The Influence of School Leadership on Classroom Participation: Examining Configurations of Organizational Supports

2014 ◽  
Vol 116 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Sebastian ◽  
Elaine Allensworth ◽  
David Stevens

Background In this paper we call for studying school leadership and its relationship to instruction and learning through approaches that highlight the role of configurations of multiple organizational supports. A configuration-focused approach to studying leadership and other essential supports provides a valuable addition to existing tools in school organizational analysis and is particularly useful in examining equifinality and causal asymmetry. Equifinality is the idea that more than one pathway can result in a desired outcome whereas causal asymmetry suggests that the set of conditions that lead to the presence of an outcome need not be the same as the conditions that lead to its absence. Focus of Study This study uses a configurational approach to examine how school leadership and other organizational supports are related to an important aspect of instruction—students’ classroom participation. Research Design We apply fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to administrative and survey data of high schools from a large urban school district to examine combinations of organizational supports that are associated with classroom participation. Conclusions The study draws attention to the utility of applying configurational approaches to investigate the influence of complex combinations of organizational supports on school outcomes. We compare this approach to more traditional methods that focus on the effects of isolated factors, controlling for each other. Our results show that leadership is associated with students’ classroom participation via multiple configurations of organizational supports. These configurations are different from the set of organizational supports that are related to an absence of classroom participation.

Author(s):  
Christian Rudeloff ◽  
Stefanie Pakura ◽  
Fabian Eggers ◽  
Thomas Niemand

AbstractThis manuscript analyzes start-ups’ usage of different communication strategies (information, response, involvement), their underlying decision logics (effectuation, causation, strategy absence) and respective social media success. A multitude of studies have been published on the decision logics of entrepreneurs as well as on different communication strategies. Decision logics and according strategies and actions are closely connected. Still, research on the interplay between the two areas is largely missing. This applies in particular to the effect of different decision logics and communication models on social media success. Through a combination of case studies with fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis this exploratory study demonstrates that different combinations of causal and absence of strategy decision logics can be equally successful when it comes to social media engagement, whereas effectuation is detrimental for success. Furthermore, we find that two-way-communication is essential to create engagement, while information strategy alone cannot lead to social media success. This study provides new insights into the role of decision logics and connects effectuation theory with the communication literature, a field that has been dominated by causal approaches.


2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Pascale Benoliel ◽  
Anit Somech

Background/Context Increasingly, educational leadership research has stressed that leadership is not solely embedded in formal roles but often emerges from relationships between individuals. Senior management teams (SMTs) are an important expression of a formal management structure based on the principle of distributed leadership. Such structures may require a reconceptualization of school leadership and the role of the principal in such a way as to better meet new challenges and enable principals to manage SMTs more effectively. Accordingly, it is proposed that to improve effectiveness, principals engage in boundary activities, the principals’ internal activities directed toward the SMT aimed at dealing with internal team matters and the principals’ external activities directed toward external agents in the team's focal environment to acquire resources and protect the team. Purpose/Objective The present study attempts to advance a theoretical model of principals’ internal and external activities toward their SMTs. This study's purpose is twofold: First, the study tries to determine which of the internal and external activities principals engage in more frequently and less frequently and to what extent. Second, the study attempts to determine how these activities are related to the SMT effectiveness outcomes: in-role performance and innovation. Taking on a distributive perspective to school leadership, our goal is to extend our knowledge about the activities that might facilitate SMT effectiveness, by highlighting the principal boundary activities as fundamental. Research Design Quantitative study. Data Collection and Analysis Data were collected from two sources to minimize problems associated with same source bias: 92 SMTs and their principals from 92 public schools in Israel. Principals evaluated the SMTs’ effectiveness through validated surveys of team in-role performance and team innovation, and SMT members evaluated the internal and external activities of the principal. Findings/Results ANOVA analyses indicate significant mean differences between the principal's internal and external activities. Results from Structural Equation Model indicate that internal activities were related to SMT performance, whereas external activities were related to SMT innovation. Conclusions/Recommendations Principals who manage both the internal SMT dynamic by promoting SMT identity and building team trust, while also promoting a common mission, serve the role of coordinator between SMT members and constituencies external to the SMT, enhancing SMT effectiveness. It may be, then, that studying new models of school leadership and management, including the relationship of the principal and the SMT, may deepen our understanding of the increasingly complex role of principals today.


2021 ◽  
pp. 019263652110365
Author(s):  
Jay Paredes Scribner ◽  
Donna H. Weingand ◽  
Karen Leigh Sanzo

Scholars and practitioners have increasingly recognized the role of culturally responsive school leadership (CRSL). However, few studies have applied recent comprehensive CRSL theoretical frameworks. This in-depth case study explores how a school leader understands and shapes a school culture to be increasingly culturally responsive to students. Utilizing recent conceptualizations of CRSL as a lens, two major findings were developed. First, the principal’s understanding of what it means to be a culturally responsive leader is centered on the student experience: meeting basic needs, seeking “vertical” engagement, and transforming student world views. Second, to meet those student needs the principal practiced differentiated instructional leadership according to individual teacher needs and oriented to fostering a culturally responsive school culture. We suggest future research carefully examine (1) the interplay of beliefs, dispositions, and values in CRSL play, and (2) how CRSL (where it exists) manifests as an organizational.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Di Paola ◽  
Rosanna Spano ◽  
Roberto Vona ◽  
Adele Caldarelli

