Successful Management - Term Paper Example

Running Head: Educational Management Educational Management: School Leadership through the Lens of Real Educational Leaders and Managers Title Name of Professor Date Submitted The aspiration to improve the management of educational institutions continues to be widespread. Discovering those factors and behaviors that contribute to successful management of schools and other educational institutions must be the objective of those who pursue a solid foundation in educational management and a wanting to boost their own performance. A great deal of what is know regarding educational management was drawn from practice, specifically, through the inspection of people at the workplace and creating an interpretation of the reality of the condition. In the consistent quest of locating the paramount means to manage, the pendulum has swung from striving for excellence to total quality management to employee downsizing and restructuring (Raynor, 1994). Apparently, for management to be successful the shifting character of the setting in which management occurs must be investigated to up-to-date insights and innovative knowledge about effective and efficient managerial strategies at the workplace. However, fundamental to locating those elements that can make educational management successful should be the crucial role that teaching frameworks, strategies and models play in training or preparing the educational manager for the job. It must be the objective of teaching to keep the learner involved in the learning process that the overall of the knowledge gained embodies a more substantial effort on the part of the student for self-education. Whether teaching and learning come about in the schools, colleges or universities, the requirement to make teaching more effective and efficient is important (Sergiovanni, 2001). In the education and preparation of education managers or administrators professional strategies provides substantially. Generally, the objective of this research is providing various perspectives in contemporary educational management through interviews with different educational managers/administrators. In developing this research an attempt was made to cover as professionally as possible a broad array of problems and issues in educational management. Even though some interviews may depict circumstances that are familiar and comparable to something that had taken place at a specific institution, the guidelines in developing the interviews was not to emphasize the negative aspects or to cast doubts on any educational organization or the individuals liable for the management of the organization, but to cover the dynamics or what occurs when an endeavor is made to successfully and professionally manage human resource, physical resources and financial resources. Due to the researcher’s assurance to the participants of the study of confidentiality, names of schools, colleges and universities as well as the names of the individuals who contributed to the interviews will all be fictional in the presentation of the findings. I. The Interviews Sustaining Academic Excellence Xavier High School was named after one of the founding fathers of the United States. It has been traditionally acclaimed as one of the excellent schools in the region due to outstanding academic performance. Mark Waver has been principal of the school since September 1990. He stressed to the members at a recent general meeting that declining standards in the academic achievement of students was menacing to the reputable status of the school. He guaranteed the staff he was not putting the responsibility entirely on their shoulders, but was keeping them accountable for establishing the sort of environment that would motivate students to once more take their lessons sincerely. After the staff meeting, roughly two weeks after, the vice principal of the school Helen Anderson, arranged a last-minute-meeting with her colleagues to talk about the problem and to develop techniques or strategies for remediation. The discussion was very motivating and produced various proposals from the group. Here are some of the suggestions put forth: weekly group programs and activities for students, group instruction, and student teaching, employee development projects to smooth the progress of professional progress and growth and improvement of all personnel. The Inexperienced School Administrator Kevin Lee was an inexperienced school administrator. He was promoted to his current position after teaching for 35 years as a class instructor and five years as vice principal. He is indeed a skilled and competent teacher but an incompetent educational administrator. For many years quite a lot of individuals have been convincing him to submit an application to the University of San Beda to take the BEd degree with focus in educational management or to keep his position and do a diploma in educational management and administration thru the University of San Beda Distance Learning Program. These proposals have been received by a closed mind and impaired ears. Kevin Lee had collaborated with five school administrators in his 35 years; three were experienced administrators and two inexperienced. It was his judgment that negligible aspects differentiated the three professional administrators from the unqualified ones with regard to managing an educational organization. He said, if he were requested to assess the five administrators he admitted that he would give a favorable evaluation to the unqualified administrators in the area of discipline. Undoubtedly, experience is the advantage. Lee firmly argued that training would not improve