LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION: THE CASE OF SERBIA

LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION: Initiatives and trends in selected European countriesThe paper deals with major aspects of educational leadership in Serbia. First, the legislative framework is presented which, in the last several years, has considerably focused on the roles and obligations of principals, as well as their formal training and licensing. Then, the findings of the research on principals’ needs, problems and perspectives on leadership since 2000 are described. This section shows that principals are aware of the multitude of competencies that they need to have in order to professionally fulfill their duties, but that they also believe that many problems hamper them in their jobs: insufficient school funding, teacher employment policies, inconsistent legislation, poor selection procedures of principals, inadequate support from higher administrative levels and so on. Subsequently, the paper gives an overview of seminars, trainings and academic programs that comprise the current offering of professional development opportunities for principals. Among them, the master program developed within the Tempus project and the official state program developed by the Institute for the Improvement of Education are described in more detail. Finally, the authors present a set of recommendations for the improvement of educational leadership in SerbiaPublishe

Leadership in education: the case of Serbia

The paper deals with major aspects of educational leadership in Serbia. First, the legislative framework is presented which, in the last several years, has considerably focused on the roles and obligations of principals, as well as their formal training and licensing. Then, the findings of the research on principals’ needs, problems and perspectives on leadership since 2000 are described. This section shows that principals are aware of the multitude of competencies that they need to have in order to professionally fulfill their duties, but that they also believe that many problems hamper them in their jobs: insufficient school funding, teacher employment policies, inconsistent legislation, poor selection procedures of principals, inadequate support from higher administrative levels and so on. Subsequently, the paper gives an overview of seminars, trainings and academic programs that comprise the current offering of professional development opportunities for principals. Among them, the master program developed within the Tempus project and the official state program developed by the Institute for the Improvement of Education are described in more detail. Finally, the authors present a set of recommendations for the improvement of educational leadership in Serbia.Collection name: “PEDAGOGICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE” 4

Formative value of descriptive grades in mathematics instruction for beginners

Descriptive grading has been implemented in the first grade of primary school in the Republic of Serbia from 2003. The monitoring of this system novelty has been absent since research community most often dealt with teachers’ attitudes and their self-evaluation of the competences for descriptive grading. This form of grading, which stems from the social constructivist paradigm, is observed as the trigger of development of the formative approach in assessment, which has been in the focus of theoreticians and practitioners in the past thirty years, especially in the United States of America and Great Britain. The method of content analysis was applied to 316 descriptive grades in mathematics given to first grade primary students. The quality of three key elements was assessed: the description of academic achievement, the description of students’ engagement and the recommendations to achieve further progress, as well as the balance of quality between the elements of the same descriptive grade. Research results have shown that descriptive grades mostly lack the necessary formative capacity. This means that the majority of students this sample of grades was prepared for did not receive quality and comprehensive feedback, which would be conducive for their further education. Formative assessment, as one of the implications of the constructivist theoretical grounding, demands a high level of development of teacher competences for monitoring the progress and assessing the students, which has not been confirmed in the present research