Literacy is fundamental to formal education, learning, and training for future career related skills. It provides not only the means of acquisition of information and skills during schooling, but it is a vital predictor of a person's general level of education in school as well as successful completion of schooling. Literacy skills serve as the major foundational skill for all school-based learning and without it, chances for academic and occupational success are limited. Despite the efforts of teachers, a significant portion of students continue to fail to achieve success in early literacy in school, with severe consequences for their subsequent educational progress, career opportunities and life chances. The extent of this problem varies throughout school systems. All of our children are affected by their reading ability, and as educators it is critical to provide for all students the most effective literacy programs and strategies which are research based, data-driven and successfully replicated. Because of the psychological, social and economic consequences of reading failure, it is critical to review the research to determine the risk factors that may predispose youngsters to reading failure, and the instructional practices that can be applied to ameliorate reading deficits at the earliest possible time. The failure to achieve in literacy is a fact, which continues to carry dire social and economic consequences for the children, as well as for this society. Furthermore, there is a substantial body of research indicating that schools have a narrow window of opportunity to make a difference. Students who fail to make progress in literacy during the first two years of school rarely catch up with their peers and are at-risk of becoming low achievers who are alienated from school and who dropout of education at the earliest opportunity. On the other hand, impressive empirical evidence is now available to support the notion that failure to make progress in literacy is preventable for all except a very small portion of children. This study reviews the relationship between the principal's knowledge of early literacy and student achievement in reading by the third grade. It will also describe the causal factors that may predispose young children to reading difficulties, as well as the instructional programs and teacher strategies that can be implemented to ameliorate the difficulties. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies are used to analyze the data. Narratives, tables and figures are used to further enhance the research.

