The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of workplace spirituality on organizational commitment and the moderating role of gender. 112 teachers, working in Gaziantep, in the 2015-2016 academic year, were assessed using the workplace spirituality scale improved by Ashmos and Duchon and translated into Turkish by researchers and also the organizational commitment scale by Meyer and Allen, adapted to Turkish by Wasti. At the end of the research, it was found that there was a moderating role of gender in relation to workplace spirituality with organizational commitment. While the spirituality of the in workplace increases, organizational commitment increases, and male teachers’ organizational commitment was more than female teachers’

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.

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.

Goffman’s theory of total institutions and Fanon’s theory of violence were used to explain student protests and violence in Kenyan secondary schools. Youth violence around the world is not a new phenomenon. However, the persistence, frequency, and intensity of violence, and their consequences beg for logical explanations and remedies. This study was part of a three-year project facilitated through the Networked Improvement Community partnership for self-study and intervention. Although a holistic approach to research was applied, data for this study were gathered through narrative inquiry. Participants (teachers, principals, and members of the school community) were identified purposively using the snowball process. Data were analyzed through deductive and inductive reasoning. Findings indicate a preponderance of student protest and violence among students in boarding schools. Student violence was a response to the devaluing and oppressive environment in boarding schools which resembled total institutions, and students exercising democratic rights to protest. The paper argues that school authorities could mitigate violent protests by providing formal political means of representation and democratic decision-making; creating new spaces for negotiation and peaceful protest; listening to the voices of students; and engaging in dialogue to create a common vision and mission.

Indonesia has achieved equal parity in access to education, income, and career opportunities. Yet in many parts of the country, female academic leaders are still highly under-represented in top academic boards. This study examines how fourteen (14) Indonesian female higher education academic leaders (FALs) enact identity salience and agency in performing their duties, while experiencing social control schemas or ‘triple binds’—exigencies of gender roles, unequal power-plays due to social status and positions, and lack of organizational resources and capital in higher education—in Indonesia, one of the world’s emerging economies still consolidating democracy and building necessary social, fiscal, and physical infrastructures. Taken as a whole, the study found the ‘triple binds’ as aggregate constraints for female leadership progression, driving female academic leaders to resist and rise above this discursive struggle and confrontation through sense-making, assertiveness, depth of conviction, a take-charge attitude, and the use of other tactical strategies like networking with key gatekeepers to obtain the resources they need. The study presents a framework of the triple binds that university leaders can use to assess constraints to academic leadership.

The paper aims to investigate the extent to which school leaders adopt transformational leadership behaviors at times of crisis. The emphasis on restructuring in the educational policy environment in recent decades has led to an increased interest in transformational leadership in education, resulting in a large number of studies. In order to investigate the adoption of transformational leadership behaviors/practices at times of crisis, qualitative research was conducted with 30 primary school teachers in Greece. The schools were selected based on the extent to which they had been affected by the financial crisis. Greece has faced major challenges in the last ten years, including the financial crisis and the influx of immigrants. These changes have had a profound effect on the Greek educational system. In this context, the paper examines the extent to which school leaders in Greece adopt transformational leadership practices in order to deal with the impact of the crisis on their school unit. The findings of the research are used to draw conclusions and implications regarding educational policy as well as future research on the topic.

It is regarded as considerable values those principles’ skills of managing diversities and teachers’ cultural intelligences which mean they understand and appreciate other cultures. These core values are remarkably vital to be culturally literate in the global world. The organizations and their administrators respecting the diversities of the employees can allocate more time competing their counterparts in the world instead of losing energy with unnecessary conflicts. The aim of the study is to examine the correlation between teachers’ cultural intelligence and Principal’s managing the diversities and their transformational leaderships according to the teachers’ point of views. The research has adopted a correlational model. The data of the research was gathered from 428 primary school teachers in Turkey/Malatya during 2020-2021 academic year. The Data was gathered through the “Cultural Intelligence”, “Diversity Management” and “Transformational Leadership” scales. The data was analyzed by arithmetic mean, correlation analysis and regression analysis. The results of the research suggest that the primary school teacher’s cultural intelligence, the principal’s management of diversity and their transformational leadership levels were “mostly high”. It was revealed that there was a moderate level positive significant correlation between teachers’ cultural intelligence levels and Principal’s skills of managing the diversities and their transformational leaderships. Moreover, teacher’s cultural intelligence levels and Principal’s skills of managing the diversities predict the transformational leaderships of Principles. Consequently, to increase the transformational leadership of Principals, it is recommended to enhance teachers’ socio-cultural awareness and to work on improving the skills of diversity management of principals.

