Tertiary Level Institutions Unit, the University of the West Indies, Barbados.

Abstract: Enrolment in tertiary education in the Commonwealth Caribbean has remained comparatively and consistently low over the years. Not surprisingly, the actual numbers of tertiary education graduates have also been well below the optimal level. On the other hand, indications are that there is an increasing demand by potential students and private sector employers as well as by governments for tertiary education graduates. Additionally, education leaders and policy makers continually express a need for, and a desire to, expand tertiary education opportunities to a wider range and greater number of its citizens in an attempt to promote national and regional development.

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Departments of Educational Administration & Foundations and Vocational and Technical Education, University Of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria.

Abstract: Technical education, especially as provided in the Nigerian polytechnic institutions, leads to the acquisition of practical and applied skills as well as basic scientific knowledge. The production function of polytechnics, in terms of producing quality middle-level manpower through effective teaching delivery, depends largely on the quantity and quality of teachers available. Teacher adequacy is a function of many factors including funding, student enrolment overtime, and staff turnover. This article, however, reveals a mis-match between enrolment and available teachers, with huge staff shortfalls over the years. Student enrolment was matched with the available teachers, using the ideal teacher-student ratios as the measure. Student and teacher ratios were projected on a five per cent annual increase with an average teacher ratio of 1:12. This is in alignment with the encapsulated vision of the Nigerian government for total development by the target year 2010. The projection showed that polytechnics would require a large number of additional teachers. An all-inclusive funding approach is recommended so as to increase the financial status of polytechnics, which would allow for improved facilities, workshops, equipment and conditions of service for teachers. If these are done, more teachers would be attracted from across the world; those who left would return and new, younger ones would be encouraged to join the teaching force. These developments can then meet and sustain the anticipated national growth for the target year.

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Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, HKSAR, CHINA.

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the University of Manitoba during my tenure as Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in February 2002. I would like to thank the various audiences for their many helpful comments.

Abstract: This paper is a relatively non-technical report on a rather large research project that I have been conducting over the last twelve years, or so, in collaboration with Professor G. Lakomski of the University of Melbourne. The project has been a systematic attempt to develop a new conceptual framework for dealing with the central themes of educational administration. Three features of work in progress – now written up in three books, and discussed in three special issues of different educational administration journals – will be covered: (1) the nature of administrative theory; (2) an account of administrative practice; (3) consequences of the first two features for theorizing and doing educational administration. The research reported here is of an ongoing attempt to develop a notion of theory that will be satisfactory for conceptualizing educational administration as a science.

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Faculty of Business, UNITEC, Auckland.

Abstract: The evaluation of teaching effectiveness has received increasing emphasis in recent years. This has focused attention on the need to identify determinants of teaching quality. This study builds upon previous research carried out at UNITEC, which identified classroom features that were considered important by students. This study was motivated by the general dissatisfaction of a particular classroom, which had a combination of poor room features essentially "the room that nobody wanted."

The purpose of this study is threefold. Firstly, to measure the students’ perceptions of the quality of certain room features. Secondly, to measure the students’ perceptions of the importance of the same room features to their ability to learn. Finally, to compare students’ perceptions of ‘room feature importance to learning’ with their perceptions of ‘room attribute quality’ for each room surveyed. Analysis of the findings indicates that there are specific room attributes that students believe to be more important to learning than other attributes.

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Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, HKSAR, China.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to identify teachers’ perspectives on the most important institutional factors that affect parental involvement in the local context. First, the paper examines teachers' attitude towards parental involvement in various school governance issues. Then it describes teachers' practices in requesting parental assistance in different types of home-based and school-based activities. Finally, it examines how institutional factors are related to teacher's attitudes and practices concerning parental involvement.

Data for this study were collected from 1056 teachers and 2500 parents in a sample of nine primary and nine secondary schools strategically selected to include schools with heterogeneous student background. The findings indicated that teachers exhibit a low level of acceptance of parental involvement in school governance. Teachers generally did not accept parents as having authority to "make decisions" in school governance issues such as school management, budgeting and staffing. They found it acceptable, however, to "inform" or "consult" parents in "instructional related activities". More broadly, while parental involvement encompasses a range of home-based and school-based activities, then teachers welcome and actively request parental assistance. The final analysis demonstrated that decentralization policy and school-parent practices are major institutional factors affecting teachers' attitudes and practices concerning parental involvement, even after school background and teacher background have been taken in account.

Abstract: This chapter introduces a report of an international research study into the forming of secondary school principals in Cyprus, Hong Kong, Malta and Singapore. The project involved a collaborative effort between a team of colleagues drawn from universities in each of these islands along with contributors from Australia and the United Kingdom. In this introduction, key aspects of the project (portraits, purpose, provenance, process) are considered. This is followed by case studies of Cyprus, Hong Kong and Singapore, to each of which a chapter is devoted. A report of fourth case study, of Malta, has already been published in an earlier edition of the journal (Bezzina, 2002). The concluding chapter attempts a comparative examination of our findings as a whole.

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Abstract: A UNESCO national review of education on Cyprus warned that "when the education service focuses so clearly upon the career structure of the teachers there is a danger this is achieved at the expense of the education of the pupils" (Drake et al, 26). To explore such issues, and to examine the careers of school leaders in Cyprus, we have studied the view of selected secondary principals.

Few attempts have been made to examine systematically the views of principals of secondary schools on the island. Pashiardis (1997) used a questionnaire to investigate, drawing on gap-analysis, the views of the whole cohort of secondary school leaders, including principals, on what they believed to be their needs for pre-service and in-service education. Although it employs a very different methodological approach, in important ways the research reported below was stimulated by this study.

