<p>The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe and understand the experiences of superintendent-certified women educators who reside in Indiana and are seeking the position of superintendent. Using a qualitative descriptive design [QDD] and open-ended, in-depth interviewing, I attempted to understand and describe the absence of women superintendents leading Indiana’s public schools. This study allowed me to immerse myself in the lived experiences of current superintendent-certified women educators with the goal of understanding what their job search and leadership experiences meant to them and identify common themes that emerged. The conceptual framework of my qualitative study was based on the ideas that women’s pathways to the superintendency are more complex than men’s and are influenced by both internal and external factors. Four women who aspire to be a superintendent, reside in the state of Indiana, and hold an educator’s license with the content area of District Administrator License: Superintendent were interviewed. Qualitative data was collected through use of synchronous, online, audio and video recorded interviews. The analysis of participants’ responses caused five themes to emerge – geography, family or career, mentors, grooming, leadership is “male”/gender bias. The five themes supported the development of three assertions. As women educational leaders continue their path to advancement and pursue the superintendency, maintaining, and preferably improving, their work-life balance is a requirement. Where a superintendent’s position is located, and how the location of this position may impact perceptions of balancing both family and a career, impacts women educational leaders’ decision making. Women educational leaders’ movement into superintendency is greatly influenced by other educational leaders who are in positions above them.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p>

Although research has been done on amnesty, little is known about amnesty as a public policy tool toward countering insurgence in Nigeria. The purpose of the study was to examine the role of amnesty as a public policy tool. The research questions are: Is there a difference in people's view of amnesty that explain the relevance of infrastructural facilities to stimulate economic growth and development in Nigeria? And, are there specific citizen characteristics that explain the differences in the way citizens perceive amnesty as a public policy choice? The theoretical framework was based on Marx's ideology of conflict theory. This study employed convenience and purposive sampling methods in selecting participant and employed a cross-sectional ex-post facto quantitative research design. Data were collected through a researcher developed survey administered to 100 randomly-selected participants at the Gwagwalada shopping mall, located in the capital city of Abuja. Descriptive statistics and analyses of variances showed a significant mean difference in the perceptions of participants who believed that amnesty would play a viable role in countering insurgency, based on age, income, education, sex, employment status and type of work performed, and the regions in which they reside. However, findings indicate that there is no statistical significance between religious differences or views on economic growth and development and amnesty as a public policy choice. The awareness will provide a framework for better understanding of amnesty as a public policy choice. The positive social change implications include advocacy for amnesty as a public policy tool toward countering insurgence. Implementation of the recommendation of this study lends support to amnesty policies in Nigeria by providing a greater awareness of citizen preferences in policy development.

<p> The current educational workforce is made up of baby boomers, Generation Xers, millennials, and Generation Zers. Research on generational theory reflects variations in characteristics, work preferences and values among generations, yet there is little known whether teachers from these various generations need differing leadership practices to perform their best. This quantitative study utilized a cross sectional survey design collecting data from 502 Indiana teachers to identify the need teachers place on principals’ leadership behaviors and determine if any significant differences exist based on their generation, gender, the type of community they grew up in or the type of community where they currently teach.  Utilizing Kouzes and Posner’s (1985) Leadership Practices Inventory, participants rated their need for 30 leadership behaviors on a 10-point Likert scale. Overall, teachers from all groups rated they needed principals to exhibit leadership practice enabling others to act the highest with an overall mean score of 8.75 (SD=1.20) followed by modeling the way (M=8.40, SD=1.29), encouraging others (M=8.28, 1.46), challenging the process (M=7.63, SD=1.46), and lastly inspiring a shared vision (M=7.50, SD=1.57). Conducting an independent t-test to compare the means of gender groups and a one-way ANOVA to compare generations, community types and building types resulted in no significant differences in teachers’ need for leadership practices. The results of this study reinforce Kouzes and Posner’s five practices of exemplary leaders as relevant across generations yet leaves open questions for future study on how principals can capitalize on the strengths various generations bring to the school family. </p>

There is an understanding that the guidelines for school counselors in Swedish elementary schools lack the preciseness in what the school counselors should do to design and perform their work. Previous research shows that school counselors find it difficult to both establish their role but also to find their position in the school organization. Therefore, this interview study aims to present the perception of six school counselors in Sweden and discover how they feel about their work practice in elementary schools. We found that the main theme in the study was that the work was mainly affected by the management from the school board. Another surprising theme showed that the interviewees agreed that a better work description might help the counselor in general but wasn’t sure that it would help them in their current workplace. They asserted that a good relationship and cooperation with the school board and co-workers were much more important than a more detailed work description. Furthermore, the study also aims to compare their descriptions of the practical work that they perform, to the general guidelines for the work of school counselors. We found that their work in general was according to what is expected for the guidelines, but that in which way the work tasks were performed could differ from one another. Lastly, the study also contains the interviewees perceptions of their position in the school organization and which factors that simplifies or aggravates their practical work. The majority thought that they had established a clear role and position for themselves. However they agreed that many of the coworkers didn’t have the same perspective and understanding as themselves. Some of the interviewees also thought that the quantity of students they were dealing with, also made a difference on the quality of their work.

