In the major study, survey responses from 432 high schools were analyzed to examine the relative use of microcomputer school IS for efficiency of routine functions versus effective decision making defined as greater use of information by school personnel. Schools showed significantly greater use of the systems for more efficient processing of routine tasks. However, operational factors related to the use of the systems as informing tools for more effective decision making were able to be singled out, and relationships among measures of efficiency, effectiveness, decision making and operational factors were identified. The article concludes with implications for institutional practice, related research and professional preparation of educational administrators.

Searching for the Golden Fleece: The Epic Struggle Continues

Educational administration has been subject to considerable criticism recently and there has been a resultant rush to identify ways to improve the field and preparation programs. How different are the problems and projected remedies in the 1990s from the issues in the 1950s? Using programs and studies (n = 8) spanning approximately 1950-1990 as a basis for analysis and comparison, it seems that the new wave of ideas (1980-1990) is substantially the same as the earlier ideas. Will the 1950s models be the vision for the 21st century, or must those who prepare educational administrators seek new models? Change in educational administration preparation models seems to be an epic task.

Cohort Groups in Educational Administration: Promises and Challenges

To create a more supportive and collegial learning environment, many educational administration preparation programs are using cohort groups of students. This article traces the development of cohort groups by describing the organizational features and instructional delivery mechanisms used to foster collegial learning and then links these practices to principles of adult learning and development. The effects of cohort groups are explored, including the benefits realized by students and university faculty as well as the challenges this learning structure presents to the teaching faculty. Potential solutions for addressing these challenges are provided.

Educational information systems: Problems of the small educational organisation

<span>This paper describes the issues surrounding the provision of information systems to small educational organisations, in particular, the concerns which need to be considered when generating a comprehensive strategy for the implementation of an educational integrated information system. The paper reviews both information systems strategy research and innovations in educational technology, and reports on two studies of the problems in information systems strategy of educational professionals. In the major study, survey responses from 432 high schools were analysed to examine the relative use of microcomputer school information systems for efficiency of routine functions versus effective decision-making defined as greater use of information by school personnel. Schools showed significantly greater use of the systems for more efficient processing of routine tasks. However, operational factors related to the use of the systems as informing tools for more effective decision-making were able to be singled out, and relationships among measures of efficiency, effectiveness, decision-making and operational factors were identified. The article concludes with implications for institutional practice, related research and professional preparation of educational administrators.</span>

Educational Administration Research, Practice, and Preparation: Lessons from Woodworking and American Indian Philosophy

There has been a continuing debate in scholarly circles about appropriate modes of inquiry. The traditionally dominant mode of inquiry, the quantitative paradigm, has in recent years been challenged by an alternative mode of inquiry, the qualitative paradigm. This paper does not rehash the scholarly debate in which previous scholars have engaged, but rather (a) presents an alternative philosophical framework, that of the American Indian, through which to view the quantitative-qualitative debate, (b) discusses practical considerations of the debate, and (c) examines implications for research, practice, and educational administration preparation programs.

Where is the Discussion of Diversity in Educational Administration Programs? Graduate Students’ Voices Addressing an Omission in their Preparation

This paper describes an investigation of the needs of graduate students in educational administration preparation programs. The study raises questions focusing on what learning would be most valuable to school administrators who deal with diverse constituencies and cultures. To obtain appropriate information, the authors conducted in-depth interviews with older graduate students at three different locations in the U.S. In this study, the most salient finding that emerged was that graduate students learned far more through informal peer learning about diversity issues dealing with gender, race, ethnicity, social class and other areas of difference than they did in the formal educational administration classroom. Based on the analysis of interviews, the authors recommend a number of changes for program development under the category of diversity. Through these changes, it is hoped that educational administration faculty will better prepare graduate students to be educational leaders in the 21st century.

Improving Educational Administration Programs

The reform of educational administration preparation programs is hampered by systemic factors inherent in higher education. Systemic factors support a traditional, liberal arts model, while reform advocates argue for substantive changes in content, process, and outcomes. A new model should be based on the “practice” of leadership that takes into account environmental forces at the global, national, and local levels. These levels are referenced to five overriding themes: increasing cultural diversity, desire for self-determination, concern over one's environment, broader participation, and economic competitiveness. A variety of instructional delivery systems are highlighted.