Leadership and management in education: What's in a field?

No Abstract.South African Journal of Education Vol. 27(3) 2007: pp. 351-37

Pergumulan as the starter and sustainer of Servant Leadership A case of academic leadership in a private University in Indonesia

In the disruptive era, every organization is expected to cope with change. This includes the ones in the sector of higher education. Servant leadership is considered as the leadership approach that enables Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) to deal with the inevitable changes. This research explores an academic leadership in a private university in Indonesia, which endorses servant leadership as its leadership approach. The case study involves the interview of twenty-six academic leaders who have asked to answer two fundamental questions: 1) How do they perceive the invitation to lead as an academic leader and 2) What did they do as they consider whether to take the offer to lead as an academic leader? The gathered data was processed using the Qualitative Data Analysis consisting data condensation, data display and drawing and verifying conclusion. Twenty-five academic leaders said no when they first offer and this initial refusal drives the researcher to find a term called �pergumulan� as the common theme across the interviewees. �Pergumulan� or a spiritual struggle happened during the pre-leadership journey and during the leadership journey of these academic leaders. The former suggests that �pergumulan� is spiritual, intrapersonal and interpersonal. The latter indicates that pergumulan happens when the servant leaders search their motivation and figure out the way to improve themselves while serving their followers. Lastly, during their leadership, the servant leaders are also having the �pergumulan� as they have to confront or rebuke their followers

How can the skills of Early Years leaders support other leaders in a primary school setting?

This study investigated the leadership skills Early Years leaders demonstrated through their daily practice of teaching, assessing and teamwork within their setting. It explored how revealing the potential of Early Years leaders could have a positive impact on the leadership practice of other leaders in the same setting to improve pupil outcomes. A qualitative approach using interviews with Early Years leaders in 20 primary settings from the East Midlands and Bedfordshire areas was undertaken by two academics from two different UK based universities. Ethical guidelines ensuring anonymity and trustworthiness were followed. Using verbatim comments, data were analysed in themes against contemporary Early Years literature. Findings showed the skills of Early Years leaders could support pedagogy and practice but some of these skills were not utilized beyond this age phase. Our conclusion suggested that Early Years leaders had a range of leadership skills which were deemed specialist as they were unique to the success of the age phase, but needed to be exposed beyond Early Years for wider success and impact

Looking for the women in Baron and Taylor's (1969) Educational administration and the social sciences

A search for women in Baron and Taylor's (1969) Educational administration and the social sciences [London: The Athlone Press] using feminist poststructural discourse analysis (FPDA) has revealed a changing discourse about gendered educational administration over the course of 50 years. Whilst few women are featured in the text itself, citations of women's writing surface the historical contributions of women as headmistresses and public servants. Women who have cited the text since its publication have challenged gendered theory and academic writing conventions. FPDA is used to explore the gendered educational administration discourse through the intertextuality of academic writing. Fluctuations between powerfulness and powerlessness are revealed depending on the socio-political context and women's circumstances

The humanistic roots of Islamic administration and leadership for education : philosophical foundations for cross-cultural and transcultural teaching

For a number of decades, a humanistic approach has been a minor but persistent one in the Western field of administrative and leadership studies, and only recently has been broadening to include other humanist traditions (Dierksmeier et al., 2011) and has yet to be fully explored in educational administration and its pedagogy and curriculum although some foundational work has been done (e.g., Samier, 2005). The focus in this chapter is on the Islamic humanist tradition as it relates to the teaching of educational administration and leadership in a Muslim context, with implications for cross-cultural and transcultural use. The second purpose of the chapter is to show the correspondences that exist between the Islamic and Western humanist traditions in terms of human values, knowledge and educational ideal, which in this chapter are argued to be close to the Western Idealist tradition and the German Bildung conception of education as well as the strong interpretive and hermeneutic foundations that originated in the Islamic tradition and which influenced the foundations of many relevant European schools of thought, particularly in the Enlightenment.The initial section of the chapter is a comparative examination of the central principles of the Islamic humanist tradition from the classical through to contemporary times with the Western humanist tradition as they relate to conceptions of the good, ethics, the construction of meaning and a set of higher order values predicated upon human dignity, integrity, empathy, well-being, and the public good (Goodman, 2003) covering a number of important scholars like Al Farabi, al Isfanhani, and Edward Said (e.g., Kraemer, 1986). In both, professions are viewed as meaningful work that allow for large measures of decision making, and are grounded in human qualities and needs including autonomy, freedom and emancipation balanced with responsibilities, obligations and duties to society. These are compared with the corresponding principles of knowledge in Western humanism which includes a strong constructivist view of reality (Makdisi, 1990). Secondly, the chapter examines the principles of good or ideal leadership and administration that humanism aims at in its preparation of officials, including those in the educational sector in both the classical Islamic tradition (Hassi, 2012) and Western approaches to humanistic administration and leadership (Czarniawska-Joerges & Guillet de Monthoux, 1994; Gagliardi & Czarniawska, 2006; Leoussi, 2000). The third section focusses on close correspondences that exist between the Islamic (Afsaruddin, 2016; al-Attas, 1980; Yasin & Jani, 2013) and Western (Aloni, 2007; Veugelers, 2011) humanist education traditions in terms of educational ideal as well as the kind of teaching practices that distinguish these traditions (Daiber, 2013; Dossett, 2014) as they apply to educational administration and leadership (Greenfield & Ribbins, 1993). The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the Islamic humanist tradition can contribute to cross-cultural and transcultural graduate teaching in international educational administration (Khan & Amann, 2013)

The shifting discourses of educational leadership:International trends and Scotland’s response

Increasing emphasis has been placed on leadership within educational theory, policy and practice. Drawing on a wide range of academic literature and policy documents, this paper explores how the discourse of leadership has shifted and for what purposes. The authors are critical of the lack of conceptual underpinning for that discourse, evident both nationally and internationally, and they identify key issues that the teaching profession has been left to try to understand and make sense of. They caution that, despite attempts to align contemporary policy developments to position leadership as inherent in the role of every teacher, flaws in the conceptualisation of leadership, and particularly in favoured forms such as ‘distributed leadership’ and ‘teacher leadership’, pose significant challenges to a serious attempt to ‘reprofessionalise’ teachers. Contemporary developments in Scottish education are referred to, exemplifying key tensions inherent in translating international trends into practice