This paper extends and complements previous research on unethical leader behavior by examining the social and cultural perspectives that inform the understanding of objectional conduct among secondary school leaders in Kenya. The study used a social constructivist theoretical framework, and qualitative case study, and semi-structured interviews with school boards of governors, principals, and heads of department and school bursars. The findings revealed that cultural beliefs underpinned by the ubuntu ethic informed the school leaders' perceptions of unethical leadership behavior in the Kenyan secondary school contexts. Four sub-themes highlight acts that contradict the ubuntu values of altruism, humanness, care, and solidarity. They include disregard for community interests, neglect of care for one's kin, disregard for harmony, and elders' respect. The study concluded that western universal perspectives and definitions could not solely be relied upon to describe unethical leadership behavior in schools in non-Euro western contexts. The study contributes to the literature on unethical and ethical leadership by proposing a potential benefit in recognizing and incorporating non-western perspectives in exploring and defining the unethical leadership construct.

This research explores the impact of effective leadership and targeted interventions in closing the achievement gap of disadvantaged pupils in primary schools. Findings suggest that the case study schools use effective school leaders and a range of targeted interventions including early intervention, small group additional teaching, one-to-one tuition, peer tutoring, parental involvement, booster class, mastery learning, pastoral care, and enrichment programmes. Each of the above success factors and intervention strategies was explored in detail in the paper. The overall conclusions of this study are that the case study schools have closed the achievement gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers through providing effective school leaders and the use of a range of effective intervention strategies. We would suggest that the case study schools’ stories of how they have closed the achievement gap through providing strong school leaders and the use of targeted interventions are of local and national significance. Our research also suggests the possibilities for further research. The recommendations from the study are that there is a need to replicate and expand this research with a larger sample of the study, in order to explore in detail what works in schools.

Over the last two decades, research has reached the conclusion that educator teamwork is necessary to ensure the achievement of school goals. No attempts, however, have been made to provide integrative evidence regarding its contribution to school effectiveness. To fill this void, the authors review two decades of professional team research in the context of schools. Specifically, the article has two objectives: (1) To review the existing conceptualizations of the terms 'team' and 'teamwork' in the school context; (2) To provide a systematic review of the impact of teamwork on school effectiveness. The systematic search resulted in 23 papers reporting three non-empirical and 20 empirical studies. The results of the review revealed a lack of agreement concerning the conceptualization of the terms 'team' and 'teamwork', which may affect comparability among studies. Furthermore, no comprehensive picture emerges regarding the consequences of teamwork for the individual teacher, the team, or the school as a whole. Indeed, studies refer to a wide range of variables within different contexts and configurations. This review contributes several important insights that may set the agenda for the next wave of research on teamwork in schools.

This article aims to explore the views of primary school teachers regarding the educational leadership exercised by leader teachers at the human resource management level, and how this can affect their willingness to communicate and collaborate. The theoretical framework analyzes the dimensions of human resource management by a leader teacher, as a communication channel, team empowerer, and creator of a climate of trust. The research was carried out using quantitative method, with a closed digital questionnaire which was completed by 693 primary school teachers from whole Greece. Initially, the analysis was carried out through descriptive statistics and then selected questions were analyzed by statistical inference test. The findings show a shift towards the model of a transformational leader, despite the country’s education system remaining highly centralized. In addition, the findings show a correlation between democratic and cooperative staff management, with the axes of inspiration and responsibility on the teachers’ side. This article highlights whether the communication skills of a leader teacher affect the functioning of the school. The research was carried out during a pandemic and thus it was not possible to collect qualitative data using interviews with leader teachers so that we can have a comparative approach to the issue.

