Public School Administrators Research Articles

Association Between the Built Environment in School Neighborhoods With Physical Activity Among New York City Children, 2012.

IntroductionThe benefits of physical activity for health and well-being are well established, yet built environment characteristics in the school neighborhood may constrain students’ ability to engage in physical activity and contribute to the considerable variation in physical activity among students at different schools.MethodsBaseline data from the Food, Health and Choices obesity prevention trial were used to create multilevel linear models of the relationship between fifth-grade students’ (n = 952) physical activity and related psychosocial factors and characteristics of the built environment of the school’s neighborhood (park access, public transportation density, total crime, and walkability), controlling for age and body mass index z scores.ResultsTotal crime was inversely associated with boys’ light physical activity duration (β = −0.189; P = .02) and behavioral intention for physical activity (β = −0.178; P = .03). Boys’ habit strength for physical activity was positively associated with public transportation density (β = 0.375; P = .02) and negatively associated with total crime (β = −0.216; P = .01), explaining 67% of between-school variation. Girls’ frequency of light physical activity was positively associated with park access (β = 0.188; P = .04). Built environment characteristics explained 97% of the between-school variation in girls’ self-efficacy in walking for exercise.ConclusionsCharacteristics of the built environment surrounding schools were associated with and explain between-school variation in students’ physical activity and several theory-based psychosocial factors. Partnerships between public health practitioners, policy makers, and school administrators may be warranted to shape the school neighborhood, specifically to decrease crime rates and increase park access, to encourage physical activity in youth.

Delivering Professional Development in Suicide Prevention

Online learning has emerged as a new technology for professional development for secondary school teachers and staff, including administration and nonclinical counselors. It is unknown if suicide prevention can be taught and learned effectively in an online learning modality. A quasi-experimental pre–post design study compared suicide prevention knowledge of 197 secondary public school teachers, administrators, guidance counselors, and staff in a traditional 2-hour in-person training versus a self-paced Web-based online training. Both training modalities led to a statistically significant increase in knowledge; however, knowledge acquisition was significantly greater among individuals in the online training. Age of the participants moderated the relationship across the two training modalities. The majority of participants reported the online training as useful and relevant, and 100% would recommend the online suicide prevention training to others. Online trainings are just as effective in teaching emotionally sensitive content such as suicide prevention as traditional in-person trainings.

CURRICULUM COMPETENCES MANIFESTED BY PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS FOR CLINICAL SUPERVISION IN ANAMBRA STATE

Clinical supervision is a process of facilitating the professional growth of a teacher, primarily by observing teacher’s instructional practices, giving the teacher the feedback about classroom interactions and helping the teacher make use of that feedback to make teaching more effective. Its effectiveness depends on the competences of the supervisors that carry it out. This study assessed the curriculum competencies manifested by private and public secondary school administrators in Anambra State during clinical supervision. The study was guided by two research questions and one null hypothesis. Sample involved 1,378 respondents (comprising 962 public and 416 private school staff respectively) selected through the multistage procedure. Data was collected through a researcher-developed questionnaire containing 10 items each on a 4-point scale. Mean scores were used to answer the research questions, while the t-test was used in testing the null hypothesis at the 0.05 level of significance. The findings indicated that public and private secondary school administrators in Anambra State secondary schools manifested only a few out of the variety of curriculum competencies for effective clinical supervision. The manifestations of these clinical supervision competencies were higher in private than in public schools. However, both administrators manifested limited clinical supervision competencies. By implication, this situation has the potential of hindering effective instructional supervision of public and private secondary schools in the State. Based on the findings and implication, it was recommended among other things that the public and private secondary school administrators should give emphasis to and seek avenues for significant improvements in their teaching, human relations, resource management and evaluation competencies. Reading professional journals, peer mentoring, and participating in professional conferences and seminars would help them to improve their clinical supervision competencies. Article visualizations:

The Information Technology Gap in Public Administration: What We Can Learn from the Certified Public Manager and Senior Executive Service Programs

The use of information technology (IT) has grown dramatically throughout every public agency regardless of size and scope. As a result, all public managers (technical and nontechnical) must be better informed and prepared to make critical decisions about IT, especially since IT is no longer the exclusive domain of technology managers. Master of Public Administration programs have struggled to prepare students for these new requirements of the 21st century workforce. This article examines this growing phenomenon by exploring two existing programs designed for practitioners who serve in senior public manager positions: the Certified Public Manager (CPM) program and the federal Senior Executive Service (SES). This article endeavors to provide a pedagogical pathway for schools of public administration and public affairs seeking to adopt IT competencies for a broader nontechnical audience.

