School bonding, attachment, and engagement through remote learning: Fostering school connectedness

Over 2020 and 2021 we have seen significant disruption to schooling across the world as COVID-19 forces school closures. Education sectors migrated to distance learning arrangements and teachers and students primarily communicated through digital means. Under challenging conditions, school leaders and teachers made rapid changes to pedagogy and curriculum to accommodate their students’ diverse range of learning needs. We present an interview drawn from a qualitative study undertaken in Australia to illustrate (from a teacher’s perspective) how a school response to COVID-19 integrates elements of school connectedness during the shift to distance learning. School connectedness is an umbrella term that has been theorised in many different ways. In this article, we illustrate school bonding, attachment, and engagement as three interrelated aspects of school connectedness that came to the fore during lockdown measures associated with COVID-19. Leaders, teachers, students, and school communities benefit from school connectedness. When adversity is experienced, school connectedness can be seen in the relationships between teachers, the commitment to students, and the all-important pastoral support from school leaders. Strong and supportive relationships develop through practices that support school bonding, school attachment, and school engagement.

Strategic Leadership Practices and Academic Performance in Public Secondary Schools in Kericho County, Kenya

Academic performance among learners has been pulled into much consideration in the worldwide field in this manner, requiring the execution of the essential procedures to help improve and keep up performance in auxiliary schools. Strategic leadership practices are fundamental in schools due to the changing climate, unpredictable, dubious, and vague. It stays to be one of the significant impacts on the academic performance of understudies in auxiliary schools. The examination tries to discover the strategic leadership practices and academic performance in open auxiliary schools in Kericho County, Kenya. The essential objective of the study was; to inspect the impacts of strategic leadership styles, the stakeholder's involvement, resource allocation, and school laws and guidelines on academic performance in public secondary schools in the Kericho county. This investigation was founded on Path-goal theory, transformational leadership approach, and trait leadership theory. The investigation utilized a descriptive examination design because the design focuses on finding relationships between variables. A stratified random sampling method was utilized to choose the respondents from the sampling outline. The objective populace for the examination was 540 subjects. The sample size of the examination was 108, including 18 school heads, 36 departmental heads, and 54 class educators in optional schools in Kericho County. Information was gathered utilized an organized survey with both open and closed questionnaires. Information was dissected by use of both descriptive and inferential statistics with the guide of SPSS software. The outcomes were introduced in different configurations, including diagrams, pie graphs, and recurrence tables. Cronbach's alpha was used to estimate the degree of reliability of the exploration instruments. The ANOVA and T test were used in data analysis to generate quantitative reports through tabulations, percentages, frequencies and measures of central tendency. The study found out that there is a significant relationship between strategic leadership practices and academic performance. The study found out that the leadership style, stakeholder’s involvement, resource allocation, and school rules and regulations greatly influence academic performance in public secondary schools in Kericho County, Kenya. According to the study, the principal should use the most appropriate leadership styles that facilitate collective responsibility in order to create a conducive environment for teaching and learning; school management should develop capacity building programs to empower both the principal and teachers in their leadership skills and styles; and teachers should be involved. To guarantee that academic performance in the region is improved, the principal should work closely with school boards of management and the ministry of education. Besides, there is need for keen management of schools and continuous meetings between the principal, teachers, and the parents for planning and monitoring academic progress of the pupils. Lastly, the recruitment of principals and teachers should be taken as a serious practice by the teacher’s service Commission to ensure the deployment of the most qualified and experienced principals and teachers.

Desain Manajemen Kurikulum Sekolah Umum

Curriculum management is concerned with how a curriculum is designed, implemented, and controlled (evaluated and ultimately refined) by who carries it out, when it is timed, and within which scope it is implemented. The purpose of this study is to describe the steps to develop curriculum management that is standardized and adjusts to the development of the community so that there can be a mutually beneficial relationship between school and community citizens. The research method used is the research library model. The results of the study showed that curriculum management is structured based on the basic concepts of curriculum management and learning starting from curriculum planning and learning, school work programs, and finally curriculum evaluation and learning.

