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1 – 10 of 434The purpose of this paper is to link the social interactions between principals and their teachers to teachers’ perceptions of their students’ engagement with school, empirically…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to link the social interactions between principals and their teachers to teachers’ perceptions of their students’ engagement with school, empirically testing the theoretical proposition that principals influence students through their teachers in the US charter school environment. The mediating influence of latent beliefs of trust and support are tested in this process.
Design/methodology/approach
By analyzing pooled network and survey data collected in 15 Indianapolis charter schools using stepwise, fixed-effects regression techniques, this study tests the association between interactions of principals and teachers, on the one hand, and teachers’ perceptions of student engagement, on the other. The extent to which latent beliefs about teachers – in particular, trust in teachers and support of teachers by the administrators – mediate this relationship is also tested.
Findings
Direct relationships between principal-teacher interactions and latent beliefs of trust and support are confirmed. Direct relationships between latent beliefs and perceptions of academic and school engagement are also confirmed. There is a relationship between principal-teacher interactions and teacher perceptions of student engagement, but the mediating effect of latent beliefs of trust and support accounts for much of the direct association. The reachability of the principal remains a significant and direct influence on teachers’ perceptions of academic engagement after accounting for trust and support.
Research limitations/implications
Moving beyond principals’ personality dispositions in management and turning to the social relationships that they form with teachers adds to the understanding of how principal leadership affects student learning. Empirically distinguishing between the actual interactions and social dispositions of principals helps inform practical implications. Focussing on how principals’ social interactions with teachers influence teachers’ perceptions of students’ engagement provides a theoretical link as to how principals indirectly influence student achievement.
Practical implications
The relationships that principals build with teachers have real implications on the beliefs of trust and support among teachers in a school and have a ripple effect on teachers’ perceptions of student engagement. These findings therefore suggest that frequently moving principals among schools is not an ideal policy.
Originality/value
This study tests the theoretical boundaries of school organization research by using a within-schools design with charter schools. It also links leadership research to outcomes typically restricted to research on school culture and climate.
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Dimitri Van Maele and Mieke Van Houtte
The purpose of this paper is to consider trust as an important relational source in schools by exploring whether trust lowers teacher burnout. The authors examine how trust…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider trust as an important relational source in schools by exploring whether trust lowers teacher burnout. The authors examine how trust relationships with different school parties such as the principal relate to distinct dimensions of teacher burnout. The authors further analyze whether school-level trust additionally influences burnout. In doing this, the authors account for other teacher and school characteristics.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use quantitative data gathered during the 2008-2009 school year from 673 teachers across 58 elementary schools in Flanders (i.e. the northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium). Because teacher and school characteristics are simultaneously related to burnout, multilevel modeling is applied.
Findings
Trust can act as a buffer against teacher burnout. Teachers’ trust in students demonstrates the strongest association with burnout compared to trust in principals or colleagues. Exploring relationships of trust in distinct school parties with different burnout dimensions yield interesting additional insights such as the specific importance of teacher-principal trust for teachers’ emotional exhaustion. Burnout is further an individual teacher matter to which school-level factors are mainly unrelated.
Research limitations/implications
Principals fulfill an important role in inhibiting emotional exhaustion among teachers. They are advised to create a school atmosphere that is conducive for different kinds of trust relationships to develop. Actions to strengthen trust and inhibit teacher burnout are necessary, although further qualitative and longitudinal research is desirable.
Originality/value
This paper offers a unique contribution by examining trust in different school parties as a relational buffer against teacher burnout. It indicates that principals can affect teacher burnout and prevent emotional exhaustion by nurturing trusting relationships in school.
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Mentoring can improve novice teacher effectiveness and reduce teacher attrition, yet the depth and breadth of mentoring can vary greatly within and between schools. The purpose of…
Abstract
Purpose
Mentoring can improve novice teacher effectiveness and reduce teacher attrition, yet the depth and breadth of mentoring can vary greatly within and between schools. The purpose of this paper is to identify the extent to which a school’s administrative context is associated with the focus and frequency of novice teacher-mentor interactions.
Design/methodology/approach
By estimating logistic regression models, the author identified the association between novices’ perceptions of their working conditions and the content and frequency of interactions with their formally assigned mentors.
Findings
When novice teachers perceived positive administrator-teacher relations in their schools and reported that administrative duties did not interfere with their core work as teachers, they were more likely to frequently interact with their mentors around issues of curriculum.
Research limitations/implications
Studies of new teacher induction need to more fully account for elements of school-level organizational context which influence novice teacher-mentor interactions, specifically related to administrative decision making and climate. Future research should seek to identify the extent to which formal policy related to new teacher induction is supported by broader elements of the organizational context.
Practical implications
In addition to implementing sound formal policies related to teacher mentoring, school administrators should seek to foster a school climate that promotes administrator-teacher and teacher-teacher collaboration to promote improved teacher mentoring.
Originality/value
This study builds upon previous research by drawing attention to the association between broad measures of school-level administrative context related to the quality of working conditions and teacher mentoring.
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Nienke M. Moolenaar and Peter J. C. Sleegers
While in everyday practice, school leaders are often involved in social relationships with a variety of stakeholders both within and outside their own schools, studies on school…
Abstract
Purpose
While in everyday practice, school leaders are often involved in social relationships with a variety of stakeholders both within and outside their own schools, studies on school leaders’ networks often focus either on networks within or outside schools. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which principals occupy similar positions in their school’s network and the larger district network. In addition, the authors examined whether principals’ centrality in both networks can be attributed to demographic characteristics and transformational leadership (TL).
