The study explored successful school leadership practices in challenging contexts: A case study of two secondary schools in Soweto. The study involved two secondary schools in Soweto Township, Gauteng, South Africa. It focused on the roles and responsibilities of principals as leaders of schools in challenging contexts. It aimed to gain insight into how these principals led and managed their schools in order to understand why other township schools consistently performed well, despite the socio-economic status that existed in the township, where other schools failed; how these principals managed to stay on top, their leadership practices and why they made the choices they did. The primary research focus was to explore leadership that contributed to the success of the school. There were three objectives and these were to explore how leaders led and managed their schools. Secondly, the study sought to understand leadership practices of successful school principals and thirdly, to understand if there were special leadership qualities that successful leaders demonstrated. The study adopted a qualitative approach and it used interviews, focus group discussions, documents and observation schedules to gather data. The sample consisted of a mixed gender group of 16 participants. The research findings revealed that principals of the case study schools played an indirect but powerful role towards the school’s success. Further, in the case study schools, leadership was a shared entity. The findings also revealed that the schools succeeded by building and managing relationships, inside and outside the schools. .

The purpose of this study is to explore South African educators’ subjective experiences of school violence within their schools. Educators’ experiences as victims and perpetrators of school violence were examined to gain an understanding of the definitions, contributing factors, impacts and incidents of school violence. An interpretive qualitative research method was used and interviews were conducted with 12 educators selected from two government schools in the low-income community of Alexandra. Participants’ data was then analysed using a thematic content analysis. The findings suggest that current definitions of school violence are too narrow and require expansion so as to include all acts of school violence, victim-perpetrator relationships beyond the confines of the school. Violence in schools was found to increase educators’ dysfunctional coping mechanisms, absenteeism, attrition, burnout and to compromise teaching efficacy and the performance of school. Using Brofenbrenner’s Ecological Approach the principal conclusion of this study was that school violence is a result of the interplay between individual, familial, school, communal and societal factors.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University

Most newly constructed schools begin life as places of hope, enthusiasm, energy, and creativity. In many ways they might be considered 'moving' schools. Such schools strive to anticipate and change with the times. Within a relatively short time, however, a significant number of new schools evolve, indeed regress, into conventional schools. This loss of initial momentum and innovative direction experienced by many newly established schools occurs because of what this study describes as the `attrition' of change. This thesis presents an historical case study of a secondary school that was once one of Canada's most renowned, innovative schools in the 1970s, and now 26 years later, can be described as a conventional secondary school. Based on interviews with three cohorts of teachers and administrators who worked in the school in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the study provides an opportunity for inquiring into and analysing the attrition of educational change. The evidence of this study of the history of an innovative school points to the existence of an ironic change dynamic, and a dual meaning for the title 'the attrition of change'. There is a natural tendency for the school itself to experience attrition and over time to lose much of its early momentum and innovativeness. This pattern, however, is usually accelerated by hostility from the school's larger professional and parental communities who perceive the school's innovations to be a threat to long held educational beliefs and practices. The staff members of the innovative school feel that their inordinately hard work is unappreciated and misunderstood, turn inward to school colleagues for protection and support and adopt a less venturesome approach to innovation and change. In the short term, therefore, the innovative school's influence upon the larger system's attitude towards change tends to be quite negative. In the longer term, however, the innovative school seems to exert significant impact beyond its own walls through the rule-breaking precedents it sets that open up opportunities for others, and through the key leaders it spawns who take their innovative images of schooling to other parts of the system, and initiate change elsewhere. Changes in one part of a system inevitably affect changes in the larger system. Innovative schools, therefore, can erode obstacles to change in the larger system and create a climate of experimentation where one may not have existed previously, thus the second meaning of the `attrition of change'.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University.

Thesis. 1975. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 231-237. / Ph.D.

Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / Teachers, during various seminars, workshops and departmental meetings, continuously complained about the inadequacy of the grade 9 biology textbook used in the Eritrean secondary schools. Among others, the teachers concerns has provided a necessary stimulus for embarking on this research which sought to determine the role, quality readability and relevance of the Eritrean grade 9 biology textbook, based on the teachers' and students' perceptions. Interviews, questionnaires, Cloze test and Word Difficulty Index were used to collect the data. The interview and questionnaires provided information on how the textbook was being used by both teachers and students. In addition they provided information about quality of the textbook and its relevance to the daily life experiences of the students. Moreover, Cloze test and Word Difficulty Index provided information on the readability of the textbook. The finding of this study reveals that both teachers and students use the textbook as the major source of information. Also, the factors that determine quality of the textbook were found to be poor except the physical features and organisation. With respect to relevance, very limited attempts were made to link biology to the daily life experiences of the students. The Cloze test and Word Difficulty Index show that the students clearly experience difficulty in understanding what they have read. In conclusion, this study makes some recommendation to writers on how to improve the quality of the textbook. The results obtained in this study are by no means exhaustive. Finally, areas warranting further investigation are suggested.

This study examined principals' and teachers' perceptions regarding both the importance of certain leadership skills and the ratings of principals' actual skills. There are strong theoretical bases for the use of principals' and teachers' perceptions in this study. The analysis of perceptions of leadership skills can lead to: (1) an increased awareness of principals' strengths and weaknesses; (2) greater communication between principals and teachers; and, (3) hopefully, increased productivity on the part of principals and teachers. The population for this study included a group of twenty-eight principals who participated in the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators Assessment Center, and teachers in those principals' schools. These principals represented the total number of Assessment Center participants who were promoted to their positions subsequent to their participation in the Center. Assessment Center predictions ratings of these principals' skills were compared to teachers' ratings of the same principals' skills. Research questions sought information in the following areas: (1) principals' perceptions of their own skills; (2) principals' perceptions of the importance of given skills; (3) principals' predictions of teachers' ratings of the importance of skills; (4) principals' predictions of teachers' ratings of principals' actual skills; (5) teachers' perceptions of principals' skills; (6) teachers' perceptions of the importance of given skills; and, (7) Assessment Center predictions ratings of principals' skills. The methodology for this study combined survey research with information provided by the COSA Assessment Center. Mailed surveys were used to collect data regarding principals' and teachers' perceptions of leadership skills. The results of this study suggested that there is a general agreement between principals and teachers regarding principals' leadership skills. Additionally, the predictions made regarding principals' skills by the Assessment Center accurately reflected teachers' perceptions of the same principals' skills in the field. The area of greatest difference in this study was in principals' perceptions of teachers' ratings. Principals generally predicted that teachers would rate the importance of skills lower than teachers actually rated them. Because teachers' perceptions of principals' skills are generally accurate, it can be concluded that teachers' ratings of their principals can play an important role in the total process of principals' evaluations.

The efforts of practice sessions in discrimination tasks with the aid of instructional cues were studied to determine their influence on the visual perceptual abilities of pre-school children . The research was conducted at the Utah State University Child Development Laboratories with twenty children. Ten of these children were three years of age and ten were four years of age at the time of the study. Of the twenty children , five boys and five girls, were given training in performing tasks requiring ability in visual perception. The remaining ten children, five boys and five girls, were not given any visual perceptual training. It was found that the ten children who had received individualized instruction during the practice sessions scored significantly higher on the visual discrimination tasks than the ten children who had received no training. The children made significant improvement through the practice sessions which was indicated by a comparison of the beginning test scores to the ending test scores. There was a significant difference in the visual perceptual abilities of girls and boys and older and younger children as measured in the visual discrimination tasks.