his experience and competency in the position. David Carter, his vice principal, had just come back from the University of San Beda having successfully finished his degree in educational management. On his homecoming he went straight ahead to the office of Kevin Lee with a suggestion for the opening up of an employee development program for instructors. Lee immediately browsed over the proposal then turned it down on the rationale that it demanded for full participation and involvement of the personnel in the preparation and completion of the program and that to his opinion was granting the instructors too much power in the managing of the school. Carter tolerantly elaborated to him that when instructors aided in the preparation and decision making processes of the school they would feel more dedication to the attainment of organizational objectives. Lee ridiculed at the explanation of Carter claiming that if the organization had supposed that teachers could very well do his job then obviously he would not have been chosen as the school administrator. Carter thought that his efforts are worthless and his voice is unimportant due to Lee’s rejection of the value of involving teachers in setting up an employee development program for the improvement of school performance. Apparently, Lee’s rejection of the idea he sensed a more profound, more deep-seated problem which was resistance and doubt of anything new, specifically when he did not initiated the idea of change himself. One month later, three instructors attended a lecture on human resources management initiated by the Ministry of Education. They submitted a report to Lee regarding the discussion at the lecture putting emphasis on the request of the lecturers that lecture participants should come back to their respective schools and share the knowledge they have learned with the other members of the staff. One of the highlights of the recommendations from the lecture was for a well-designed program for employee development in every school. As Kevin Lee read the report he immediately remembered Carter’s proposal. He quickly summoned Carter, informed him the contents of the instructors’ recommendations and commanded him to initiate the preparation and completion of an employee development program. He directed Carter to take caution that he did not at any means direct any of the training activities at him as the instructors were the people who required additional training to facilitate them to accomplish their responsibilities better. Carter was thankful that Lee changed his opinion about his proposal, but he was disappointed that a person who was clever to observe the demand for consistent professional development and growth of teachers was sightless to his own inadequacies. The Domineering Leader Bryan Jones delighted himself on being a domineering leader. His principle in life was that all duties and responsibilities are accomplished when you exercise your authority. Jones grew up in a very authoritarian family. His father was a superintendent of a police task force and his mother a class teacher. His boyhood, growing up in the neighborhood of Hampton, failed to understand why the children living in the neighborhood were permitted to wander the streets anytime they want. His parents trained him as a home buddy and only let him out when he is required to attend camping and field trips. His parents inculcated in him the desirable quality of compliance. As a matter of fact, he visibly remembers his father’s reprimand, “to comply is to obey and to obey is to be disciplined.” What he considered utterly mediocre was the drastic weakening of norms and standards both in the school and the larger society. He observed that countless articles were being published regarding the continuous increase in delinquent juveniles and adults. It was just last week that he heard in the evening news about a student who was carrying a gun in his school bag. As Jones listened attentively to the news he comforted himself with the idea that that will never come about in his school. At the assembly the next day Jones announced to the personnel and students that graduation day would be held on September 25 of that year and intramurals day on July 7 of the next year. He afterward sent a memo to all the members of his staff containing the outline of programs for both occasions and indicated the individuals who are responsible for each task. The daybreak of July 7 was very pleasant and sunny. Competing students are dressed very neatly and attractively in their sports uniforms. Several instructors could be seen giving final advices to their students. There was a mood of enthusiasm at the venue. As Jones entered the gate of the school he noticed that students and teachers were perfectly organized and they grouped themselves is such a manner that is was trouble-free to distinguish each competing group. At the end of the activity it was obvious that Houston group had held on to the trophy. At the meeting the next day Jones paid his warmest gratitude to the members of the staff for their uphill struggle to make the event a success. Glancing at every corner of the room he noticed the absence of the organizers of Houston group and Seattle group. He asked whether anyone had informed them about the meeting and was notified by the vice principal that they were informed but decided not to come in opposition against the undemocratic way in which he went about determining the date and programs for graduation and sports day. Jones was stunned. He could not believe that he was experiencing this in his school. Jones finally looked around the room and before he regained his composure, he just heard