Editorial

Citation

Roberts, B. (2012), "Editorial", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 26 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijem.2012.06026faa.001

Editorial

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Educational Management, Volume 26, Issue 6.

A very warm welcome to the sixth issue of IJEM in 2012 which sees six international papers from New Zealand, Singapore (two), Israel, Hong Kong and Italy.

In the first, Steven Marshall of the Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand contributes a paper entitled, “Educational middle change leaders in New Zealand-the meat in the sandwich”. This paper reports findings from a larger study into the role of middle leaders involved in change in the New Zealand Higher Education system. The study discusses the perceptions of being in the “middle” and how change leaders reconcile their position as a subordinate, an equal and a superior!

David Ng of the National Institute of Education-Policy and Leadership Studies, Singapore, writes on “How leadership for an ICT reform is distributed within a school”. The study examined the process of information communication technology (ICT) reform in a government school in Singapore. The focus was on the distributed leadership actions performed by various individuals, and how the multiple leaders and their leadership practices interacted with one another. The study found that distributed leadership for ICT implementation requires a combination of transformational leadership and instructional leadership to develop the teachers’ capacity to enhance their instruction with ICT, emotional leadership to support the teachers’ efforts for change and the strategic management of resources to sustain the teachers’ change efforts.

Joseph Klein of the School of Education, Bar Ilan University, Israel presents a paper on “Open policy-transparency minimizes conflicts between school Principals and staff”. There is a greater demand for transparency in the education system but perhaps not much attention has been made to internal transparency between an organisation's administration and its employees and the effect transparency may have on relations between them. This study examines the question of whether enhanced transparency in schools contributes greater teacher trust towards their administration, fewer conflicts between them, and greater commitment on the part of teachers to do their work.

In the next work Eisuke Saito of the National Institute of Singapore writes on a study of strategies to promote lesson study for learning communities in developing countries. The concept of lesson study came from Japan although there are various approaches to it. The basic format seems to be a process consisting of the following steps:

1. 1.

   planning a lesson collaboratively;

2. 2.

   observation of the lesson;

3. 3.

   discussing the lesson;

4. 4.

   reviewing the lesson plan if necessary;

5. 5.

   teaching the revised version if necessary; and

6. 6.

   sharing opinions and views on the revised version of the lesson.

A variation of this to overcome any limitations of the lesson plan is lesson study for the learning community (LSLC). In the latter the whole school is involved and focus is placed upon the observation and reflection across subject boundaries.

Chi Keung Eric Cheng of the Hong Kong Institute for Education gives a piece on “Knowledge strategies for enhancing school learning capacity” in which he identifies the knowledge strategies applied in aided secondary schools in Hong Kong and explores the predictive relationship between knowledge strategies and school learning capacity. The results show that the schools use interpersonal interactive knowledge sharing as their major knowledge strategy. Knowledge retrieval, utilisation and sharing were identified as the predictive factors for instructional learning capacity and organisational learning capacity.

The last paper sees three authors from the Department of Management, Politecnico di Milano coming together to produce a work which asks the question as to whether the managerial aspects of a school influence its performance. The authors Sibiano, Agasisti and Bonomi, investigate the role of governance and the managerial characteristics of schools, particularly in respect of the factors that are associated with high performance as measured through student achievement. Only the private sector was looked at in the study from which the authors show some characteristics of high performing schools:

1. 1.

   the use of structured tests to measure achievement;

2. 2.

   specific support for disabled and foreign students;

3. 3.

   a high level of autonomy for principals in strategic decision making;

4. 4.

   the use of assessment to define strategies; and

5. 5.

   a high level of collaboration between teachers.

It is interesting to compare this paper with that of Klein where there seems to be contrasting styles of management proposed in the principal's role.

Brian Roberts