Theories of distributed leadership suggest that organizational learning and change results not from the efforts of a single individual, but rather from a network of people working within their broader systems. Team empowering leadership enhances human resources development of the organization to promote the sharing of knowledge that is necessary for change. In this study, we study transformational and distributed leadership team that have been linked to improving working conditions and students’ learning in high-needs schools. Specifically, we highlight a team-based intervention where positive organizational improvements were made to academically struggling schools, and then qualitatively examined the associated processes to understand what enabled the occurrence of those positive changes. We find that the team structure allowed for the clarification of expectations, enhancement of communication, and improvement of educator working conditions through professional development support and distribution of leadership responsibility, which ultimately resulted in improvement in school culture and performance.

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.

The COVID-19 pandemic imposed a paradigm shift on education delivery worldwide. In response to the pandemic, the government of Jamaica mobilised strategies to ensure that the nation was protected while continuing the education of the nation's children. One of the strategies was to implement remote teaching and learning. Online teaching and learning created challenges, especially for students from rural and marginalised communities. This research explored the experiences of accessing education in Jamaica's rural and urban primary (K-6) schools during the pandemic. Researchers aimed to answer the questions: To what extent has COVID-19 impacted access to continued education in your school? (b) How has the state's intervention facilitated continued education during COVID-19? (c) To what extent do the qualitative findings converge with the quantitative results? Mixed-method research was employed for data collection and analysis. Purposeful sampling was used to select principals, teachers, and parents for this study. The findings of the study provided insights into how COVID-19 affected students' access and, the effectiveness of the government's response to continuing education online. Participants' contributions informed recommendations to the government on students' access to education during the onset of the pandemic in 2020, for the periods March to July and September to December.

As an educationist over the years, I have experienced principals’ outburst and their tendency to make a scene out of seemly minor issues that could have been addressed with little modesty. This behaviour has led to an uproar amongst parents, teachers and learners about the school principals’ insensitiveness which is attributed to lack of emotional intelligence (EI) competency. The study is underpinned by the transformational leadership theory which aims at pioneering change of attitude in school leadership so that different educational actors could be influenced to achieve the school and overall educational objectives. This qualitative study generated data from five (5) conveniently selected secondary school principals, five (5) parents and five (5) teachers using semi-structured interviews. Using thematic analysis method, the study revealed that principals with EI are able to enhance school performance and satisfy parents. Thus, the study revealed that EI is useful in establishing and maintaining good relationships with different school stakeholders. It is fundamental in managing conflicts in schools and facilitates constructive management of any stressful situations. The study further revealed that principals could acquire this skill through self-enrichment and induction initiatives by the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET). It is recommended that before principals are appointed, they should be subjected to multiple aptitude tests to evaluate their knowledge and competencies. Furthermore MoET through its experts should continually induct principals on EI aspects.

The study aims to determine the relationship between school administrators’ paternalistic leadership behaviours and teachers’ work alienation levels. The research sample group involves 205 teachers working in the Anatolian high schools in the central district of Siirt. Research data was collected through the “Paternalistic Leadership Behaviours Scale of School Principals” and the “Work Alienation Scale”. According to the descriptive and Pearson correlation analysis results of the research, it was determined that the paternalistic leadership behaviours of the school administrators are at a “strongly agree” level while the work alienation of the teachers is at a “somewhat agree” level, and a negative moderate significant relationship was found between the paternalistic leadership behaviours and the teachers’ work alienation levels. The path analysis revealed that benevolent leadership predicts the powerlessness and meaninglessness dimension negatively significantly; authoritarian leadership predicts the powerlessness dimension positively significantly, and moral leadership predicts meaninglessness and self-estrangement negatively significantly. Moreover, it was also established that, in general, paternalistic leadership behaviours predict the teachers’ work alienation negatively significantly as a whole. As a result of the research, school administrators were suggested to display helpful and ethical behaviours by watching over the teachers in various matters.

