A Better Approach To College Teaching?

Servant Leadership has become a popular tool for leaders in recent years though it has been dated back as far as 2000 years ago. Leaders employing Servant Leadership serve their followers/employees in an effort to increase both employee productivity and satisfaction. It has proved successful in numerous businesses and other organizations. The question is, then, does Servant Leadership have a place in the education system? The extension of Servant Leadership to teaching in higher education, “Servant Teaching” as it is being called, is a promising technique for focusing on helping students learn via a professor who serves them to better meet their educational needs

Violence Affecting School Employees

A review of the literature shows significant violence (both physical and verbal threats) in schools in the United States (U.S.). Almost all of the studies focus on violence by students and against students. There is very limited information about violence involving employees in the schools even though teachers are three times more likely to be attacked than are students on a per capita basis. The purpose of this study was to understand the extent, causation, and reduction of violence against school employees in a metropolitan area. Administrators of all schools (K-12, vocational schools, and colleges) in a 4-county, 2-state metropolitan area were surveyed. The results of the survey found that violence in the Portland metropolitan area was not as prevalent as nationwide trends indicate. However, most respondents believed violence would continue at the present level into the future. More research needs to be conducted about violence against school employees, but it should carefully consider the geographical area and the type of respondents

Agency theory and performance appraisal: how bad theory damages learning and contributes to bad management practice

Performance appraisal interviews remain central to how employees are scrutinised, rewarded and sometimes penalised by managers. But they are also often castigated as ineffective, or even harmful, to both individuals and organisations. Exploring this paradox, we highlight the influence of agency theory on the (mal)practice of performance appraisal. The performative nature of human resource management increasingly reflects an economic approach within which its practices are aligned with agency theory. Such theory assumes that actors are motivated mainly or only by economic self-interest. Close surveillance is required to eliminate the risk of shirking and other deviant behaviours. It is a pessimistic mind-set about people that undermines the supportive, co-operative and developmental rhetoric with which appraisal interviews are usually accompanied. Consequently, managers often practice appraisal interviews while holding onto two contradictory mind-sets, a state of Orwellian Doublethink that damages individual learning and organisational performance. We encourage researchers to adopt a more radical critique of appraisal practices that foregrounds issues of power, control and conflicted interests between actors beyond the analyses offered to date