Cette recherche vise à augmenter les connaissances sur le processus d’insertion professionnelle des nouveaux directeurs et directeurs adjoints du primaire et du secondaire au Québec lors de la première année en fonction. Pour mieux connaître cette étape de la vie professionnelle, quatre dimensions du processus d’insertion professionnelle ont été étudiées : la nature de la tâche, le contexte d’exercice, le soutien et l’accompagnement et les caractéristiques motivationnelles. Le sentiment d’empowerment des nouveaux gestionnaires a été étudié simultanément afin d’examiner leur motivation à exercer la nouvelle fonction. La question générale de la recherche était de savoir si la mesure du sentiment d’empowerment utilisé pour traiter de la motivation pouvait apporter de l’information sur la façon dont se vit le processus d’insertion professionnelle des nouveaux directeurs et directeurs adjoints d’établissement d’enseignement. Les données ont été recueillies auprès de dix nouveaux directeurs et directeurs adjoints d’établissement. Une conception de l’insertion professionnelle en tant que processus ayant été retenue, chaque participant a été rencontré à trois moments au cours de l’année scolaire, soit quelques semaines après l’entrée en fonction, au milieu de l’année et à la fin de celle-ci. Lors de chaque rencontre, les participants ont été interrogés à l’aide d’une grille d’entrevue semi-dirigée sur les quatre dimensions du processus d’insertion professionnelle mentionnées précédemment. Ils complétaient par la suite un questionnaire pour mesurer le sentiment d’empowerment. Ce questionnaire est une adaptation validée par Boudreault (1990) d’un outil développé par Tymon (1988). La recherche tend à confirmer l’utilité du sentiment d’empowerment comme source d’information sur le déroulement du processus d’insertion professionnelle. Ainsi, des relations semblent possibles entre le sentiment d’empowerment et certains aspects étudiés. Il s’agit de relations qu’il faudra cependant analyser avec de plus grands échantillons pour les valider. Tout d’abord, concernant la nature de la tâche, les constats indiquent que les directeurs adjoints affichant les meilleurs sentiments d’empowerment géraient moins de dossiers différents et que la plupart des dossiers dont ils étaient responsables faisaient appel à des habiletés développées antérieurement lors d’affectation intérimaire ou lors de leur participation à des comités à titre d’enseignants. De plus, ces participants avaient moins de gestion de personnel à effectuer, et particulièrement au regard du personnel de soutien. Ensuite, une tendance marquée a ensuite été constatée en ce qui concerne le soutien et l’accompagnement. Il est apparu que les participants (directeurs et directeurs adjoints) avec les meilleurs sentiments d’empowerment étaient ceux qui bénéficiaient du meilleur soutien et accompagnement de leur supérieur immédiat. Puis, en ce qui a trait aux caractéristiques motivationnelles, les participants exprimant les meilleurs sentiments d’empowerment se sentaient plus capables d’accomplir leur tâche et remettaient moins en question l’exercice de leur fonction. La recherche a indiqué d’autres relations possibles entre le sentiment d’empowerment et certains aspects des dimensions de l’insertion professionnelle, qui bien que moins marquées dans l’échantillon, mériteraient d’être approfondies dans des travaux futurs. Il s’agit de la relation entre le sentiment d’empowerment et le climat organisationnel de l’établissement, de la marge de manœuvre consentie dans l’exercice de la fonction et de la motivation des directeurs adjoints à postuler à un poste de directeur. Finalement, la recherche a mis en lumière la conviction des nouveaux directeurs de vivre une nouvelle phase d’insertion professionnelle et la différence entre les tâches des directeurs adjoints du primaire et ceux du secondaire. / This research contributes to the discussion regarding the induction process of new Québec elementary and high school principals and vice-principals during the year following their appointment. To understand better this stage in one’s career, we analyzed four of its main components: the nature of newly assigned professional responsibilities, working conditions and context, the degree of support provided by direct supervisors and the school board, and new vice-principals and principals’ motivational characteristics. Simultaneously, this research evaluated individuals’ feeling of empowerment, in order to measure their motivation to carry on their new positions. The main goal was to determine whether the degree of principals and vice-principals’ perceived empowerment could provide information about how they are experiencing their professional induction. Ten incoming Québec elementary and high school principals and vice-principals were met through a process of semi-structured interviews. Seeing the notion of “professional induction” as a process, rather than a discrete moment in one’s career, each participant was interviewed on three occasions over the course of the school year: a few weeks after the participant took office, halfway through the school year, and at the end of the school year. During each interview, participants answered questions relating to the four components of the professional induction process that were previously mentioned. They were then asked to fill in a written questionnaire designed to measure their own perceived level of empowerment. The questionnaire used was an adaptation by Boudreault (1990) of a tool initially developed by Tymon (1988). This research seems to confirm the usefulness of the feeling of empowerment as an indicator of how professional induction is unfolding. More precisely, the findings suggest that there exist correlations between the degree of perceived empowerment and certain aspects of the four components of the professional induction process under study. Further studies with larger samples will nevertheless be necessary in order to validate these findings. Firstly, vice-principals with the highest levels of perceived empowerment were those with less variety in files to manage and who were mainly responsible for files that required skills they had already developed during previously-held interim positions or during their participation in committees as teachers. These vice-principals also had fewer responsibilities relating to human resources management, and particularly few responsibilities regarding support staff. Secondly, results regarding the quality of support available to the participants showed a marked tendency. Indeed, participants (both principals and vice-principals) with the highest levels of perceived empowerment were those who reported having received satisfactory support from their direct supervisor. Thirdly, participants with the highest levels of perceived empowerment were those who felt more able to satisfy their professional responsibilities and who questioned less whether they ought to remain in their current positions. The findings also suggest links between individuals’ perceived empowerment and other aspects of their professional induction process that, while less clear from the present research, deserve further investigation. These other aspects include the school’s organizational climate, the level of discretion given to new vice-principals and principals, and whether vice-principals plan to apply for positions as principals. Finally, the research has highlighted new principals’ belief that they are experiencing a unique induction process in their career and the differences between the tasks of elementary and high school vice-principals.