Perceptions of the school self-evaluation process: the case of Abu Dhabi

ABSTRACTThe Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) has initiated educational change and school improvements. As part of the school reform agenda, ADEC has introduced school self-evaluation-Irtiqaa (SSE-Irtiqaa). This research probes the effectiveness of school administrators (SAs), including principals, vice principals, academic principals, and heads of faculty, and their perceptions of the implications and implementation of SSE-Irtiqaa. The study also intends to improve school quality and help benchmark Abu Dhabi public schools with international academic standards, by tracing challenges faced during the SSE-Irtiqaa process. Public SAs are the participants of this study. This research is an exploratory case study that employed a qualitative research tool. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with 14 administrators representing 6 public schools in Abu Dhabi. Findings and recommendations shed light on the areas and paths of development required to facilitate and improve the SSE-Irtiqaa process.

THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY SCHOOL PUNISHMENT AND THERAPY/MEDICATION ON SOCIAL CONTROL EXPERIENCES DURING YOUNG ADULTHOOD

The use of suspensions and expulsions by American public school administrators has increased dramatically over the past 40 years. Meanwhile, a growing number of childhood misbehaviors have been diagnosed by doctors as medical conditions and are being treated with therapy or medication. As these trends develop at different rates for boys of different racial and ethnic groups, the connection between childhood and adult social control remains untested empirically. By using a prospective panel of 3,274 White, Black, and Hispanic males (15,675 person‐years) and multilevel logistic models, I examine whether and how school punishment and/or the use of therapy or medication during childhood contributes to involvement in the criminal justice or mental health systems during young adulthood. The findings suggest that school punishment is associated with greater odds of involvement in the criminal justice system but not the mental health system. The use of therapy and/or medication during childhood is associated with higher odds of involvement in the mental health system but not the criminal justice system. Finally, although the relationship between school punishment and involvement with the criminal justice system is similar for White, Black, and Hispanic men, the relationship between medicalized social control during childhood and young adulthood is stronger for Whites than for non‐Whites.

Optimizing the Access Records of Students in the Moodle Virtual Learning Environment Database

Moodle is a freeware solution for Learning Management System (LMS) applied to Virtual Learning Environments (VLS). Despite the several features to support online courses, some desirable information is not easily provided, for instance, the amount of time the user spent in the system or in a specific course. A custom implementation can measure the time spent on the user's searches into the internal Moodle log and the distance between the records through the session time. However, for a large number of recorded logs, searching a single record passing through the other records requires a large time processing. As a consequence, the generation of custom reports is also costly. This work proposes a realtime plugin for Moodle to count the time spent by a student logged into the system retrieving the information from a pre-computed central table. The objective of the solution is to improve the counting precision and allow a faster retrieval of data. Our proposed plugin is validated using real data from the National School of Public Administration (Enap) in Brazil.

Assessing drivers and barriers of energy-saving measures in Oklahoma’s public schools

Implementing energy conservation initiatives within public schools, including both behavioral changes as well as building retrofits, can generate cost saving and educational benefits. However, the level of energy efficiency improvements that can be achieved may depend on the socio-economic characteristics of the school or the underlying district. The purpose of this research is to identify and examine the factors that have a role in influencing the adoption of energy-saving practices and/or building retrofits within Oklahoma’s public schools. In order to investigate these factors, a survey was administered to public school administrators across the state. The results illustrate different factors that drive schools to make decisions associated with energy conservation and retrofitting efforts. A comparative analysis between different types of schools (e.g., rural vs. urban, low- vs. high-income) was also conducted to discover the combination of characteristics that are associated with energy-saving measures. The findings could help school administrators and teachers understand how they might adopt new behaviors or technologies.

A Gestão participativa na Educação Pública Brasileira: desafios na implantação e o perfil do gestor

Este artigo tem o objetivo de analisar a mudança na administração das escolas públicas brasileiras passando do modelo atual de gestão para um mais moderno, participativo onde o gestor deverá ser capaz de entender as necessidades da comunidade local e, ao mesmo tempo, atender as normativas do governo no Plano Nacional de Educação. Partindo da idéia de que a redemocratização criou uma abertura para a participação da sociedade civil nas decisões do governo, discutindo as suas necessidades e formando a sua agenda, os rumos que tomaram a administração pública brasileira levaram os novos gestores a tentar estabelecer uma visão sistêmica dos diversos setores e órgãos públicos. No modelo, o papel de gestor da escola acaba recaindo na figura do diretor da organização educacional e este deve ter habilidades e competências. Discutimos neste artigo quais são, de forma geral, estas habilidades e competências para termos um modelo de gestão educacional pública de qualidade e moderna.

