Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceived efficacy of a US-based national principal mentor training program.

A sample of 370 protégés who received services from principal mentors in a national mentor internship program were invited to complete an electronic survey. Responses were obtained from 54 protégés.

The 54 respondents rated the mentor program highly, indicating that mentors were well prepared, good listeners, and instrumental in strengthening their instructional leadership.

This study provides preliminary information on the perceived efficacy of the program. To more fully understand the needs of new principals and the value of varying mentor approaches, follow-up interviews, a research design that provides for data to be disaggregated by specific mentor trainers and dates/locations of training sessions, and comparative data from protégés supported by mentors prepared by other programs are needed.

Protégés reported high job satisfaction and recommended the program to others.

New principals reported that the principal mentoring was critical to their adjustment and success during their first year. This is the only known principal mentor program requiring a nine-month internship. The outcomes revealed the value of evaluating perceptions of protégés for continuous quality improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the initial outcomes of a mentoring program designed to increase the advancement prospects of racialized teachers to vice principal positions within a Canadian school district.

This program assessment documents evidence that challenges current school leadership paradigms rooted in western dominance and suggests new approaches to leadership informed by research on diversity, equity, and identity.

Survey data from 32 participants (13 mentors and 19 mentees) from Canada’s second largest school district were analyzed thematically and showed that racialized mentees generally rated their satisfaction with the program lower than did mentors (both racialized and non-racialized), particularly as it relates to feelings of inclusion and in the program’s potential to influence the recruitment and advancement of racialized employees in the district.

The findings are limited to a single mentoring program for aspiring racialized leaders within a single, large school district but reinforce similar findings from research conducted in another large Canadian urban center, the USA and UK, and are of interest in other educational contexts where leaders from diverse backgrounds are underrepresented.

The paper reinforces findings from the small number of studies on targeted leadership mentoring for specific populations. While the findings support the practice of mentoring for leaders, the authors challenge the culture-free leadership paradigm that permeates Western education literature and question its role as an underlying barrier for aspiring racialized leaders in schools.

This study attempts to describe mentors' perceptions of their ethical dilemmas, the derived mentor roles, and the ethical guidelines suggested by mentors, with reference to previous studies exploring the mentors' multifaceted roles.

A total of 60 mentors participated in a two‐phase study: the mentors were asked to submit descriptions of their ethical dilemmas to the study web site, and submissions were then discussed in focus groups. A four‐stage coding process derived from grounded theory was utilized.

The findings were grouped by means of the ATLAS.ti 5.0 into five main categories: discretion, caring, accountability, autonomy, and distributive justice. The findings raise three important issues: first, mentors perceive their role mainly as empowering their mentees and perceive their powerlessness as being due to lack of tools for dealing with ethical dilemmas. Second, most mentors' ethical dilemmas involved conflicts with school principals. Third, a large number of mentor roles and several of the derived ethical guidelines are unique to the mentoring situation.

The findings may promote the design of an educational program for mentors that will relate to the ethical aspects of mentoring. Such programs call for the participation of school principals in program development and meetings to help mentors deal with their ethical dilemmas.

While previous studies in mentoring focused on defining mentoring, describing mentors' roles, and suggesting how to build effective mentoring, no study focused on the ethical aspects of mentoring. This study describes mentors' ethical dilemmas, and the unique ethical guidelines that emerged.

Explores the principles of mentoring in schools with reference to the Headteachers Leadership and Management Programme (Headlamp), a new UK national scheme which seeks to improve the quality of school management. Discusses issues such as entitlement, expectations of others, competences, other players in the team (mentors, LEAs, governing bodies), and resourcing mentoring. Concludes that for the Headlamp programme to be truly effective it should include a mentoring component as a structured element of all efforts to support beginning heads.

Improvements in special education and the implementation of inclusive education are a significant focus in Myanmar. Legislation toward these goals was officially enacted in the National Education Law, which was amended in 2015. While the Ministry of Education has adopted a policy of inclusive education, which states that all students with disabilities could attend mainstream school classes, classroom settings are not adequately equipped to support students with disabilities. The Department of Social Welfare does not have an inclusive education program. The department's role is to support the training of schools as a part of special education for such students, providing primary special education via different teaching methods and appropriate therapies for students with disabilities. After students pass the primary education exam, they can join middle school, high school, and higher education levels of inclusive education, which run under the Ministry of Education. All special schools in Myanmar focus their different occupational therapies on enhancing students' physical and mental capabilities and collaborating with outside professionals in relevant areas. The Ministry of Education aims to develop the knowledge and skills of teacher educators and teachers, so they can effectively adopt more inclusive teaching practices. Currently, Myanmar's basic education reforms are being carried out through the National Education Strategic Plan (2016–2021). The ministry is currently working to implement a new 4-year pre-service degree program as well as the Basic Education School Quality Assurance Standards Framework. Such a movement to enhance the quality of teachers became a bridge to collaborate between inclusive and special education within two ministries.

This chapter is on teacher leadership and how principals can improve schools by increasing the role teacher's play in school operations. The author maintains that principals and teachers must work together if schools are to achieve higher levels of student performance, especially those who serve high concentrations of minority students. Various leadership theories are presented, as well as recommendations of how principals and teachers can work together to enhance the leadership abilities of both.

This study was conducted in the United States of America to identify what practices virtual mentor-coaches perceived to be effective in virtual mentoring and coaching (VMC) within virtual professional learning communities (VPLCs). The authors also sought to determine the ways in which virtual mentor-coaches provided VMC for school leaders within VPLCs.

The authors used a phenomenological approach in our research, describing the lived experiences of practicing virtual mentor-coaches as they engaged in VMC. Data analysis included video analysis and systematic coding of interview data.

An in-depth analysis of interview and video data showed that virtual mentor-coaches support school leaders in developing and transforming school leaders' leadership for building teachers' instructional capacity. The authors identified a VMC process model within VPLCs, including four steps as follows: (1) presentation, (2) collaboration, (3) reflection and (4) action plan.

VMC for school leaders participating in VPLCs is regarded as a transformative model which provides encouragement, reflection and support for instructional leadership actions.

Key steps and components of an effective VMC highlighted in the current research offer practical guidance for future virtual mentor-coaches in conducting and implementing VMC within VPLCs.

The purpose of this paper is to present the argument that leadership preparation programmes in the new millennium should be required to train school leaders emotionally as well as cognitively. A number of scholars have stressed that leaders are increasingly working within roles that are politically sensitive, conflicted and complex, resulting in role anxiety, emotional stress, and professional burnout. Principals and vice‐principals are frustrated because they are being forced to manage the marketplace, curriculum change, and governance factors with an increased emphasis on accountability, marketability, and globalisation, often at the expense of their primary role as educators.

Such a discussion is framed within a sociological perspective of emotions and presents the importance of acknowledging the primacy of school leaders' emotions in leadership preparation programs.

Sociological aspects of emotions are examined within a context of the globalisation, marketisation, and accountability confronting Western education and their implications for extant leadership preparation programs; the latent influences of these broader issues; and, more specifically, their effect on the emotions of leaders within a context unique to Western Canada. Recommendations for what apotropaic the role of leadership preparation programmes should play in shielding leaders from being overwhelmed from within a changing educational landscape are also discussed.

An examination of the emotions of school leaders and the importance of acknowledging their emotions within preparation programmes remains an understudied topic in the field of education.

Recent changes in legislation have generated discussions among educators throughout the United States. The NCLB Act and IDEIA added new requirements for schools, and raised some questions regarding the intersection of the two laws as they impact special education. Following are discussions of these laws and what they mean to rural school systems.