himself cursing that these protesters will be punished for their utter disrespect and for questioning his decisions. II. Analysis and Discussion The world of educational institutions has become an intricate one, particularly for school leaders and managers at all levels. In a period of sweeping changes, they have to possess the wisdom necessary to understand and deal with the numerous interrelated processes that take place in schools and in the relationship of schools and their contexts. They consume much of their time and effort accomplishing multiple tasks and holding several interconnected items in mind all at the same time, and they are under enormous pressure to show results. Moreover, in this complicated world, even though there may be several commonalities, each school has a distinct set of conditions in its framework, as such manifested by the aforementioned stories of various educational managers. In these conditions, recommendations for leadership that are relevant to one school may well not relevant to another. Educational improvement over the recent decades or so has been headed much by centrally resolute improvement ideas and an emphasis on accountability and these have contributed much in altering the set of traditions and professionalism in educational organizations. In lieu of this, this research aims at two basic premises on the basis of the findings of the interviews with various educational managers. Primarily, school leaders and managers dealing with complexity is a foremost ability grounded in a specific set of conditions, and this implies that interpreting what is happening and how things occur is more significant than recommendations about the manner they should lead and manage. Possessing a clear understanding will frequently propose how to decide and act in a manner that is applicable to the circumstance. The second is that subsequent to countless years of fundamental control and a different outline of the capabilities and expertise of teachers, the time is now ripe for the next step in educational development where schools can build up more innovative practices of their own relevant to their own conditions (Marzano, 2005). Sustaining Academic Excellence Effective thinking is at the core of excellent leadership and management, which was obviously showed by Mark Waver and Helen Anderson of Xavier High School, whether leaders are apprehensive with strategic planning, bridging the gaps between members of the management and staff, or presiding over a meeting. If leaders’ thinking and with it their perceptions are flawed, then all the management strategies in the world will not be of value. For instance, it is now somewhat well believed that leaders have to be capable of adopting an array of styles so as to deal with various situations. Hersey and Blanchard (1982) put forth a circumstantial leadership framework which supported four leadership approaches relevant to four distinct employee types, and the Hay Group’s organization of six leadership approaches is comprehensively applied in education administrators’ training in the UK (as cited in Jones, 2000, 101). Leaders are encouraged to apply the approaches most relevant to the circumstance they confront. Nevertheless, the leadership qualities of Mark Waver and Helen Anderson manifest the saying that no man is an island, entire of itself. They see their school organization as a network of relationships and recognize that the power and strength of the network depends as significantly as on the quality and quantity of these interrelations as on the individual attributes of the members being interrelated, the essentiality of effective relationships turns out to be more than a dream for a good-natured daily habit. Relationships become a chief floorboard of educational effectiveness, in an intricate behavioral system, in which roughly, each section influences all the others. The internal workings of Xavier High School showed that people in an organization are mutually dependent in their quest to attain a common goal or vision for their school. The case of the Xavier High School looks at the essentialities of relationships as they influence culture, what the purpose of relating is what attributes people should attempt for in their relationships, and in several manners in which people might handle the relationship-building process. It is apparent on reflection that educational organizations are about reaching goals through collective actions between members of an organization. Even the rules and regulations, guidelines and arrangements are there to sustain this objective. The relationships are established and strengthened through open communication, which is mainly discussing, but written guidelines, displays and others can be noticed as they discuss, they are articulating someone’s ideas and insights. As some educational professionals claim, all budgetary, marketing and hierarchical structures in educational organizations are simple tools used in the carrying out of communicative interaction (Tucker, 2002). The Inexperienced School Administrator and the Domineering Leader The traditional knowledge has people going through several processes that assume their capability to control what takes place in school, such as teacher development planning, school development planning and other kinds of plans, supervising and assessing processes, as well as goal setting. Effectively, these define to control objective, outcome, strategy and quality. Thereby, they make the implied assumptions that people can predict prospective outcomes of their decisions and actions and control them (Siegrist, 1999). Practice of leadership becomes much more innate and natural