Design/methodology/approach
Using social network analysis, correlational and regression analysis, and an advanced social network technique, namely p2 modeling, the authors analyzed data collected among 708 educators in 46 Dutch elementary schools. The authors also offer a visualization of the district social network to explore principals’ relationships with other principals in the district.
Findings
Results suggest that principals who occupy a central position in their school’s advice network are also more likely to occupy a central position in their district’s collaborative leadership network. Moreover, TL was found to affect the extent to which principals are central in both networks.
Originality/value
The study is unique as it simultaneously explores principals’ social relationships in schools and the larger district. Moreover, the authors advance the knowledge of TL as a possible mechanism that may shape the pattern of these relationships, thereby connecting two streams of literature that were until now largely disconnected. Limitations to the study warrant further qualitative and longitudinal research on principals’ social relationships in schools, districts, and the larger community.
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Megan Tschannen-Moran and Christopher R. Gareis
– The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships among faculty trust in the principal, principal leadership behaviors, school climate, and student achievement.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships among faculty trust in the principal, principal leadership behaviors, school climate, and student achievement.
Design/methodology/approach
Data from 64 elementary, middle, and high schools in two school districts formed the basis of the study (n=3,215 teachers), allowing for correlational and regression analyses of the variables.
Findings
The authors found that faculty trust in the principal was related to perceptions of both collegial and instructional leadership, as well as to factors of school climate such as teacher professionalism, academic press, and community engagement. Student achievement was also correlated with trust, principal leadership behaviors, and school climate. The authors found that both of the composite variables, principal behaviors and school climate, made significant independent contributions to explaining variance in student achievement and that together they explained 75 percent of the variance in achievement.
Research limitations/implications
Limitations of the study include the use of a single form to collect participants’ responses that may have elevated the degree of correlations, as well as the exclusion of rural schools from the sample.
Practical implications
The findings of this study suggest that principals must foster and maintain trust in order to lead schools effectively. Importantly, trust has both interpersonal and task-oriented dimensions. Thus, principals must be prepared to engage collegially with teachers in ways that are consistently honest, open, and benevolent, while also dependably demonstrating sound knowledge and competent decision making associated with administering academic programs.
Originality/value
Situated in a conceptual framework of systems theory, this study explored the interplay of faculty trust in the principal, principal behavior, school climate, and student achievement. The findings suggest that it is necessary for principals to evidence both interpersonal and task-oriented behaviors in order to be trusted by teachers. Furthermore, the strength of the relationships suggests that schools will not be successful in fostering student learning without trustworthy school leaders who are skillful in cultivating academic press, teacher professionalism, and community engagement in their schools.
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The objective of this article is to present a model of tourism strategic planning in relation to product positioning, image creation and demand management. However, tourism is a…
Abstract
The objective of this article is to present a model of tourism strategic planning in relation to product positioning, image creation and demand management. However, tourism is a complex product created as the composite of a number of key inputs. The final product has to be planned taking into consideration the peculiar characteristics of a number of divers tourism services. Finally, both public and private organisations are involved in providing the services which are required to market and sustain tourism demand.
Adela Moise, Alexandru Mărghitaş Liviu, Daniel Dezmirean and Otilia Bobis
The main purpose of this study is to create a complete physico‐chemical characterisation of Romanian heather honey.
Abstract
Purpose
The main purpose of this study is to create a complete physico‐chemical characterisation of Romanian heather honey.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 30 samples of heather honey were harvested from three different geographical areas (Fântânele, Călăţele, Mărişel) from Transylvania region (Romania). This study contains a complete characterization of heather honey regarding its physico‐chemical composition, total phenols content, flavonoids content, antioxidant activity (expressed as radical scavenging activity – RSA) and micro‐ and macroelements content.
Findings
The results obtained for the total phenols content and total flavonoids demonstrate that honey samples have good bioactive properties and the antioxidant activities are similar to those of dark honeys. Heather honeys normally have a high content of minerals, having their origin in soil. All quantified minerals in heather honey presented values higher that those reported for other types of honey.
Practical implications
Heather honey is a very important type of honey for consumers, which due to its features has a high price on the local market. This study provides the main analytical methods for honey quality determination, which is very important for the students.
Originality/value
For the first time in Romania a complete study of heather honey was done.
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Heather Richardson Bono, Charles G. Leathers and J. Patrick Raines
The purpose of this paper is to develop an analysis of the improbable events of housing market bubbles occurring in a period when US and UK central bankers were responding to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop an analysis of the improbable events of housing market bubbles occurring in a period when US and UK central bankers were responding to perceived risks of a new deflation.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology focuses on how the anti-deflation policies implemented by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England contributed to the housing market bubbles. The central bankers perceived the deflation as a Keynesian short-run deficiency in aggregate demand, triggered by a financial crisis. Indications are that the deflation is in the nature of long-run aggregate-supply-driven trend as explained in Veblen’s theory of “chronic” deflation driven by cost-reducing advances in technology and globalization.
Findings
The Keynesian anti-deflation policies of the Federal Reserve and Bank of England failed to counter the deflation risks while contributing to housing market bubbles. Moreover, the policies failed to address the structural problems of unemployment and income inequality associated with long-run aggregate supply deflation.
Originality/value
Effective policies must be based on a correct theoretical understanding of the problems. The chronic nature of the new deflation points to the need for new approaches to deal with the negative income and employment effects that exclude an increasing number from the housing markets.
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