Editorial

International Journal of Educational Management

ISSN: 0951-354X

Article publication date: 19 September 2008

469

Citation

Roberts, B. (2008), "Editorial", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 22 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijem.2008.06022gaa.001

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2008, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Educational Management, Volume 22, Issue 7

Dear readers may I welcome you to the final issue of 2008 and thank you for your support during this last year-what a year it has been for the journal with many more high-quality papers coming through to me. In spite of the fact that about 40-50 percent are rejected by the refereeing process I still have many of the papers needed for the following year in my possession – so congratulations to you the readers and authors for helping me make it a successful product for the international market. The international nature of the journal I can demonstrate from personal experience as recently I have returned from a very successful trip to the Shenyang Normal University in China and must say how impressed I was with the efforts made by that establishment for the benefit of the students in the Research Institute of Educational Economics and Administration. My especial thanks to the Director of the Institute Prof. Dr Miantao Sun and Prof. Dr Hechuan Sun, my sponsor at the University, and other staff and students for their support and encouragement. I look forward to future cooperation with them.

In this issue, there are six papers from USA, Australia, Finland and Israel, with topics covering University selection, curriculum management, new school establishment, emerging technologies and knowledge organisation. The first is from the USA by McCuddy, Pinar and Gingerich, “Using student feedback in designing student-focused curricula” a paper first presented to the Annual Conference of Educational Innovation in Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria, June 2007. The paper describes a process used in one American school of business for incorporating meaningful student input into the curriculum review and planning process. A student survey and student focus group generated feedback in two areas:

  1. 1.

    the structure, operation and impact of an introductory business course offered in the first year of the undergraduate experience; and

  2. 2.

    the potential addition of majors, minors, and a course requirement in the business school’s curriculum.

The authors hope that this example of organisational development and change (ODC) in diagnosing the need for curricular change will stimulate others to embrace ODC as they think about the broader issues of change in educational institutions.

From The University of Turku, Finland, Keskinen, Tiuraniemi, and Liimola offer a manuscript on university selection in Finland. The purpose of this study was to find out which factors contribute to the decisions of the students when they choose their place of study between the psychology departments [sic] of the Universities in Finland. The study involved a questionnaire which revealed that the major determinants were the special characteristics of the teaching and research departments. An aptitude test seemed a natural part of the selection process and the lack of one put off some applicants. Psychology departments have a clear opportunity to influence the applicants’ decisions by making their teaching and research characteristics known to the applicants which in practice would be possible by collaborating more with upper secondary schools and open universities.

The Department of Education Ben-Gurion University Israel provides the next submission from Dr Dorit Tubin who writes on the establishment of a new school and an innovative school. The paper aims to explore the stages involved in the school establishment phase and to detect differences between new school and innovative school startup. The data were collected through interviews with central figures in each school, school visits and documentation analysis. Four stages were found in the establishment phase; building construction and resource achievement goal prioritization, staff development and vision formulation, yet these phases were found to be in the reverse order in the innovative schools. Although limited in scope the study offers a useful conceptual framework for the establishment process of new and innovative schools.

From Australia Dr David Gamage contributes on the three decades of implementing school-based management in the Australian Capital Territory and Victoria. The approach adopted was a mixed methodology of empirical surveys, interviews with stakeholders and documentary analysis covering a wide range of reports. The findings suggest that both systems had a strong commitment to the proper implementation of SBM towards the improvement of school outcomes and student achievements. Whenever problems arose the stakeholders were able to sort them out and move forward by covering gaps to avoid the repetition of similar problems. Both systems have succeeded in strengthening their own model of SBM and are satisfied with the achievements through SBM. Limitations are recognised because the strong element of trust in the partners would not always apply elsewhere.

In the next paper, another Australian contribution comes from Prof. Reynold Macpherson of Macquarie University. Critical management in knowledge organisations is the topic and in the paper the author uses the point of Socrates’ death to invite educational managers and management educators to reflect critically on practice. It offers ways and means of reflecting on actions using ethically, environmentally, politically and globally critical perspectives. It does this with special reference to the concept of value and the unique nature of knowledge organisations.

The final paper is from Prof. Ray Calabrese et al. entitled, “Emerging technologies in global communication: using appreciative theory to improve the preparation of school administrators”. Practitioners from Canada, the UK, Singapore and the USA, university educational administration faculty from the USA and the Editor of IJEM engaged in a collaborative process to discover how to improve the preparation and practice of educational administration on a global basis. An appreciative enquiry approach was used o discover a positive core of experiences that could add to cultural proficiency as it relates to educational administration. Computer mediated technology was used during a conference presentation at the University Council for Educational Administration, UCEA, in which stories related to administration were collected on a global basis. Cross cultural lessons were discussed. These stories suggested that relationships and collaboration are at the heart of an educational administrator’s practice and there was a belief that they are “difference makers” in education.

Brian Roberts

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