if it emerges from deep in leaders’ understanding rather than from a network of behavioral recommendations leaders have learned. There are scholars who have written thoroughly about the manner leaders interpret experiences so that they fit into perspectives they have, built on their experiences or cultural orientations. They are more often than not concealed from consciousness but function as attractors, offering purposes to events, and making leaders more inclined to concentrate on those components of experience that substantiate them. At a basic level, they can be considered as the rules of the game (Hoffman, 2000). Perspectives, just like those maintained by Kevin Lee and Bryan Jones, create and direct leaders’ focus and hence rule over what they perceive. It follows that perspectives hampers leaders’ thinking and creativeness, and on the contrary, if they shift the perspective, the significance of their experience changes. In the deteriorating educational organization, the internal mechanisms such as leaders’ perspectives are not in association with the requirements of the environment, for whatsoever reason. Either structures or processes in the school are erratic and uncoordinated, or there are no collective values and cohesive objective, and so forth. Partly for this justification, any self-organization that comes about is valueless and not deliberately applied to pushing the school forward, but perhaps applied primarily to the informal structure and characterized by fixed discussions (Glanz, 2002). This educational organization will either at the blocked end of the strength scale, where its significance and mechanisms are traditional and steady, typified by Bryan Jones’ school, or too much as the open end where leadership is tolerant and process disorganized, as illustrated by Kevin Lee’s educational administration. These schools are therefore not adjusting to the changing environment, not creating new alternatives into place, not improving its personnel, and not keeping up with the school framework. The kind of leadership required to wedge the school back on the right track is perhaps one of direct involvement, where for the interim, employees need to be informed how to surmount this problem. The timescale for this to come about is normally extremely short, and this hence makes direct involvement even more crucial. This is what happened to Bryan Jones’ school, where staff is simply directed on what to do and ever at Kevin Lee’s school when a very good proposal on employee development program was single-handedly dismissed because of an irrational basis. This instructive, involved leadership can be successful in creating some remarkable reform, but the course of action may not be sustainable over a longer period of time. III. Conclusions Based on the outcomes of the interviews, I have observed that in the 21st centuries there are perhaps three dimensions of educational leadership, namely, strategic leadership, ethical leadership and competent leadership. Strategic leadership involves the capability to take into account both the long-term prospect, considering the larger picture, as well as interpreting the present contextual environment of the educational organization. Strategic course is the skill to relate long-range objectives and ideas to daily routine. Nevertheless, it is essential to address the concept of vision or visioning with proper caution. Pursuing to investigate trends and their purpose for the potential of the organization can be considered as a good thing if it causes arguments and if future circumstances become the foundation for strategic discussions (Raynor, 2004). The significance of formulating the strategy with others, and not merely dictating it to others, as what administrators of Xavier High School has done, may be the essential ability that strategic leaders set up in deciding on the strategic course of the organization. Strategic direction can be considered to be the founding of a futuristic organization, which constructs an understanding of prospective course of actions, and includes endeavoring in strategic discussions and arguments to concentrate on the most suitable course and approach. This capability involves bringing into line individuals, or the educational organization as a whole, to a forward-looking organization position. A primary component of this capability is to motivate dedication through collective values. It would appear that the leader’s personal values and initiatives are dominant in this process and the leadership skill includes making it practical or real for others. Leaders for that reason need to appreciate themselves and the virtues they have and be able to enrich effective communication. Strategy is as much about the conception of meaning for all those in the educational organization as it is about the construction of direction. Decisive in this construction of meaning is the art of strategic conversation and discourse (Smith, 1999). Making a goal possible for others demands skills of assurance and fervor. It entails emotion. The leader fashions an atmosphere of trust, wherein every one in the organization can feel liberated to argue, suggest, question and defy. The self-assured leader motivates detached leadership so that anyone can freely organize a sub-group, examine a specific component of the school’s system, study a perplexing point, and then report the outcomes to the wider group. The leader afterwards has to moderate when the debates have gone long enough, unify the contrasting ideas, and then express the cultured essence of what has been discussed. Nevertheless, such a discussion is not, should not be in any case, a rare occurrence. Life