While the phenomenon of leadership is widely considered to be universal across cultures, the way in which it is operationalized is usually viewed as culturally specific. Conflicting viewpoints exist in the leadership literature concerning the transferability of specific leader behaviors and processes across cultures. This study explored these conflicting views for managers and professional workers by empirically testing specific hypotheses which addressed the generalizability of leadership behaviors and processes across five nations in North America and Asia. Confirmatory factor analyses provided evidence for conceptual and measurement equivalence for all six leader behaviors employed in the study.
In a longitudinal, randomized field experiment, we tested the impact of transformational leadership, enhanced by training, on follower development and performance. Experimental group leaders received transformational leadership training, and control group leaders, eclectic leadership training. The sample included 54 military leaders, their 90 direct followers, and 724 indirect followers. Results indicated the leaders in the experimental group had a more positive impact on direct followers' development and on indirect followers' performance than did the leaders in the control group.
The Wounded Leader: How Real Leadership Emerges in Times of Crisis (2002), a recently published book by Richard Ackerman and Pat Maslin-Ostrowski, asks educational leaders to reflect on personal and profound questions - ones they are not likely to have been asked in a formal interview or performance evaluation. Ackerman, co-director of the International Network of Principals’ Centers and Associate Professor of education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell Graduate School of Education, and Maslin- Ostrowski, an Associate Professor of educational
leadership at Florida Atlantic University, have spent the past seven years asking school leaders about “wounding” or “crisis” experiences in their leadership practice, and how they make sense of this wounding in terms of
their personal and professional lives.
Teacher empowerment requires investing in teachers' right to participate in the determination of school goals and policies and the right to exercise professional judgment about the content of the curriculum and means of instruction. Implications of this conception and the kind of school leadership it requires are discussed. (Source:ERIC)
Two central questions should arise for anyone who attends to the rhetoric of empowerment that is being used in current discussions of improvement of teaching as a profession: (1) What is teacher empowerment? and (2) Toward what ends are teachers to be empowered? Discussions of teacher empowerment have proceeded as if all of those who use the term were in agreement, when even a cursory review of what has been written on the subject reveals that this is clearly not the case. In the literal sense, to ize or license. It is also to impart or bestow power to an end or for a purpose. An obsolete definition ng back into the history of the word, is to gain power or assume power over.1
ize or license. It is al ng back into the history of the word, is to gain power or assume power over.
Exploring the relationship between research universities and schools, Lieberman asks us to think seriously about the real meaning of collaboration and of how real, notjust creden tialed, teacher leaders can be developed. She points out many things we have already found out about the characteristics and learning experiences that good teacher leaders have and how detached university faculties have been from the schools.
The booming business of publishing books on educational administration is largely due to the rapid, but essentially undisciplined, expansion of college programs to prepare administrators. Increasingly rare is the institution of any sort of higher education which does not also offer courses for administrators. There is, however, a dearth of instructors properly qualified to teach educational administration on the intellectual level of professional courses in law or engineering. Many who probably could do well as instructors are not available because college salaries are dismally low when compared to those of practicing administrators. The differential between public school administration and college teaching of the subject is much greater than for other positions in the public education
enterprise. The deplorable result of such circumstances is that large numbers of courses in educational administration are textbook-bound. Basically, the demand
ONE set of circumstances distinguishes the present crucial demand for strong educational leadership from past demands: the pressures for change in school and society outweigh any in the past century. Freedom, democracy, human dignity are under fire. The repercussions of this upheaval are reaching into almost every community in the land. No other period of civilization has witnessed the kinds of changes which have occurred in the past half century and are continuing. Scarcely a single aspect of present-day society has not been altered markedly in this brief period. Building a school program to keep pace with—let alone contribute to—change requires effective educational leadership.
A TEACHER who strives to develop professional skills finds it profitable to examine and evaluate the social forces which are active within the class situation. Periodic observations and evaluations of how students respond to the
teaching method and content, what reactions express their feelings, and why these reactions are forthcoming can improve the quality of instruction, integrate teaching and learning, and provide a more democratic atmosphere in which to resolve the problems of both teacher and students. When followed cooperatively by students and teacher, these procedures should also improve the quality and extent of learning in every experience.
A DISCUSSION of educational leadership in these troublous times might concern itself with an attempt to review our social and economic ills, to show their relationship to education, and to propose the way out by means of economic and social reconstruction. I shall assume that all of you are familiar with current discussion concerning the maladjustments in our society. I shall take it
for granted, as well, that you are conversant with the opposed points of view of those who see the
need for complete reorganization of our economic life, our government, and indeed the whole social
order, and those who believe that progress lies in the more gradual evolution of our society. I
feel sure that you will agree with me that leaders in education and in all other walks of
life will need to cooperate in finding and putting into effect those changes which will contribute to the common good. I take it, as well, that you would agree that those of us who work in the field of education must depend for guidance on experts in economics, in government, in psychology, in sociology, and in anthropology if we are to have a sound basis in fact for our thinking with respect to social change.
