This qualitative study examined what female principals in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two historically male-dominated cultures who are actively implementing reforms to provide women with more leadership opportunities, reported as typical elements of their daily work. The study also examined the challenges that these female principals reported in their efforts to improve the learning environment in their schools and what advice they would give to women entering the field of school leadership. The themes that emerged from the data were used to construct a grounded theory of the daily responsibilities of Saudi and Qatari female principals, the challenges that faced in fulfilling those responsibilities, and how they advised women entering principal positions to prepare to respond to those challenges.

The study examined the level of autonomy among basic school teachers in the Central Region of Ghana and the effect of teacher demographic characteristics on the level of teacher autonomy. The explanatory sequential design was adopted. Using the systematic sampling technique, a total of 315 basic school teachers were sampled for the quantitative phase of the study whilst 12 teachers were sampled for the qualitative phase through the purposive sampling technique. Eighteen (18) items Likert-scale was adapted from Pearson and Hall and used for the quantitative phase. A semi-structured interview guide was designed to collect data to further elaborate the study’s key findings. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the quantitative data whilst the interview was analysed thematically. The study revealed that teachers in the Central Region of Ghana hold positive perceptions about their autonomy with the level of autonomy being moderate. It further established that teacher autonomy is affected by gender positively whilst age and teaching experience affects their level of autonomy negatively. Based on the findings, it is recommended that the Ghana Education Service (GES) and school heads should organize in-service programmes aimed at informing basic school teachers on the extent of autonomy that they have in the process of implementing the curriculum.

To make their mandate more efficient, universities have to either offer services to students either produce innovation and scientific research. From this point of view it is difficult for universities to focus their attention on economic and financial performance. Instead, it is much more relevant for the university to find models of governance that are able to bring together profitability, financial sustainability, and social and communitarian commitment. Universities generate knowledge that can be used to improve the standard of economic and social life in the territorial environment. For these reasons it is important to analyze relations between university and community of reference. We found that italian universities that perform better are associated with communities able to generate individual and social welfare. Better universities have also more active and skilled student populations. Monthly data are considered for the period 2012 and 2017 for 58 italian universities. Data are collected from BES-ISTAT, Almalaurea and Center for World University Rankings-CWUR. The complex database has been realized by using KNIME mixing different sources in an original metric environment. We use panel data approach to estimate the level of italian ranking in CWUR statistics by the usage two different sets of variables: BES-ISTAT and SIOPE. The increasing in the Global International Ranking can be realized either directly by increasing the level of services and products generates, either indirectly improving the spillovers effect of universities in respect to a certain community of reference.

In this article, we extend and complement previous studies on self-descriptions of superintendents’ administrative work by examining the influential role of a relatively new actor in charter schools: the charter school district superintendent. In particular, we examine the influence of a charter district superintendent’s leadership on organizational factors such as mission, principal decision-making and school board involvement through interviews with the principals and board members in the district to identify how a charter school district superintendent exhibits leadership within an emerging context in the public school landscape. We use a qualitative case study approach to examine one charter school district superintendent and the perceptions of charter principals and charter school board members concerning his role and responsibility as a leader in the charter district. Three major themes emerged from the data: the superintendent’s role in the mission of an autonomous district; superintendent as an instructional leader; and the superintendent as a policy entrepreneur. The superintendent’s mission of the charter school district to operate as an autonomous entity, paved the way for the influence of the charter superintendent to employ and articulate instructional leadership strategies in his district, and spurred the superintendent toward action as a policy entrepreneur, establishing an LEA for his charter school district. The findings demonstrate that the superintendent has a significant, dynamic effect on the organizational mission and goals of the charter school district as well as influence on building principals and board members as the leader of the district.

In this research, it has been aimed to determine the relationship between teachers’ perception of organizational trust and innovative behaviours. The relational survey model was used in this study. The universe of the research has been constituted teachers in Şırnak province. The sample of the study has been formed of 151 teachers working in 35 schools, which were detachedly determined from the study universe. The data of the research have been gathered by “Individual Knowledge Form”, “Organizational Trust Scale” and “Innovative Behaviour Scale”. Descriptive analyses, correlation, reliability analysis and regression analyses have been performed to the data by the help of SPSS programme. Results of the regression analyses showed that participant teachers’ perception of organizational trust significantly predicts their innovative behaviour. While trust in administrator and trust in shareholders dimensions of organizational trust predict innovative behaviour of teachers, on the other hand, trust in colleagues dimension doesn’t predict teachers’ innovative behaviours significantly. For school administrators who would like to encourage teachers to exhibit innovative behaviours, it would be beneficial to keep the perception of organizational trust at school at high levels

Women’s work has been acknowledged as an important tool towards effective leadership and economic development in Nigeria and Africa in general. It is important therefore, to accept their presence and encourage the active role they play in the labour force which at the long run impacts the economy positively knowing full well that they make up noticeable portion of the world’s population. This study evaluated the contribution of job autonomy, workload and home-work conflict to the job satisfaction of employed women in universities in Ogun State, Nigeria. A descriptive survey design was used to draw 200 women through multi-stage sampling technique. Standardized questionnaires were used to obtain responses from respondents. Four hypotheses postulated were analyzed using correlation matrices and multiple regression analysis and the level of significance was at 0.05 level. Findings show that job autonomy, workload, and home-work conflict jointly contributed to job satisfaction with 10.1% variance (Adj. R2 = .101) while workload predicted female employees job satisfaction the most. It was concluded that university management should introduce flexibility in work schedules and restructure job descriptions to allow female employees have more autonomy so as to reduce the effect of home-work conflict and pressure associated with workload.