shifts too quickly. Every feature of the society’s life, its values, its traditions and way of life will be re-examined and re-verified against the shifting circumstances. Moreover, that discussion will not at all time be peaceful and within reason. There will be contradictions and clashes of ideas, but as long as these conflicts come about in trust, in a context which appreciates diversity and differences of opinions, then the expected conflict will be creative (Raynor, 2004). The objective is alignment, not conventionality. There are educational organizations which are breaking free from the strictness of the recent decade. There are educational organizations which are seeking for an ethnically motivated education, an education which put emphasis on the entire child and not merely on those measurable outcomes. They might, in some aspects, be referred to as scoundrel schools. What needs to happen nowadays is for these rascal schools to come together, in the first case to sustain and encourage each other, but in the near future to be paradigms not just of good performance, but of the only performance that is up to standard (Sergiovanni, 2001). On the other hand, in response to the thrust for effective and efficient organizations, the ideas of competence have been applied comprehensively in the last two decades to refer to abilities and characteristics which allow people to accomplish effectively the task demanded of a function, yet there is still uncertainty regarding the terms. This uncertainty is difficult by the reality that, in many countries, standards have been designed for different types of leadership, management and teaching missions in educational organizations. Within this standard-based structure, the term competence is not at all times applied, yet one or other of these terms underlies several of the assumptions (ibid, 88). While leadership is as old as humanity, the concept did not emerge in the literature on school administration until the turn of the 20th century. Educational management started as a successor of scientific management and its early advocates were passionately ingrained in the principle of efficiency, resulting in what English refers to as ‘scientism’; later appeared the behaviorists, afterwards the organizational sociologists, neither of which has given the analytical power to solve the countless problems confronting educators of the 21st century. A growing number of researchers believe that numerous administrators perceive themselves as carrying the legacy of efficiency through the application of systems theory and, presently, total quality management. Throughout the latter part of the twentieth century, people’s understanding of leadership has shifted rather remarkably as people have acknowledged that what leaders do is resolute, primarily, through the nature of those being governed and the culture of the educational organizations in which they work. Moreover, as system theory proposes, those organizations are affected by and, consequently, affect the larger society of which they belong (Raynor, 2004). The European and Asian distinct ideas of communities, the familial ties and lineages of generations, do not belong to the American culture. Two centuries of colonization, economic mobility, a distinct political context, a decentralized educational structure, and America’s massive geographic size have led to a diversity of cultural ideals unparalleled anywhere in the planet (ibid, 117). That diversity accompanied with people’s complete dedication to obligatory education to enrich the commonwealth and a constitution that puts up education to the various states creates a significant challenge to educational leaders. References Glanz, J. (2002). Finding Your Leadership Style: A Guide for Educators. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Goldberg, M. (2001). Lessons from Exceptional School Leaders. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development . Hoerr, T. R. (2005). The Art of School Leadership. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Hoffman, A. M. (2000). Managing Colleges and Universities: Issues for Leadership. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Jones, B. A. (2000). Educational Leadership: Policy Dimensions in the 21st Century. Stamford, CT: Ablex. Linde, C. V. (1997). Intercultural Communication within Multicultural Schools: Educational Management Insights. Education , 191+. Marzano, R. (2005). School Leadership that Works: From Research to Results. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development . Raynor, A. (2004). Individual Schools, Unique Solutions: Tailoring Management Techniques for School Leadership. New York: Routledge Falmer. Riley, K. A. (2000). Leadership for Change and School Reform: International Perspectives. London: Routledge . Sergiovanni, T. (2001). Leadership: Whats in it for Schools? London: Routledge Falmer. Shapiro, J. P. (2001). Ethical Leadership and Decision Making in Education: Applying Theoretical Perspectives to Complex Dilemmas. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Siegrist, G. (1999). Educational Leadership Must Move beyond Management Training to Visionary and Moral Transformational Leaders. Education , 297. Smith, W. F. (1999). Leadership for Educational Renewal: Developing a Cadre of Leaders. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Thrupp, M. (2003). Educational Management in Managerialist Times: Beyond the Textual Apologists. Maidenhead, England: Open University Press. Tucker, M. S. (2002). The Principal Challenge: Leading and Managing Schools in an Era of Accountability. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Read More