MANY an ephemeral emphasis has come and gone in education. Teachers still activ can remember when they were first challenged by the Palmer method of handwriting, the additive method of subtraction, homogeneous grouping, or the Dalton Plan for individualized instruction. For some years after World War I, Teachers College gave
courses in how to Americanize the flood of recent immigrants. During depression years some states began to require that their schools give instruction in the Cooperative Movement. Viewing the upsurge, in the past dozen years, of educational articles, pamphlets, films, talks, and workshops on intergroup relations, one might first ask whether this, too, will swiftly run its course as another educational fad— inspired, of course, by the highest motives.
THE question of educational priorities becomes increasingly important as contemporary culture becomes more complex and more tasks are thrust upon the school. The identification of priorities is difficult, however, and, in an age of ideological conflict, almost inevitably controversial. Decisions concerning priorities in the school program need to be based on the characteristics of contemporary culture, some conception of ideals and values, and the best available knowledge regarding the dual growth and development and the learning process.
THE science of psychology, in spite of its immaturities and its brashness, has advanced mightily in recent decades. From a concern with observation and measurement, it has moved toward becoming an "if-then" science. By this I mean it has become more concerned with the discernment and discovery of lawful relationships such as that
if certain conditions exist, then certain behaviors will predictably follow.
FREUD commented on the insults heaped on man since the Renaissance. He suggested that all the discoveries made by man in recent centuries have automatically, as it were, become techniques of debunking. And he saw psychoanalysis in this light too, as meeting resistance bewcause of its wound to human pride.
To evaluate old and new directions we must keep objectives sharply in mind. Of late, articulately explicit discussion of the objectives of international exchange has fortunately been supplanting the vaguer statements of pious hope that sprang from the unanalyzed convictions that exchange is inherently a Good Thing. A brief review of the principal objectives that have been advanced is made easy by the availability of an excellent summary by the Committee on Educational Interchange Policy.1 From the generally expressed purposes of sponsoring groups, the Committee lists the following in
descending order of frequency:
IT HAS become a truism that we live in an age of rapid and profound change. The growth of freedom of thought, the use of the scientific method, the advance of the industrial revolution, the rise of political and economic democracy, and the everwidening applications of technology— culminating in the atomic age—are recasting the thoughts and actions of men into strange new patterns.
OVER THE LAST FIVE YEARS OR SO WE HAVE HEARD A great deal about something called the Knowledge Society. The term ‘knowledge’ is appearing in places we wouldn’t have expected to see it a decade or so ago. The media is full of references to the knowledge economy and the knowl-edge revolution; business discussions now routinely talk about knowledge management, knowledge resources, knowledge clusters, knowledge work, and knowledge workers; and policy documents argue for the need to ‘catch’ the knowledge ‘wave’.
This project, to support schools in involving parents in school improvement planning, was initially sponsored by the Education Improvement Commission (EIC) of Ontario. The mandate of the EIC expired in 2001. The Canadian Education Association (CEA) was contracted to conduct a three-year study of the project. Exploring the potential contribution of parent participation to school improvement planning (SIP), results of the study help answer four broad questions:
This paper explores general issues relating to globalization and higher education; the internationalization of higher education, and particularly the recruitment of international students. This subject is examined through a range of topics around the global development of the market approach to the recruitment of international students and a focus on the current situation regarding the recruitment of international students in the Colleges of Applied
Arts and Technology in Ontario (CAATs). As the number of international students seeking educational opportunities grows to 7 million over the next 20 years, the ability of the CAATs, the Canadian educational system, and the governments of Ontario and Canada to market the welcoming and safe multicultural Canadian experience, and the excellence of the educational offerings and opportunities in CAATs to potential international students will, in great measure, determine their success and their survival in an increasingly globalized world.
For many years, critics of the SAT have cited a verbal question involving the word "regatta" as an example of how the test may favor wealthier test-takers, who also are more likely to be white. It's been a long time since the regatta question was used -- and the College Board now has in place a detailed process for testing all questions and potential ques questions that may favor one group of students over another.
A study released Monday suggests that hundreds of thousands of students a year may have SAT scores that predict they will receive either better or worse grades than they are actually likely to receive. While the SAT may predict accurately for many others, the scholars who have produced the new study say it raises questions about the fairness and reliability of the SAT (including the new version about to be unveiled), which remains a key part of the admissions process at many colleges and universities.