In this study, the relationship between the happy school variable, which determines the happiness levels of secondary school students in their schools, and academic self-efficacy, general self-efficacy and life satisfaction were examined. The relationship between variables was examined in this correlation study. The population of the study consisted of high school students studying in Anatolian high school in the city center of Kahramanmaras (Turkey). 315 students selected from these schools constituted the study sample. Data were collected with life satisfaction, academic self-efficacy, general self-efficacy, and happy school scales. Regression and path analyses were conducted for the data analysis. Study results suggest that each variable has a positive significant relationship with the other variables and that general self-efficacy, academic self-efficacy and life satisfaction predicted happy schools. In the study, a linear model was created considering that a happy school is affected by general self-efficacy, academic self-efficacy and life satisfaction. High fit indices were obtained with the model. These indices suggest that the model is an acceptable model which is fit.

The highlighted local and international perspectives of school-based management (SBM) offer logical findings on its efficacy at the grassroots level. Despite some hindering factors, its impact along leadership and governance, curriculum and learning, accountability and continuous improvement, and resource management are commendable. After methodical scrutiny of data, this paper concludes that the improvements in schools triggered by SBM are responsiveness to the needs and challenges of schools; contextualization of curriculum; improvement of physical facilities and linkages; and stakeholders’ awareness and involvement to school’s programs, projects and activities (PPAs). Principals likewise implemented SBM in their respective schools by holding SBM planning with its stakeholders. In fact, the different programs and projects implemented in schools include SBM crafting and planning; implementation, monitoring, and documentation of student learning activities; and clean-up drive and transparency board installation. Researchers, therefore, recommend that responsiveness of SBM to the needs and challenges of schools; contextualization of curriculum; improvement of physical facilities and linkages; and stakeholders’ awareness and involvement to school PPA be extensively maximized. Eventually, sound partnerships between schools and external stakeholders be cultivated.

Educators in non-formal education organizations are often expected to display values of volunteering and giving to the community. These contributions, which are beyond the call of duty, are defined as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). When such behavior is performed as a result of pressure rather than out of free will, that pressure is defined as citizenship pressure (CP). Building on the job demands-resources theory, the study examined a moderator-mediator model at the team level construct, to explore whether team CP mediates the relationship between both idealized influence behavior and idealized influence attributed (transformational leadership dimensions) and team OCB, and whether that mediation is moderated by organizational identification. The study sample consisted of 75 teams of educators and their direct superiors, who work in 11 youth movements. Results show that the negative relationship between both idealized influence behavior and idealized influence attributed and team CP is moderated by organizational identification. Furthermore, results show a negative relationship between team CP and team OCB. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Studies conducted on learners rarely focus their investigations on learner perceptions of pre-service teachers’ classroom management practices. In response to the changing school environments, this study investigated learners’ perceptions of pre-service teachers’ classroom management practices. A survey design was adopted in which 550 grade 11 secondary school learners from eleven secondary schools in the Copperbelt Province in Zambia formed the sample. A Likert scale questionnaire was used to collect data which was analysed using SPSS and also through an iterative process. The study revealed that learners positively perceived pre-service teachers’ classroom management practices. This is indicated by pre-service teachers’ interest in learners’ welfare, possessing good personal qualities, ability to handle learners’ disruptive behaviours, ability to teach effectively, and ability to assess learners effectively. Using an independent samples t-test, it was concluded that there were no statistically significant gender differences in learners’ perceptions of pre-service teachers’ classroom management. Regardless of which institution pre-service teachers came from, learners had a positive impression of pre-service teachers in terms of learner discipline (60%), assessment of learners (66.3%), learner and pre-service-teacher relationship (64.7%), pre-service teachers’ ability to teach (54%), interest in learner welfare (58.5%), pre-service teachers’ personal characteristics (82.6%) and acceptance of pre-service teacher (46.9%).