Paper [I] models a game, where two temporary work agencies (TWAs) compete to fill a vacancy at a client firm (CF). They simultaneously choose how much effort to expend, based on their expectation of how good their opponent’s best candidate will be. I then show that this will make the TWAs overconfident, as the rational way of judging your own probability of winning is not looking at the opponents expected best, but comparing how much effort your opponent will expend. Paper [II] examines the misaligned incentives in the temporary work agency sector, where we first look at pure recruiting contracts, that either require payment on delivery, or payment on some specified point in time. We then look at the incentives of recruit-and-rent contracts, where the worker is leased to the client firm. We assume that the better the worker, the higher the probability that the client firm is going to want to hire him/her. If that happens then the TWA will no longer get revenues from said worker, incentivizing the TWA to not always deliver the first match it finds, if it is too good. Lastly we look at how competition can dampen this perverse incentive. Paper [III] models the waiting behavior that can occur if a TWA is contracted to find a worker for a specific time far in the future; the TWA will postpone effort. This behavior is modeled for two types of TWAs; one that is rational and plans ahead, and another that does not plan ahead at all, but instead only looks at the immediate future. I find that the one that only looks at the immediate future starts exerting effort earlier than the planner. After looking at optimal contracts under perfect monitoring and hidden action I provide two extensions. I first show that for the principal to want to delegate search to a rational TWA, the agent has to be better than the CF, by some factor, as it has to make up in efficiency what the principal loses in moral hazard, when the agent waits longer than the principal would like it to. Lastly I prove that it is profit maximizing for the principal to contract one agent and give it a deadline earlier than when the principal would need the worker, and then replace that agent with a competitor if the first one has not succeeded by that earlier deadline. Paper [IV] estimates at the effect of family experience on relative transition probability into the temporary work agency sector. Using register data for all of Sweden we run a bias-reduced logistic regression, where we include various factors that affect the probability of young adults (aged 18-34) entering the sector. This paper ties in to the literature on occupational inheritance, as well as the literature on changing social norms. We find that having had a parent, sibling or partner in the TWA sector increases your probability of entering.

This study investigated the overall job satisfaction level and motivators of job satisfaction for elementary school principals in Central Virginia using the MinnesotaSatisfaction Questionnaire (1977) revision via Web-based survey through Virginia Commonwealth University's Inquisite Survey System. The research literature supports job satisfaction of school principals being a worthwhile topic of study. Researching aspects of job satisfaction is important because a job is not merely life-sustaining, but enriching and enhancing (Darboe, 2003), and the impact of leadership on everyone in schools is substantive. Elementary principals' general job satisfaction level was investigated using descriptive demographic data and the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) through Web-based survey. Using 4 of Frederick Herzbergfs (1959) 6 motivators from the MSQ (i.e., Achievement, Advancement, Recognition, and Responsibility), job satisfaction level was examined in terms of variance in relation to the respondents' gender, age, level of education, salary level, years of experience, number of full-time assistant principals, school socioeconomic status, school size, or accreditation status assigned by the Virginia Department of Education. This study collected information from 85 out of a possible 151 public elementary school principals across 14 school divisions in Region I of Central Virginia. The findings of this study suggest that on an overall basis respondents were satisfied with their jobs. They were also satisfied with their job as it relates to Herzberg's four motivators associated with those particular scales of the MSQ. Findings demonstrated that job satisfaction level did not significantly vary in relation to the nine demographic variables except in one category, level of education. Respondents with education beyond master's degrees were more satisfied with their sense of achievement. The response rate for this Web-based survey was 56%. This response rate contrasts with most literature that described Web-based surveys as having lower response rates than mailed surveys (Fricker & Schonlau, 2002). This indicates that principals will answer Internet surveys in higher numbers when asked to do so, when using repeated contacts, and/or when a colleague requests their participation. It would be worthwhile to replicate this study using a wider demographic area or through the use of qualitative methodology.

