Editorial

International Journal of Educational Management

ISSN: 0951-354X

Article publication date: 29 March 2011

523

Citation

Roberts, B.E. (2011), "Editorial", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 25 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijem.2011.06025caa.001

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2011, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Educational Management, Volume 25, Issue 3

In this issue there are contributions from Israel, New Zealand, Germany, India and Australia. It is not a “special” issue but there are some common strands in the form of research on stress amongst teachers and managers and ways in which students can contribute to this.

Colin Scott of the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology in New Zealand writes on “management control system support of initiatives for disruptive pupils”. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the management control system (mcs)support for school initiatives in respect of disruptive students. The project investigated and was limited to two secondary schools and found that their mcs supported initiatives to develop their school climate and to re-engage disruptive students. Using Habermas’s distinction between the ethical and moral it was observed that one school was using more ethical initiatives such as group involvement and values for a good life to develop their school climate. The other school was found to be taking a more moral approach of requiring tolerance, respect of others and conflict avoidance/resolution.

In the second paper Oplatka and Stundi of Tel Aviv University and Gordon College of Education respectively, submit work on “The components and determinants of pre- school teacher organisational citizenship behaviour”, in which they explore the role behaviours that are discretionary, unrecorded, and beyond formal role expectations. It was found during the study of 12 Israeli kindergarten teachers and four supervisors during 2008-2009 that the pre-school teachers’ organisational citizenship behaviours appear both in professional and interpersonal areas.

Likewise, both personal and organisational determinants may account for the occurrence of this behaviour in pre-school teaching. As a result of the work it is recommended that education districts and superintendents facilitate pre-school teacher “ccb” by promoting greater job autonomy for kindergarten teachers and forms of participative leadership among their supervisors.

From India, Doble and Supriya from Anna University, Chennai, submit “Student life balance: myth or reality?”. The authors state that student life stress, student family conflict and student life balance were not researched very well. This study identified 15 key factors that students perceive affects student life balance and these factors account for almost 65 per cent of the variance. In the paper the implications are discussed for academic administrators who are concerned with the holistic growth of the students. The writers claim modestly that an instrument has been developed to understand the sources of imbalance in students’ lives.

The next work is from Carsten Schermuly from Humboldt University Berlin, Rene Schermuly from Ernst-Born-School Germany, and Bertolt Meyer, University of Zurich. Their joint piece is “Effects of vice principals’ psychological empowerment on job satisfaction and burnout”. This study investigates the relationship between psychological empowerment, job satisfaction and burnout amongst vice principals in primary schools. A total 103 vice principals at different German primary schools were surveyed using a questionnaire that assessed the four dimensions of psychological empowerment (competence, meaning, self-determination and impact), emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction.

The participants also reported demographic data including days of absence from work. Job related burnout can cause serious consequences for the individual and the school, because VPs have a central role in the running of a primary school. Since competence and meaning have the strongest influences, measures should be implemented to foster them. Because job satisfaction is closely related to emotional exhaustion, it could serve as an early alert system. For this reason, the authors recommend that VPs should be surveyed at regular intervals regarding their job satisfaction. Qinggang Wang, of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Ross Taplin, and Alistair Brown, of Curtin University in Australia write on “Chinese students’ satisfaction of the study abroad experience”. Building upon McLeod and Wainwright’s paradigm for rigorous scientific assessment of study abroad programmes, social learning theory is used to assess mainland Chinese students’ satisfaction of a specific programme at Curtin. The questionnaire results suggest that preparation for study in Australia requires an understanding of the different cultures and technical differences between the countries for the Chinese student to flourish in the programme.

Another Australian paper comes from John McCormick of the University of Wollongong and Kerry Barnett of the University of New South Wales. The paper is on “Teachers’ attributions for stress and their relationship with burnout”. The authors argue that some shared psychological mechanisms (attributions) and structures (schemas) are likely to play a role in how individuals perceive stress. This paper proposes and hypothesises relationships between stress attribution domains and burnout dimensions using 416 classroom teachers in 38 randomly selected high schools in New South Wales.

Most variance was at the individual level supporting the view that the stress and burnout were overwhelmingly psychological phenomena. Findings suggest that the centrality of stress attributed to student misbehaviour in predicting each of the three dimensions of burnout: depersonalisation, emotional exhaustion, and personal accomplishment. The authors suggest that greater emphasis be placed on effective management of student behaviour when assisting teachers at risk of burnout.

Brian E. Roberts

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