“If I Ever Leave, I Have a List of People That Are Going With Me:” Principals’ Understandings of and Responses to Place Influences on Teacher Staffing in West Virginia

Purpose: Schools across the predominately rural state of West Virginia are experiencing widespread teacher shortages, though recruitment and retention difficulties are unevenly distributed across place. Using spatial in/justice as our framework, we explore how principals define place, how place influences principal perceptions of teacher recruitment and retention, and how principals respond to these staffing challenges given their leadership experiences, relationship to school community, and understandings of place affordances and disadvantages. Research Methods/Approach This research utilized interviews with eight principals across six school districts in West Virginia over a four-month time frame. We inductively coded interview transcripts in iterative cycles using our research framework as a guide for emic and etic codes. Findings: We find principals’ understanding of place influences on staffing to be specific to the unique attributes of each community and the placement of their leadership experiences – as community returners, seasoned though not originally from the community, and new-to-place. Their understandings of spatial in/justice as it relates to teacher staffing shape ideas of place affordances and disadvantages and recruitment and retention practices. These findings complexify the teacher staffing picture across geographically diverse rural places and the responses available to leaders given their leadership experience and relationship to place. Implications for Research and Practice The place-specific influences on teacher staffing problematize statewide policy mechanisms for ameliorating teacher shortages. The findings also suggest the need for further in-depth qualitative research within districts and across states, with an emphasis on racially diverse rural places.

Political Leadership After the British: A Study of Jomo Kenyatta and Julius Nyerere

<p>In the post-World War Two era, political decolonisation swept across Africa. In the wake of decolonisation a wide variety of political leadership outcomes have emerged. In many national contexts indigenous political stakeholders were required to wrest political control from colonial powers. This study will compare the progress of the post-colonial political leadership experiences in Kenya and Tanzania - in order to ascertain the nature of the unique pressures and constraints placed upon first generation post-colonial political leaders. This will be framed and informed through the lens of contemporary and historical theories of leadership. Developing a greater understanding of the leadership experiences of these first-generation post decolonisation leaders will provide greater insight into the nature of post decolonisation leadership in sub-Saharan Africa.</p>

Political Leadership After the British: A Study of Jomo Kenyatta and Julius Nyerere

<p>In the post-World War Two era, political decolonisation swept across Africa. In the wake of decolonisation a wide variety of political leadership outcomes have emerged. In many national contexts indigenous political stakeholders were required to wrest political control from colonial powers. This study will compare the progress of the post-colonial political leadership experiences in Kenya and Tanzania - in order to ascertain the nature of the unique pressures and constraints placed upon first generation post-colonial political leaders. This will be framed and informed through the lens of contemporary and historical theories of leadership. Developing a greater understanding of the leadership experiences of these first-generation post decolonisation leaders will provide greater insight into the nature of post decolonisation leadership in sub-Saharan Africa.</p>

Principals’ perceptions of school autonomy and educational leadership

This paper examines principals’ perceptions of school autonomy and leadership as part of a 3-year research project looking at the implications of school autonomy on social justice across four states of Australia (Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland). Drawing on interviews with principals and representatives from principal stakeholder organisations in these four state jurisdictions, the paper identifies a number of key issues for school principals and the implications for understandings and practices of educational leadership. These include varied understandings of autonomy, practices of leadership and implications for health, workload and well-being. The paper argues that while principals have mixed perceptions of school autonomy policies, there has been a narrowing of leadership experiences by principals in the form of managerialism and compliance. Furthermore, principals continue to experience high levels of workload, and some principals, depending on career stage and experience level, feel better able to work within and sometimes against these policies in their schools and communities. These practices are sometimes felt to be despite the system and not due to school autonomy policies themselves. The implication of these findings is that principals are inequitably able to respond to and implement school autonomy policies, an issue often glossed over in educational leadership research.

How Female Students Are “Educated” to Retreat from Leadership: An Example from the Chinese Schooling Context

Women’s continued under-representation in leadership positions is well documented. This article asserts that part of the reason for this can be found within educational settings. Chinese educational environments are examined using secondary data analysis, and it is argued that a) the protective approach that teachers adopt towards female students, b) the reserved and unworldly female images exhibited by textbooks, and c) the improper view of leadership that girls tend to develop through classroom-based leadership experiences combine to damage girls’ leadership potential. These mechanisms are usually unintentional and hard to detect, which means that part of the solution lies in promoting the awareness of teachers and educational leaders. Meanwhile, it is important to note that this issue is not merely about equal treatment for both genders; rather, it is broadly linked to our construction of leadership as a concept. Ultimately, the educational setting is expected not only to produce an equal number of “great women” and “great men”, but also—partly through its explorations of how to cultivate the female version of a “great man”—to contribute to updating and advancing the “leadership” concept and practice as a whole.

Decolonial Approach to Leadership: Latin American Women in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Canada

The absence of Latin American women in positions of authority and power is indicative of the career limitations they face. This paper examines the leadership experiences of Latin American women who are leaders and reside in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). I apply a decolonial feminism approach and the concept of intersectionality to examine the intersection of race, gender, and class. Also, I employ qualitative research using 10 in-depth semi-structured, individual interviews. I find that current Latin American women leaders still face barriers that prevent them from continuing their advancement in leadership positions. These barriers include racial and gender discrimination, negative stereotypes, scarcity of networks and mentors, and the struggle to achieve a work-life balance.