A professional development that is often mandated is exclusionary, less motivating, and provides teachers with little or no improvement in their professional practice as well as student achievement. This necessitates a fundamental change in policy from prescribing professional development to addressing teachers’ self-identified felt needs. Hitherto, teachers are generally disenfranchised from specifying their felt needs for development, thus they feel uninterested, or enthusiastic to attend professional development programs that are prescribed for them by school leaders. When they do or are compelled to attend, they tend to be less attentive and are often indulged in reading newspapers, grading students’ test papers, texting, playing video games, or simply doing something unrelated to the professional development. This practice stifles teachers’ professional growth and student learning, hence it must not be allowed to continue unabated. Through a qualitative case study research design, using survey, interviews, and focus groups, this research brought to the fore, the debilitating effects of the current practice. Analysis of data yielded four major themes: choice, motivation, effectiveness, and satisfaction. The study proposed a paradigm shift in policy from mandating to granting teachers the autonomy to identify their own real or felt needs for professional development. Implications for practice, leadership, policy, and further research were also discussed.

Special Unit students at a secondary education school in Cyprus were to be included in an action research project. Its primary objective was to study the challenges the headmaster/leader or other school leader faces while attempting to involve Special Unit students in the school's leadership, which was based on an inclusive leadership approach. The researchers concluded that Cyprus' centralized educational system is the biggest impediment. The primary research methods used to carry out the action research were interviews, focus groups, and observations. 85 teachers, 210 students, and 15 parents participated in the 8-month research, which was conducted in a secondary school in Cyprus with a special unit. By completing the research process, the researchers finally concluded that the solution to the problem might be the recruitment of an inclusive leadership model, which aims to use decentralized inclusive practices.

Teacher Leadership Teams (TLTs) are cross-functional teams, and thus knowledge integration is central to their teaming. Importantly, the existing literature maintains that cross-functional teams apply the traverse or transcend approach differently to integrate divergent knowledge, but few studies have directly focused on it within the context of TLTs. Studies on leadership teams in schools have highlighted political and/or cultural perspectives and mainly stressed team/organizational conditions that might influence the TLT process of using two knowledge integration approaches. Therefore, our research analyzed how one TLT employed two knowledge integration approaches in consideration of team/organizational conditions. More specifically, we conducted qualitative research using the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory as an analytic lens. We identified that the TLT used traverse, transcend, and mixed approaches, and that its context influenced the team’s hybrid use by determining when the team utilized each approach. We believe that our findings contribute to revealing TLTs’ actual knowledge integration process by empirically examining one TLT’s use of knowledge integration approaches. Our findings also contribute to developing a more comprehensive framework to understand TLT knowledge integration by addressing existing research from political and cultural perspectives and suggesting further areas of focus (i.e., functional conditions) for future research.

There is little empirical evidence that convinces the effectiveness of distributed leadership in contemporary educational research. Thus, many distinguished scholars suggest its’ statistical examination. Considering this need, the primary purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of principals’ distributed leadership practices on students’ learning outcomes at Technical and Vocational Education Training schools in Eritrea. The study was conducted based on quantitative design and applied structural equation modelling. A sample of six hundred and three students was employed. The researcher developed the structural equation model to test a model that hypothesized the relationship between the major variables using path analysis. The study results demonstrate that the principals’ distributed leadership practice has a direct and significant (.883, p<.001) effect on students’ learning outcomes keeping other things constant. The strongest predictor of students’ learning outcomes was capacity building, given it has the largest path coefficient (β=.346). Moreover, findings show gender disparity among the respondents and in terms of turnout rate; nevertheless, it was not statistically significant (p<.001). One of the study’s contributions is that it developed and assessed the validity of the principals’ distributed leadership practice scale for Eritrea’s TVET schools through CFA model. The study offered basic evidence that distributed type of leadership is a significant predictor of learning outcomes by exploring six factors of leadership practices, which shows a promising area for practice and future studies.

Research has shown that school leaders’ engagement in teacher induction is vital for establishing supportive school structures and conditions that are conducive to successful socialization and long-term sustenance of newly qualified teachers (NQTs). In Malta, the problem of teacher recruitment and a growing attrition rate is becoming very acute. This article describes findings from an exploratory qualitative study that examined the perceptions of five heads of schools regarding their engagement in the induction and mentoring programs that have been designed to support NQTs in Malta. The findings describe the ways through which the heads of school support NQTs and their advice for new heads of schools working with NQTs. The article offers a discussion of research results in relation to the extant literature and concludes with implications for practice and further research.

This study, designed as a basic qualitative research, aims to evaluate the perspectives of Turkish teachers regarding the nationally implemented large-scale assessments in specific subjects. By employing purposive sampling methods, particularly maximum variation sampling, 14 teachers with different seniorities and branches from various high schools were included in the research. Data were collected using a semi-structured interview form prepared by the researcher. Through the application of descriptive analysis, it was found that teachers viewed these assessments more as a preparation for changes in the higher education transition system and as a tool for achieving standardization across the country rather than as an accountability policy instrument. Despite the low-stakes nature of this assessment, it was observed that teachers exhibited responses like those documented in the literature for high-stakes accountability. Additionally, it was found that teachers prepared students for the exams primarily through practice exercises and experienced anxiety before the exams due to the limitation of their autonomy and the comparison of their students and themselves. Furthermore, most participants believed that the assessment results were not effective in determining students' learning, primarily held the students accountable for the results, and considered such assessments as a source of stress. Based on the findings, recommendations were made for practitioners and researchers.