Talking About Race in Schools Post-Brown: A Public Relations Challenge

The Brown v. Board of Education of 50 years ago was perhaps the most significant school reform implemented in American education. The goal of this landmark decision was to end public school segregation and introduce racially integrated schools. Now in the 21st century and clearly in the shadows of this decision, we argue that the hope and promise of Brown v. Board of Education has not been realized. Many public schools are still segregated and those that are racially and ethnically integrated face segregated classrooms as a result of white flight and college tracking. We argue that Brown v. Board of Education, the most racially explicit school reform enacted in 50 years, can be made more effective through additional racially minded and social justice re-forms. Specifically, public school administrators and teachers can pro-mote racial equity academically and socially by promoting learning opportunities, shaping the discourse about race, and developing multicultural curriculum.

Assessing the needs of training on inclusive education for public school administrators

This study assessed the needs of urban school leaders for special education preparation in a large public school district in the USA in order to assist the school administrators with improving their knowledge and skills for providing appropriate services to students with disabilities and their families to support inclusive education. The needs survey was created based on the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC 2009) standards for school administrators in the USA and the literature in special education. The validity and reliability of the instrument were verified. The needs assessment measures 10 aspects regarding special education knowledge and skills as indicated by 10 factors in the exploratory factor analysis. Quantitative data analyses on a sample of 289 participants revealed that there were significant differences in the needs of training in special education knowledge based on the school administrators’ backgrounds. The current research supports the call for the professional development and inclusive education for school leaders. The findings of the current study indicated that school leaders wanted the knowledge to make them more successful in serving students with disabilities to answer the call for inclusive education.

The Relationship between Locus of Control and Perfectionism Perception of the Primary School Administrators

In this research, it's aimed to investigate the relationship between locus of control and perfectionism perception of the public primary school administrators in central districts of Ankara. The target population of the study is composed of public primary school administrators working in Ankara in 2010-2011 academic year. The study group constitutes 391 (selected by stratified sampling method) public primary schools administrators. To gather the required data; “personal information form”, “multidimensional perfectionism” and “multidimensional locus of control scales” were used. The structural validity of the multidimensional perfectionism and locus of control scales were tested by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (EFA-CFA). Whether school administrators’ perfectionism and locus of control perceptions differ or not based on their gender and educational levels was analyzed by t test. Whether school administrators’ perfectionism and locus of control perceptions differ or not according to their assignment, age and experience was analyzed by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and LSD test was used to determine the source of this difference. Whether locus of control predicts perfectionism perceptions or not multiple regression analysis was used. The significance level was .05.

Aktywność polskich jednostek samorządu terytorialnego w zrzeszeniach międzynarodowych

main aim of this paper is to present the results of the study titled The effectiveness of cooperation between Polish local governments with partners from other countries, undertaken within international associations, prepared in September 2015 by the Malopolska School of Public Administration - Cracow University of Economics, commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As part of this study, in-depth individual interviews (IDI) were conducted with representatives of more than 50 local governments responsible for international cooperation. They supplied the characteristics of the activities undertaken by Polish local governments units in the area of cooperation in the framework of international associations. This study showed that, although according to respondents the activity of Polish local governments has increased in this regard in recent years, there are still some barriers to reaping full benefits of membership in international associations. Therefore, the developed recommendations aim at improving the effectiveness of this cooperation in the context of, among others, improvement of the quality of public tasks. (original abstract)

English

What are the extent, nature, and state of nonprofit education in Chinese universities? We address this question with the aim of providing the first overview and assessment of the university-based education programs in nonprofit management and philanthropic studies in China. Based on a 2012 survey among nonprofit faculty in the top 100 Chinese universities in humanities and social sciences, we found nonprofit courses were offered at about two thirds of top Chinese universities, the curriculum was practice oriented with a heavy emphasis on nonprofit management, and more than 80% of the nonprofit education programs were placed in the professional school of public administration or public policy. Our findings indicate that nonprofit education in China is clearly intended to nurture professionals for the Chinese nonprofit sector, but its coverage, course design, and related research quality still have significant limitations. We further discuss the symptoms and implications of the limitations in China's nonprofit education and attribute some of the limitations to the strict regulation the Chinese government has imposed on the nonprofit sector.

