Editorial

Citation

Roberts, B. (2007), "Editorial", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 21 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijem.2007.06021gaa.001

Editorial

Welcome to issue 7, the last in 2007, in which I am delighted to offer six further papers with an international flavour for the international education market. There are papers for you from Turkey, USA, Australia, Pakistan, and Greece. Whilst there are many papers rejected in an international journal, please continue to submit as referees sometimes surprise me by the work they are impressed by. Whilst the editor has the final say, it would be true to say that referees’ views are very important and I invariably accept their recommendations for improvements to a paper. One of the difficult areas is that of authors from non-English speaking countries and I try to be sympathetic to their presentation, but it does help if, prior to submission, prospective authors check out with experienced authors the language used in the paper. Often only very small adjustments make a big difference to the look of the work.

In the first work Dr Üstün of Amasya University, Turkey, writes on globalisation of education. The study investigates the effect of globalisation on educational institutions in Turkey via an investigation through education administrators in secondary schools. The findings gathered demonstrate that school administrators entertain different attitudes towards globalisation effects. The most striking finding is that school administrators do have an awareness of the effects of globalisation, whether they hold a positive or negative stance towards the issue.

Teresa Wasonga of Northern Illinois University, USA, contributes on the use of technology to “enhance collaborative learning”. The purpose of the research project outlined was to use technology to link prospective school leaders to practising mentors from a variety of settings. This project was an initiative to develop and implement a web-based network for diverse collaborative learning among prospective school leaders engaged in the leadership experience internship, diverse practicing principals, and university educational administration faculties. The responses from the participants indicated that the technology used in this project:

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  created a forum for the prospective school leaders and to be involved in experiences spanning multiple settings and multiple mentors;

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  enabled the participants to better understand issues of urban/inner city, suburban,rural,elementary,middle and high schools;

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  created opportunities to assess their own knowledge, skills, and dispositions based upon Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium standards; and

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  enabled the development of web based electronic portfolios.

“Institutional factors affecting international student recruitment management” is the next offering from Australia by Drs Ross, Heaney and Cooper of Griffin and Notre Dame universities. The purpose of the paper is to investigate student recruitment from an institutional perspective and to consider factors that may affect recruitment. A qualitative study was undertaken in which marketing practitioners were interviewed regarding aspects of recruitment. Interview data was analysed by NVivo and categorised into four institutional factors: marketing department size, employee qualifications, institutional recruiting experience, and institutional focus. The findings were that differences existed between universities and secondary schools in terms of their current international education recruitment practice The percentage of the international student cohort appears to be largely responsible for sectoral differences.

Naseer Salfi and Dr Saeed offer a paper on the relationship between school size, school culture and students’ achievements at secondary level in Pakistan. The study was descriptive and was conducted on a sample of 90 secondary school headteachers and 540 primary, elementary and high school teachers working in the government secondary school (boys) in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Data was collected through a number of sources including EMIS (Education Management Information System). Examination results were obtained from boards. A questionnaire was used with 39 items on a 5 point scale and 10 items in yes/no form. The overall reliability was 0.967. The findings were that there was a significant correlation between school size and school culture, and size and achievement. Small schools revealed positive school culture and performed better than medium and large schools.

A rather different topic comes next from Suzanne Perillo, who states that the purpose of her paper is to argue that school innovation is a complex process requiring a detailed accounting of the various characteristics of everyday activity. Using a case study methodology, a focus on ideas of resistance and tension is used to explore the character of actual innovating experiences. Actor-Network Theory is applied as an analytical tool to investigate the sociomaterial character of everyday enactments of innovation practice in four independent boys’schools in Australia. Four data stories describe multiple patterns of innovating activity that cannot be accurately accounted for in terms of a general notion of resistance.

In the last paper Drs Tsigilis, Grammatikopoulos and Koustelios from the university of Thessaly, Greece, write on the teachers’ sense of efficacy scale in relation to educators teaching innovative programmes. In the research, 175 educators completed a Greek version of the sense of efficacy scale. Exploratory analysis showed that the efficacy scale can be applied to educators of an innovative programme. Mean values suggested that teachers had strong efficacy beliefs. The findings have to be considered carefully as the authors show that the study was conducted in a cultural setting different from that which the scale was originally intended for.

Brian Roberts