This study examined the extent to which the role of the assistant principal is perceived to include instructional leadership behaviors. Specifically, this study compared the perceptions of instructional leadership practices of elementary, middle, and high school assistant principals from the perspectives of assistant principals, principals, and teachers. A nonexperimental comparative design was used. Quantitative data were collected via a version of the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale that was adapted for application to assistant principals. Analysis of variance, independent-samples t-test, correlation, and nonresponse bias analysis were conducted. Effect size and standard error were calculated. Results indicated that the mean scores given by principals were the highest given by any of the three role groups and those given by teachers were the lowest including the lowest seven mean subscale scores among all role groups. Analysis of variance and t-test results of survey responses indicated that, though statistically significant differences were identified regarding school level, gender of the assistant principal, and role of the rater, no practical differences were found. Results further indicated that there was a negligible relationship between experience and ratings of assistant principal instructional leadership. Recommendations include those related to suggestions for continued research on this topic as well as implications for the practice of instructional leadership for assistant principals.

The diploma work is called: "Analysis of preparation for the post of Principal in Selected Country of OECD. It is aimed at preparing the Principal in their profession before taking the office. It describes the different educational systems focused on the training of directors in selected OECD countries - the Czech Republic, USA, Canada, Chile. The aim is to compare the preparation for the profession Principal before taking office in each country, focusing on practice, education, legal grounding.. The theoretical part deals with the historical perspective of the OECD in terms of education, access to education in different historical periods since the inception of the organization. It also deals with the initial preparation of Principals prior to becoming director in terms of personality and school manager. The practical part describes the situation of education with a focus on Principal in selected countries. the conclusion are set out common elements of education directors.

The diploma thesis deals with the conditions of the principal office entrance and the training required in selected European countries. In the theoretical part the thesis deals with the current situation of principals, the possible professional support and preparation needed before the post entrance. It also follows up the role of principals, their competencies and the process of acquisition and selection of principals. The selection of first-rate principals and their training can influence the effectiveness of the school and the quality of education provided. Due to this, the entrance conditions and their preparation were inquired. The process of acquisition, selection and preparation of principals was described and compared in the case of selected European countries from 1994 to 2012. The results provided show the changing role of school principals, the growing workload requirements principals have to deal with, the growing meaning of preparation and education of future principals and the necessity to attract talented leaders. Even though the entrance conditions are different in distinct European countries, some issues they deal with are similar. Owing to this, the results can provide stimuli and inspiration for current and future principals and for everybody interested in education. KEYWORDS:...

M.Ed. (Educational Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

In this paper a resilient sensor network is built in order to lessen the effects of a small portion of corrupted sensors when an aggregated result such as the average needs to be obtained. By examining the variance in sensor readings, a change in the pattern can be spotted and minimized in order to maintain a stable aggregated reading. Offset in sensors readings are also analyzed and compensated to help reduce a bias change in average. These two analytical techniques are later combined in Kalman filter to produce a smooth and resilient average given by the readings of individual sensors. In addition, principal components analysis is used to detect variations in the sensor network. Experiments are held using real sensors called MICAz, which are use to gather light measurements in a small area and display the light average generated in that area.

Education in Lesotho was not available to all children until the year 2000 with the introduction of the Free Primary Education policy. Since then, the huge rise in enrolments, the abolition of school fees, the effects of new policies and the problems of HIV/AIDS have expanded the demands on the principal while limited human and financial resources threaten the quality of education. This study investigates the role of two principals in the Botha Bothe district in the leadership and management of teaching and learning as well as the strategies they employ to overcome the difficulties. Special attention is given to distributed leadership so that accountable, effective and efficient leadership and management can take place. Qualitative methodology has been used through instruments such as questionnaires, followup interviews and observations to obtain data from the principals at the schools, one deputy principal and three to four teachers each. The findings indicate that the perceived main role of the principal at both these schools is managing and leading teaching and learning to the required standard. In both schools, it has been found that principals share their complex managerial duties with teachers and deputy principals, that most teachers willingly give of their time to contribute to the success of the school in this way and understand the need for doing so. By incorporating and respecting teachers’ contributions to leadership, the study shows how both principals cope with their particular leadership challenges. While the strategies used can serve as a guide to others within similar contexts, the researcher suggests that the education authorities in Lesotho need to be more aware of the problems facing schools, should make sufficient human and physical resources available to help principals manage the schools properly, and provide for AIDS orphans adequately. In addition, support for quality education in the form of ongoing professional development for both principals and teachers is needed, and more research needs to be conducted related to education issues in Lesotho.