Head Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices about Teaching and Learning in Pakistani Public Schools

Very limited research focusing on instructional contribution of Pakistani public school administrators has emerged from the educational landscape of Pakistan. Therefore, the present study highlights some of the core issues related to the instructional contribution of two head teachers situated in public schools. While focusing on instruction-related practices, the two case studies particularly examine the head teachers’ engagements in supervisory processes and in-school capacity development initiatives. The study notes that despite the presence of required human and physical resources, the two head teachers make limited contributions towards the instructional quality of their respective schools. A vague understanding about their roles, a limited capacity building opportunities, and an absence of an accountability mechanism prevent the two head teachers from becoming more involved in the said processes. The study maintains that a new organizational culture needs to be introduced that re-conceptualizes the role of Pakistani head teachers while emphasizing the above-mentioned factors.

Prayer 101: Deciphering the Law — What Every Coach and Administrator Should Know

Sport and religion have been linked in many societies and are still a part of many traditions today. In recent years, the topic of prayer in interscholastic sport has received public attention due to many high-profile court cases. Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (2000) was the landmark case that prohibited school officials, administrators, and employees from initiating, leading, sponsoring, or promoting prayer at interscholastic athletic events. Unfortunately, the practice still continues today and is most prevalent in the sport of football in the Southern states. Public school administrators and coaches need to be aware of the current laws regarding prayer and interscholastic sport. This article highlights key court cases and includes several steps that administrators and coaches can take so that religious controversy is minimized at interscholastic athletic events.

The Lived Experiences of Resilient Single Mothers Who Raised Successful Black Men

This transcendental phenomenological study (Moustakas, 1994) describes the lived experiences of resilient mothers who raised successful Black men in absent-father homes. The 8 themes that captured the essence of the participants' experiences are explored in detail. The author provides recommendations for counselors, public school administrators, and community organizations providing services to single mothers and their children.

Vaccination perceptions of school employees in a rural school district

BackgroundThere continues to be a need for increases in adult vaccination rates, especially among those working in environments which may easily become communicable disease outbreak centers, such as school employees in the school environment. The purpose of this study was to evaluate why rural Utah school employees were non-compliant with the influenza and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines, as well as to identify their views on mandatory vaccination policies. MethodsA questionnaire was distributed to all school employees in a rural Utah school district. Data analysis included frequencies and measures of central tendency and dispersion for quantitative items and theme identification for qualitative items. ResultsOnly 51% of school employees were adequately vaccinated for influenza. Reasons for noncompliance with the influenza vaccine included inconvenience, lack of perceived need, and questionable vaccine efficacy. There were 39.3% school employees who had not received an MMR during adulthood, which was commonly attributed to lack of knowledge regarding the need for this vaccine. Almost half (45.7%) of school employees believed a mandatory vaccination policy should be instituted, although 24.2% of school employees were opposed to mandatory adult vaccination policies. Reasons for opposing vaccination mandates included violation of personal choice, lack of perceived vaccination safety and efficacy, lack of perceived need for adult vaccines, and vaccine cost. ConclusionsSuboptimal vaccination rates of school employees may negatively affect the health and well-being of individuals in the school environment. School employees report a variety of beliefs regarding the influenza and MMR vaccines. While over half of school employees support mandatory vaccination policies for adults working in the school environment, those opposing such a policy report concerns regarding violation of personal choice. Public health officials and school administrators should coordinate efforts to increase vaccination rates among adults in the school environment.

Expediting the Analysis of Qualitative Data in Evaluation

Qualitative data offer advantages to evaluators, including rich information about stakeholders’ perspectives and experiences. However, qualitative data analysis is labor-intensive and slow, conflicting with evaluators’ needs to provide punctual feedback to their clients. In this method note, we contribute to the literature on rapid evaluation and assessment methods by proposing procedures that evaluators can use to expedite the coding and analysis of qualitative data and comparing these procedures to other possible methods. Specifically, we outline procedures for the rapid identification of themes from audio recordings, which allow evaluators to code and analyze qualitative data without time-consuming transcription. We illustrate the use and assess the reliability of these procedures using qualitative semi-structured interview data from 18 public school administrators on how they locate information about and decide to use instructional, health, and social skills programming in their districts. Finally, we end with advantages and trade-offs of these procedures as well as recommendations for how to apply them.

Unpacking the Global Perspective: Examining NISPAcee Region-Focused Public Administration Research in American Scholarly Journals

Comparative and international public administration research in the United States (US) has enjoyed moments of both prestige and inattention over the last several decades, variation that is important in that it reflects the efforts of a scholarly field to contribute to improved individual and organizational performance. These contributions are, in and of themselves, worthy of attention and critical reflection. This article examines public administration research focused on the Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe region published in US-based academic journals from 1997 to 2012, discussing trends that have characterized empirical and conceptual research during that period. The article concludes with comments on collaboration in public administration research.