Editorial

Citation

Ross Thomas, A. (2010), "Editorial", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 48 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jea.2010.07448caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Educational Administration, Volume 48, Issue 3

Editorial Advisory Board

With regret I have to announce that Professor Joe Licata has resigned from the journal’s Editorial Advisory Board. He has been a most active and helpful member of the EAB since 2003 and his contribution to this journal is acknowledged with gratitude.

W.G. Walker Outstanding Paper Award, Vol. 47, 2009

Named in honour of the founding editor of the journal, this award is made each year to the author or authors of what the members of the journal’s Editorial Advisory Board decide is the most outstanding paper published in the six issues of the volume. A shortlist of eight articles selected by the Editor was presented to Board members who recorded their preferences for the best three publications. I am pleased to announce the following recommendations.

Outstanding Paper Award

“Teacher effectiveness and student achievement: investigating a multilevel cross-classified model”, by Ronald H. Heck (Volume 47 Number 2).

Highly Commended

“The vice-principal experience as a preparation for the principalship”, by Paula Kwan (Volume 47 Number 2).“Effects of school design on student outcomes”, by C. Kenneth Tanner (Volume 47 Number 3).“Teacher quality and attrition in a US school district”, by William Kyle Ingle (Volume 47 Number 5).

I congratulate the recipients of the journal’s annual award. Each author has contributed an excellent article to this journal and to the literature in our field.

Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award

Emerald Group Publishing Limited and the European Foundation for Management Development seek to celebrate excellence in research by sponsoring the 2009 outstanding doctoral awards in 12 associated fields. Journal of Educational Administration is sponsor of the educational leadership and strategy category. On this first occasion 15 submissions were made to the journal from authors in Australia, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Sweden, the UK and the USA. The task of evaluating the merits of each proved challenging (and time-consuming) for a committee of the Editorial Advisory Board. It was far from easy to decide on the rankings of several of the dissertations. The authors of all submissions deserve congratulations on the quality of their studies.

The winner of the award will receive a cash prize of €1,500, a certificate, a winner’s logo to attach to correspondence and the prospect of an offer of publication in this journal – either as a full paper or an executive summary at the discretion of the Editor.

Outstanding Doctoral Award

“Organizational ethics as predictors of teacher work withdrawal behaviors”, by Orly Shapira-Lishchinsky, University of Haifa, Israel. Supervisor: Zehava Rosenblatt.

Highly Commended

“Leadership in green schools: school principals as agents of social responsibility”, by Carly R. Ackley, The Pennsylvania State University. Supervisor: Paul T. Begley.“Strategy and the principal”, by Scott Eacott, The University of Newcastle, Australia. Supervisor: James G. Ladwig.“Perceptions of the built environment on academic performance of children”, by Sophie Hui Sun, The University of Hong Kong. Supervisor: Ling Hin Li.

This issue

The six articles in this issue of the journal have been contributed by authors in Israel, The Netherlands, Sweden and the USA.

The first of these, by Benoliel and Somech, investigates aspects of participative management. Using their study of 153 teachers and principals in Israeli elementary schools as the data source, the authors analyse the moderating role of teachers’ personality traits on the relationships between participative management and several elements of teachers’ behaviour. The study reveals that the personality dimensions of extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism serve as moderators of the relationship between participative management and teachers’ performance, satisfaction, and strain.

Conley, Gould and Levine next address the roles of school support staff – personnel who seldom seem to engage the interest of researchers in our field. The authors first establish the importance of support staff in public schools in the USA and then suggest reasons why the literature has not been particularly informative. The study focuses on three groups of support personnel and highlights the visibility of school custodians/janitors, the multidimensional responsibilities of school secretaries, and the background of paraprofessionals in special education. Important implications for training, compensation and scheduling, and work design and supervision emerge from this article.

Norberg and Johansson next argue that the school curriculum is an ethical document since it mirrors society’s notion of what is valuable, useful, and necessary for society collectively and for the individuals that comprise such. The authors’ analyses of the ethical frameworks of Scandinavian (Sweden, Norway, Denmark) curricula reveal disparity between rhetoric and reality. Notwithstanding the accepted importance of universal schooling, the curricula analysed reveal that the promoted content and the desired outcomes are interpreted differently.

One of the largest pubic school districts in the USA provides the source of data for the next article by Ing. In excess of 300 teachers and 15,000 students contributed to this study of the variability of principals’ classroom observations and the relationship of such with schools’ instructional climates. The author reports that there is no evidence that the frequency, duration, or instructional focus of classroom observations varies among schools with different student demographic characteristics and performance levels and instructional climates. There is, however, evidence to link observations conducted with a focus on instructional improvement to instructional climate after controlling for several school and principal characteristics.

Social networks among teachers provide the focus of the next article by Daly, Moolenaar, Bolivar and Burke. Five schools in one under-performing school district in the USA were studied as they engaged in system-wide reform. Despite its being enacted as a system-wide change, significant variance between schools was identified, particularly in respect of reform-related social networks. Networks were significantly related to uptake, depth, and spread of the change. Of particular importance was the observation that densely connected grade levels were associated with more interactions focused on teaching and learning as well as an increased sense of grade level efficacy.

The final article, by Oplatka, guides the reader away from schools in order better to understand prominent professors who publish in the major journals in the field of educational administration. His examination of 57 curricua vitae enables an analysis of careers (as well as suggesting some epistemological implications for the field). For example, the authors received their academic degrees in a host of disciplines from many countries and universities, had usually worked in the compulsory/public education systems and had played numerous academic roles in their respective universities. Their teaching, research and publications address a host of topics three of which are most noticeable – leadership, managerial processes, and organisation theory.

Six book reviews complete this issue of the journal.

A. Ross Thomas