Editorial

Citation

Ross Thomas, A. (2007), "Editorial", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 45 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jea.2007.07445baa.001

Editorial

The demands of preparing a chapter on educational leadership journals for the third edition of the International Encyclopedia of Education have included a copy-in deadline that matches that for this issue of the journal. Something had to give and hence this editorial will be brief, serving only to introduce the five articles published herein. But I give an undertaking to report on some of my recent findings in a forthcoming issue of this journal.

In our first article Fenwick describes a case study of collaboration between a university unit, school district, elementary school and parent executive board to govern a laboratory school. The author employs organizational theory to examine the potential learning that opens between these educational organizations. The actors (teachers, administrators, parents) who thrive in the “knot” of collaboration learn to be flexibly attuned to the shifting elements that emerge during negotiations.

Alsbury and Whitaker next report on the superintendent position of the UCEA Voices III project, a four-year study to determine how a variety of school leavers describe their experiences of educational leadership as related to school improvement, democratic community, and social justice. Conclusions suggest that superintendents understand and practise a more inclusive form of social justice, sometimes having to control and filter majority stakeholders’ views in order to achieve more ethical, socially just, educational decisions.

Nir and Alassad next report on intercultural differences and role perceptions of two groups of teachers – Israeli Arabs and Israeli Bedouins. The former group live in modern towns where Arabs and Jews coexist; the latter live in the southern part of Israel and practise a traditional way of life. Results of questionnaire analysis reveal that Bedouin teachers exhibit a higher degree of compliance and loyalty to leader and are more conservative and emotional in comparison with Israeli Arab teachers. The results also testify to the strong relationship that exists between values and norms accumulated during ethnic socialization processes.

Decentralization of educational reforms in Nigeria is analysed by Ikoya. Survey data from a variety of participants in the educational sector between 2003 and 2005 reveal low regional compliance to the particular decentralization law that established educational boards and committees.

In the final article Parkes and Thomas report on an observational study of a sample of effective secondary principals located in state high schools in New South Wales. The study is one of very few that have attempted to identify values in action; most studies are content to use questionnaires in order to identify espoused values and assume that these are manifest in principals’ behaviours. A serendipitous finding was the significance of a principal’s interruptibility.

Several book reviews complete this issue.

A. Ross Thomas