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Abstract: Traditionally, studies of principalship in Hong Kong have been conducted in the quantitative tradition. Such research was based largely on school climate and employed the organisational climate description questionnaire (OCDQ) as developed by Halpin and Croft in the 1960s. This was intended to enable an understanding of school leadership as perceived by teachers. The clusters of factors ranging from closed to open climates were adopted to describe the leadership style and organisation setting of local schools.

In the early Nineties, when qualitative research approaches were beginning to be more widely adopted, principals were interviewed within a framework of studies that sought to explore what made for effective schools. In such studies, principals were seen as instrumental in promoting school effectiveness and enhancing student learning. However, probably for cultural reasons, such studies have usually placed the principals in a general school context rather than identifying them as subjects for individual attention. As such, the biographical approach to understanding principals that was employed in research that underpins this special edition represents a significant new direction.

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Abstract: Life for the principal is not quite as simple as it may seem from the outside. We are frequently told about the changing demands of the leader’s role in the turbulent environment of contemporary education, but there are complexities other than the ubiquitous external pressures and expectations. It is in this quest for a deeper understanding of principals’ lives that the research team in Singapore sought to take ten selected principals back in time to childhood influences, and the memories of their schooldays. It was from there that we were able to make sense of their more recent experiences including the strategies they adopted in preparing for higher office.

The methodology of our research is explained in chapter one. The interview schedule, as we used it, adapted the wording to be consistent with the local context.

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Abstract: The earlier contributions to this book and Bezzina and Cassar (2001) and Bezzina (2002) have considered the occupational preparation in four societies of those women and men charged with the management of what, for many pundits, has become the most important domestic sector in underwriting the kind of sustained and substantial economic growth and prosperity for which nations yearn: education.

In the sections that follow, we develop an evolutionary perspective on educational leader formation, with particular reference to the making of school principals. An evolutionary approach is one which foregrounds the importance of culture and in doing so seeks to account for intercultural variations in institutionalised role preparation mechanisms and subsequent career role behaviour. Such an approach recommends itself because it accords particular attention to dimensions of cultural modelling, with the assumption being that culturally grounded models represent attempts at programmed problem solving.

ISEA Vol.31 No.1, 2003

An International Partnership for Tomorrow’s Educational Leaders

University of Calgary, Canda and university of Waikato, New Zealand

Abstract: Universities must adapt to the changing world and educate students in ways that challenge them to be able to act on the global stage. More important than ever is the need for leaders to be able to adapt to this changing world and to develop cross-cultural sensitivity. This article describes the seven-year journey of internationalising two leadership programmes in Canada and New Zealand as we took up the challenge to internationalise our programmes and thus our educational leaders who are part of them. It will discuss the processes undertaken to maximise the possibilities and learning experiences of students and lecturers within the programme. The partnership includes electronic and study tour exchanges of educational leaders, as well as students joining each other’s classes in online delivery. The article presents the theoretical underpinnings of developing such a partnership, and also outlines many of the steps that were taken to successfully teach across the Commonwealth in this way. It closes with a suggested framework for assessing university partnership programmes.

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Centre for Educational Research and Development, UNITEC Institute of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand.

Abstract: The role of school principals has changed markedly since the introduction of Tomorrow’s Schools for whilst being expected to be leaders, it is acknowledged that principals have the responsibility for managing their schools within the oversight of a governing body. Research has identified detrimental impacts on the principal’s role in terms of increased workload and stress (Harold, Hawksworth, Mansell & Thrupp, 2000), so given that the principal’s role is pivotal in the school context, it is imperative to address the tension between role and workload.

This paper provides discussion on the New Zealand component of a collaborative study undertaken in New Zealand and Queensland, Australia. The project focused upon what principals report they actually do compared with both what they would like to do, as well as what they believe their employers expect them to do. The underpinning skills and competencies for school leadership were also investigated.

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The Leadership Authority of Educational ‘Middle Managers’:
> The Case of Subject Leaders in Secondary Schools in Wales

Chris James and Judith Aubrey Hopkins

University of Glamorgan, Wales, U.K.

Abstract: The head of subject department role in secondary (11-18) schools in Wales has recently been re-defined as subject leadership. The leadership authority of subject leaders (SLs) is of interest because it is the key to fulfilling their leadership role. Interview data from 17 SLs in secondary schools in Wales were categorised into seven factors that impacted on SLs’ leadership authority. The factors were interpreted from an institutional transformation perspective. For individual SLs, many factors could either enhance or diminish their leadership authority and the enhancing or diminishing capacity of any factor varied across the group. The internal sanctioning of authority is a major factor in this variation. Other findings include the value of system boundary management, the interplay between authority and accountability and the ‘at risk’ and dynamic nature of the SLs’ leadership authority.

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University of Lincoln, U.K.

A Paper delivered at the CCEAM Conference, Umea, Sweden, 21-23 September 2002

Abstract: This paper examines the massive increase in numbers of support staff in mainland UK schools over the last few years. It looks at the proliferation and growing importance of their roles, and at the failures to establish firmly the professional status of these personnel. It compares and contrasts the UK situation with that in other democratic countries. The paper draws some important conclusions about the radical nature of the change to understanding concepts of education, teaching and learning that are implicit in these developments. An attempt is made to explore the value of a post-modernist approach in examining issues about the employment and deployment of support staff in schools. The implications of this approach for school leadership are discussed.