Editorial

Citation

Roberts, B. (2009), "Editorial", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 23 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijem.2009.06023caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Educational Management, Volume 23, Issue 3

I am very happy to welcome you to the third issue of 2009 and hope that you all enjoy, or at least find valuable, the papers presented here. As always there is a range of geographical authorship as well as topic variation. Within this issue you will find that there are papers from Hong Kong, Australia, The Netherlands, Israel and the USA from new authors as well as those who have contributed previously.

In the first paper from Paula Kwan of the Chinese University in Hong Kong we see work on the vice-principals’ dilemma – do they advance their career or work harmoniously? Actually the best can do both. In this study the author cites the fact that studies have usually been descriptive and provided little empirical support – this study attempts to verify empirically the job satisfaction and desire for principalship based on a quantitative survey covering vice-principals in all of Hong Kong’s secondary schools.

The second is from Choi-wa Dora Ho from the Hong Kong Institute of Education – this work is on human resource management in Hong Kong pre schools. It is argued that the developing role of leadership in creating a culture and procedures for collective participation in staff appraisal is important for human resource management in preschool settings. With the aid of a case study the paper illustrates and analyses the policies and practices currently adopted by many pre school heads in the process of personnel management that may potentially affect the quality of education service. In focussing on common practices the use redundancy is perceived as an effective strategy to solve budget deficit problems although this about opportunity rather than maintenance of a quality service.

A contribution from The Netherlands is next by Karen Zwijze-Koning and Menno de Jong which is on auditing management practices in schools. Over the past ten years most Dutch high schools have been faced with mergers, curriculum reforms and managerial changes (where has this been heard before?) and as a result the pressure on schools’ communications systems has increased and several problems have emerged. The article examines recurring clusters of communication problems. These problems vary from a lack of participation in decision making to employees feeling under appreciated. While some of these problems could be solved by creating more awareness within the organisation, others require more structured changes and long range planning.

From Penn State-Altoona and Valparaiso University is a paper by Girard and Pinar on the gender effect on student presentation evaluations. Using data collected from marketing students at two universities in the USA the study examined the potential effect of the gender similarity between the presenter and evaluator. In addition a separate instrument was used to capture student perceptions of gender differences in various aspects of presentational quality. The findings show that gender made no significant difference to presentation scores. The survey of student perception of gender effect on student presentations indicate that while female students seem to be perceived as better presenters than male students, the study found no consistent patterns of gender effect on presentation evaluations. This suggests that student inputs can be included for grading without any concern of gender bias on grading.

The joint paper next is from Dr O’Meara of the University of Ballarat, Australia and Dr Petzall of Deakin University, Australia. Their work is on the appointment of vice-chancellors in Australia. Work in to research on the nature role and purpose of criteria in appointment processes has been conducted largely in the private sector and across various hierarchical levels. The research presented here attempts to identify and analyse the reported selection criteria used in the appointment of Australian vice-chancellors and contrasts this with the selection criteria actually used. The research then compares the selection criteria models developed from the private sector with those employed to identify and select vice-chancellors in Australia.

The final study is from Israel by Michael, Court and Petel and looks at job stress and organisational commitment among mentoring coordinators. The research examined the impact of job stress on the organisational commitment of a random representative sample of coordinators in an Israeli educational mentoring organisation. The findings revealed that stress hinders the coordinators’ sense of belonging decreases. As the stress level rises the coordinators’ sense of belonging decreases. Another finding was that the stress in the coordinators’ job does not influence their overall continuance commitment. Strong continuance commitment was found in two categories: role expectations that were not compatible with the role requirements, and the second, unwillingness to leave the job in the middle of the year.

Best wishes and thanks for your support for this journal.

Brian Roberts