Getting Organised

Citation

Heron, C. (2005), "Getting Organised", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 359-359. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513540510599671

There is a sense of dëja vu when reading “Time management”, the first chapter of Getting Organised: ‘Teaching is a busy, hectic and pressurised job. Work is not confined to time in school and you spend doubtless many hours at home on school work. Indeed, if we refer to The Teachers Survival Guide by Thody, Gray and Bowden (2000), this is a direct copy of the chapter in that book. Also, the chapter on Stress Management appears in The Teachers Survival Guide and the other two chapters on Career Management and Alternative Career Management bear remarkable similarities to their identically named chapters in the The Teachers Survival Guide. While there is nothing wrong in replication of material in other books, the authors fail to follow the standard academic tradition of referencing and quoting their previous work, nor of warning the purchaser that they have published the work elsewhere, for example by clarification in the introduction.

What about the book? The chapters on “Time management” and “Stress management” are standard management material and offer little new. Those on “Career management” and “Alternative career management” are rather dull.

In conclusion, if The Teachers Survival Guide was being plundered for this book, the authors would have been wise to include some of the stronger chapters from it and to supplement them with something rather more inspiring than is found in Getting Organised as currently conceived.