<p>The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate how school leaders are assisting at-risk students in urban schools develop social capital. It sought to understand specifically what strategies they perceive as useful for developing social capital with students. This study’s findings are significant to the field of education in providing educational leaders the strategies other urban principals are using to support the development of social capital for their students. Schools need to recognize all the different ways they contribute to helping students achieve academic success. One of the most significant benefits a school can offer students, in addition to academic rigor, is preparation for facing the social and emotional challenges of life. This instrumental case study focused on five former Principal of the Year (POY) recipients from urban secondary (grades 6-12) school environments to maximize the quality and experienced practice of the leaders being studied. The urban school settings were all categorized as predominantly diverse (high minority composition and/or low socioeconomic status). Three assertions resulted from the study:</p> <p>●Principals must have a clear and communicated vision of excellence for all within the community and implement systems and structures that consistently support the mission, vision, and values of a student-centered school. </p> <p>●Principals must consistently find ways to foster collaborative, trusting, relationships with and between members of the school and local community.</p> <p>●Principal and staff within the school must consistently model, create, and nurture opportunities for students to grow and find uses for their social networks.</p> <p>The results of this study may offer school principals specific strategies they can use to positively impact the growth of social capital within their schools.</p> <p><br></p>

<p dir="ltr">This study explores an association between the leadership styles of senior leaders in international schools—specifically transactional, transformational, and passive-avoidant approaches—and whether members of their board are elected, appointed, or both. The literature review identifies a recent board trend towards increasing the appointment of members and a preference for transformational leadership from senior leaders. This study highlights the relationship between leadership and governance in international schools and suggests re-evaluating historical paradigms. A quantitative approach was used to establish a significant association with a large effect between senior international school leaders with a transformational leadership style and international school boards that appoint members as opposed to electing them. Implications for theory, practice, and future research are discussed with the suggestion that a transformational break with democratic traditions might serve international schools best in the future.<br></p>

The purpose of this enquiry is to challenge and add a further dimension to cultural management, through an empirical exploration of what cultural managers do in a particular domain (theatre) and scale of organisation (micro-) within the (subsidised) cultural sector, in South West England. Working from a sensemaking perspective (Weick, 1979, 1995a, 2009), it focuses attention on what these practitioners do, rather than what they could, should or do not do. It draws on literature from cultural management, theatre and performance studies and organisation and management studies to help address the following questions: • What do cultural managers do in micro-scale theatre organisations (in South West England)? • Why do they do what they do? • How do they do what they do? • In what ways might an analysis of what they do inform talk in and about cultural management? • To what other theoretical conversations might such an analysis contribute? The subjects are three cultural managers running micro-scale contemporary theatre organisations in Bristol, Plymouth and Redruth. The study adopts a qualitative, ethnographic, multi-case study approach, with data collected through non-participant observation, informal interviews and documentary sources. Analysis is inductive, deductive and abductive. The thesis concludes with a conceptual and epistemological re-framing of cultural management as cultural managing, suggesting that what the cultural managers studied do is not only vocationally dedicated to the purpose, values and work of their organisation, but is also isomorphically inflected by them in the doing. Furthermore, it offers (a) an adjusted perspective on “high reliability organising” (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2007) orientated more towards making the best than mitigating the worst; (b) a focus on organising in theatre to colleagues pursuing the relationship between management and the arts; and (c) a challenge to traditional notions of divide between theatre managing and theatre making, particularly at the micro-scale. This is an interdisciplinary study with cross-disciplinary implications.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, 2000. / "A theis presented to the University of Western Sydney, Macarthur in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, June, 2000.''--t.p. Bibliography: leaves 235-287.

<p>Writing centers and writing programs, as well as the role of their administrators, are shaped by historical and disciplinary factors that have been closely examined by scholars over the last half century. However, the role of institutionality in writing center and writing program administration (WPA) studies has been ignored in much of the scholarship about these two sub-disciplines. This dissertation examines the role of institutionality by developing a new method, relationship-mapping, as a way of understanding how the complex nature of institutional contexts impacts the work of writing centers and writing programs. Through a study of 13 small liberal arts colleges, it is determined that the factors of this specific institution type shape and transform the ways in which centers and programs develop relationships and collaborations to teach and support writing. Relationship-mapping shows promise, though, beyond small colleges and could be used at a multitude of institution types as a way to responsibly critique institutions and how they support students, as well as a way to study institutional cultures of writing. </p>

<p>The education field is experiencing a shortage of qualified teachers, especially in high-poverty schools. All school districts struggle to find ways to prevent the increasing turnover rates in their schools; however, school districts serving impoverished populations have to deal with the impact of teacher turnover more frequently. This qualitative study focused on the lived experiences of four elementary school teachers with ten or more years of experience in Steele Community Schools, a high-poverty school district. This study focused on factors that have led participants to remain in their teaching positions. Using the framework of Fredrick Herzberg’s two-factor theory, the researcher examined motivation and hygiene factors to determine which factors had the greatest impact in increasing a teacher’s likelihood to remain in the profession; more specifically in high-poverty schools. The results of this study provides an understanding of the factors that impact a teacher’s decision to remain in their position and may serve as a reference for school districts that continue to experience high teacher turnover. Through semi-structured interviews, data were collected from four veteran teachers with ten or more years of experience in their district. This study found that, of Herzberg’s motivation and hygiene factors, coworker relations, salary/benefits, and the work itself had the greatest impact on a teacher’s decision to remain in their teaching position in a high-poverty school. The study also brought to light a element outside of Herzberg’s theory which has had just as great of an impact on teacher retention; the outside community. Based on the findings of this of the qualitative study school district leaders could potentially take a deeper look at factors that have been referenced in this study as having had a positive impact on teachers’ decisions to remain in their positions in a high-poverty school and increase teacher retention.</p>