This study examines the attitudes of school leaders and how their interpretation of the African language policy influences its implementation in practice, as well as how this interpretation hinders the multilingual goal in South African public schools. The qualitative data were collected from semi-structured, audio-recorded interviews lasting between 30 and 40 min, with sixteen school leaders from four public schools in the Johannesburg East District. Participants comprised two principals, six deputy principals, six departmental heads, one Institutional Development and Support Official, and one District African Language facilitator. Data were analysed using a Thematic Analysis supported by Constant Comparative Analysis. Findings reveal an uneven understanding of policy among leaders, resource constraints, overcrowding, inadequate teacher training, and competing community preferences for English. The results were interpreted using Burns’ Transformational Leadership Theory, through the mapping of the leaders’ responses to the theory’s four dimensions: idealised influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Recommendations, which are tied to the empirical findings, include targeted leadership development in policy interpretation, a strategic plan to support learners’ transition from home language to English at a school level, and a partnership between the school and district to address resource and teacher training gaps.
The purpose of this non-experimental quantitative correlational study was to research the influence of school climate for all stakeholders at elementary schools in South Carolina. The literature review has unveiled that school leaders can utilize school climate measurements to understand better areas of need concerning school climate, student achievement, and teacher retention. According to The United States News Research (2024), the South Carolina education system ranks in the bottom 20% of the United States. Moreover, this study’s research questions further probed the relationships between school climate, student achievement, and teacher retention. The study intended to use a Pearson correlation coefficient; however, after running a Shapiro-Wilk test, the results were not normally distributed. Therefore, Spearman’s Rho test revealed that all three research questions were statistically significant. The implications of this study’s results have directed the educational field members’ attention to conduct future research in the school-building leadership styles that lead to desired school climate, student achievement, and, or teacher retention results. Additionally, future research could determine how the following variables affect school climate, teacher retention, and student achievement: school policy, political influences, if other states have the same trends, total student enrollment, total teacher enrollment, student-to-teacher ratio per classroom, elementary, middle and high schools compared to one another, pupils in poverty index, teacher salary, and administrative salary.
Research practice partnerships (RPPs) are a specific type of partnership that fall within the broader category of district-university partnerships and drive change on a problem of practice. This paper focuses on the ways in which an RPP between a university and a PK-12 school district led to growth in both partnered organizations. We utilized a qualitative case study that leveraged the concept of the boundary infrastructure to inform how various aspects of the partnership bled into areas of the organizations. Data included observations of partnership meetings, partnership artifacts, semi-structured interviews with 11 partnership stakeholders, and a focus group conducted within the partnership’s coordinating council. We present three main findings through the lens of boundary infrastructure that demonstrate how the organizational growth occurred: research as a boundary practice, engagement with practitioners, and a flat power structure. The research process helped drive new endeavors within the district. Engagement with practitioners led to curricular changes at the university while also broadening the scope of faculty research agendas. Finally, creating a flat power structure for the partnership’s collaboration helped to include multiple voices in partnership processes. These three findings demonstrate ways in which RPPs may support organizational growth and provide insights for university and district leaders who are considering developing partnerships to drive change.
To create the change necessary to dismantle educational inequities, school leaders need to involve faculty in the change process. Faculty involvement ensures that equity-based interventions are designed with diverse input to maximize their efficacy and helps to secure faculty buy-in to carry out those interventions. Prior research outlines how schools use committees, department meetings, and other methods to involve faculty in change; however, there is limited research on the efficacy of these structures. This study fills that gap by examining the relationship between the use of the structures to involve faculty in decision-making, and the perceived degree of faculty involvement in equity-based decision-making. This research took a quantitative approach, utilizing a survey of 206 independent school teachers to examine the usefulness of six decision-making structures (committees, open forums, faculty meetings, department meetings, informal conversations, and surveys). Multiple regression analysis showed that committees, meetings, and forums each predicted a higher perceived degree of faculty involvement. However, it did not support that correlation for department meetings, informal conversations, and surveys. School leaders should continue their frequent use of committees and expand their use of full-faculty meetings and open forums to effectively involve faculty in equity-based decision-making.
Women artists and superintendents in the U.S. and around the world continue to face gender- and race-based discrimination when attempting to obtain leadership positions. In this paper, we offer a comparative case study design of a racially diverse group of three prominent women artists and six women superintendents on Long Island who were all mentored by white males and have succeeded in white, male-dominated professions. While we found many similarities between the artists and superintendents regarding how they overcame sex-role stereotyping and interpersonal racism in their respective career trajectories, we suggest that the women superintendents can learn much from the artists about how to center their gender and racial identities and transform their leadership practices in ways that would disrupt the status quo that continues to produce inequities and outcomes in schools. Indeed, women superintendents seemed to experience tensions between emulating male superintendents’ leadership styles and resisting gender stereotypes. They also must navigate a competitive culture of accountability and rankings. This competitive culture among mostly male superintendents is detrimental for women leaders who have less opportunities to seek out women mentors for advice. Our analysis provides important implications for future women superintendents aspiring to practice, what we call a “women-centric approach to culturally responsive school leadership,” or WC-CRSL.