<p>The linkage between entrepreneurial ideas and actions continues to be central to the entrepreneurship debate. However, the possible implications of the various entrepreneurial motivations for the process are still largely understudied. On this basis, our study aims to contextualise the theoretical model linking entrepreneurial intentions, motivations and actions, with particular reference to academic entrepreneurship within the Life Sciences. We use the qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) set-theoretic method to process data gathered amongst 25 scholars active in the Life Sciences context. We carried out the analysis in two steps. The first reveals that a condition which determines entrepreneurial intentions is the absence of normative beliefs together with the presence of control beliefs. In contrast, the research highlights that the entrepreneurial intentions are able to determine the entrepreneurial action. However, as the second step shows, these alone are not sufficient and need to be complemented by extrinsic motivations, that is, those correlated to external incentives/benefits (above all of an economic nature). Our findings offer interesting insights into the whole phenomenon, revealing that the reference to specific contexts may well determine implications which differ from those already detected in the literature, with undeniable effects in terms of managerial and policy implications.</p>


2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-109
Author(s):  
Tayyaba Zarif ◽  
Aziz un Nisa

The increasing diversity of cultural, ethnic, racial and tribal composition of societies in general and schools in particular signify the importance of multicultural education at all levels of education. In this context the roots of such a concept can be strengthened at school level in any community. Here the role of school leadership is imperative towards promoting intercultural harmony in the school environment in general and the curriculum and classroom practices in particular. This research sheds light on the perspectives of school leadership and the actual scenarios at school level to integrate intercultural education into mainstream curriculum and teaching-learning practices at schools. For this reason altogether 30 School leaders were selected through purposive-random sampling from a sample of 30 private schools of Karachi selected with the help of convenient sampling. The most experienced School leaders were selected for this study. The perspective of School leadership regarding Multicultural Education and their practices in everyday schooling was collected through interviews by using an open ended questionnaire so the study is completely qualitative in nature. The theme analysis of qualitative data was done. The theme analysis depicts that the principals in-general seem to possess a positive understanding of multicultural education and that they preferred a very neutral approach for multicultural education.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helder Gusso

This article highlights the duty of the public employee to oppose any government policy that goes against constitutional principles and objectives. The defence of this position is made from an organizational analysis of the State. Theoretical contributions such as the understanding of State and Domination in M. Weber, Organization in D. Katz and R.L. Khan, and Control Agency in B.F. Skinner have been used. The analysis of contingencies that control the behavior of the public employee and the understanding of the notions of State and Organizations enable greater clarity about what constitutes the role of workers in the public sector. It also highlights the importance of existing mechanisms to reduce the imbalance in power relations between governors, servants and the population.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-202
Author(s):  
Irena Burić ◽  
Maja Parmač Kovačić ◽  
Aleksandra Huić

The school lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic pushed teachers to online teaching literally overnight, which put their performance at risk. Transformational school leadership (TSL), teacher self-efficacy (TSE) and digital competencies might have played a protective role in such burdening conditions. Therefore, the present study aimed to examine the mediating role of TSE in explaining the relationship between TSL and instructional quality. Additionally, the moderating role of digital competencies in explaining the interrelations between TSL and TSE as well as between TSE and instructional quality, or the proposed mediating mechanism, was tested. The study was conducted via online survey in Spring 2020 and involved 1655 Croatian teachers. The mediation and moderated mediation analyses revealed that TSL was positively related to instructional quality both directly and indirectly via TSE. Teacher digital competencies did not moderate the proposed relationships or the mediating mechanism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 946-972 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charalampos Saridakis ◽  
Sofia Angelidou

Purpose Collecting behaviour is a special type of consumption, which consists of several traits, such as “completion”, “perfection”, “caring” and “cooperation”. The purpose of this study is to shed light on this complex consumption behaviour, by effectively developing an empirical typology of collectors and explaining their motivation to engage in collecting. Design/methodology/approach In total, 208 questionnaires were collected among Thai collectors. A set-theoretic comparative approach was implemented – namely, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The value of the proposed approach over conventional correlational methods, is illustrated through an examination of a set of relevant research propositions. Findings The study develops an empirical typology of collectors, on the basis of the various collecting behaviour traits. It has been suggested that different combinations of motives are sufficient for identifying collector types accurately, and the proposed typology is stable and generalizable across collectors of different demographic characteristics. Specifically, “expert professionals” are mainly driven by adventure and social motives, while the role of idea motive is crucial for “introvert focusers”. Adventure and social motives are necessary conditions for “extrovert altruists”, while gratification has a deleterious role. The presence of social motive is necessary for “hobbyists”, while the absence of value motive is also required. Practical implications The brand collectible market is booming, and the collectibles can be a strategy for brands to maintain existing users and reinforce loyalty levels. Global brands, such as Swatch and Coca-Cola, have been acquired for collection rather than typical consumption purposes. Marketers and brand managers should therefore monitor the motivation behind this complex consumption behaviour. The mosaic of motives to engage in collecting behaviour varies across different types of collectors, and therefore specifically tailored strategies are proposed. Originality/value The study tackles the lack of literature specifically focussing on collecting behaviour in relation to motivation. This is the first attempt to empirically derive a collectors’ typology and provide a nuanced coverage of how financial and nonfinancial (hedonic) motives and their combinations affect different collector types.


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