Chronicling school principals’ experiences on school management in the context of COVID-19 stringency

The COVID-19 pandemic experience has brought to the forefront the importance of leadership as institutions across the world are now trying to emerge from hibernation and rebuild broken academic practices. As such, this study sought to examine school principals’ experiences on school management in the context of COVID-19 stringency in four rural schools in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Underpinned by a qualitative research approach, the study employed a case study design in which semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from four rural school principals who had been purposively sampled. Findings of the study revealed that in order to combat challenges associated with teaching and learning, school principals engaged among other things, in mobilization of resources, engendering a technological culture among teachers, ensuring effective delivery of content. We further ascertained that although hamstrung by resource inadequacies, school principals in rural schools promoted school safety by ensuring transparent and effective communication, striving for the provision of safe and adequate facilities, among other things. Finally, our study also revealed that rural school principals ensured clear and consistent communication with staff, provided psychosocial assistance to staff members, and adapted performance and workload expectations.

Teachers’ language politeness, students’ academic motivation and self-efficacy during school from home

This study aims to investigate the influence of teachers’ language politeness on students’ academic motivation and self-efficacy during online learning (school from home) and to examine the relationship between students’ academic motivation and self-efficacy during online learning. This study used a quantitative approach with the correlational method. The participants of the study were 150 elementary students (male: 47%; female: 53%). Three types of scales were used in this study, namely the teachers’ language politeness scale, the academic motivation scale and the self-efficacy scale. The hypothesis of the study was tested using analysis of variance assisted with SPSS version 26. The study found that teachers’ language politeness significantly influences students’ academic motivation and self-efficacy during online learning. Teachers’ language politeness was more likely to have greater influence on students’ self-efficacy than on students’ academic motivation. As shown in the model, the value of the relationship between students’ academic motivation and self-efficacy was 0.497. Keywords: Language politeness, academic motivation, self-efficacy, school from home.

The Contribution of Entrepreneurial Competency and Principal's Leadership on the Learning School and Its Implication on Teachers' Innovative Performance

The study aimed to examine the influence of entrepreneurial competency and the principal's leadership on the learning school and its implication on the teachers' innovative performance. The study belongs to quantitative research using a cross-sectional design with ninety teachers as the samples. The analysis concluded several findings. First, entrepreneurial competency reached the beta score of 0.107, showing that it has no significant influence on learning school. Second, the managerial competency has a positive impact on the learning school, which was as much as 0.644. Third, entrepreneurial competency reached the beta score of 0.022, indicating that it has no significant influence on the teachers' innovative performance. Fourth, similarly, managerial competency reached a score of 0.005, showing that it does not influence the teachers' innovative performance. Fifth, learning school negatively influences the teachers' innovative performance, with a score of -0.355, showing its significant effect. Sixth, entrepreneurial competency through learning school positively influences the teachers' innovative performance, with a score of 0.059. And seventh, managerial competency through learning school positively affects the teachers' innovative performance, with a score of 0.233. The research implies a relative influence of the principal's entrepreneurial and managerial competencies on developing the learning environment and the teachers' innovative performance at school.

The Use of Technology in Accounting Classrooms During COVID-19: What Do Accounting Teachers in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, Have to Say?

It was mentioned that accounting classrooms must keep pace with rapidly changing technology, which is influencing all aspects of our daily lives. This study examined accounting teachers’ views on the use of technology in their classrooms during Covid-19. To this end, the researchers employed a qualitative approach and a case study. Data were obtained from accounting teachers through interviews, with the sample of ten participants having been purposively selected. The results indicated that allowing learners to bring their own personal technological devices to the classroom represented a contravention of the school’s constitution. Another result was that when technology is optimally used in the classroom, it makes available different forms of assistance which change the way learners learn. Researchers conclude that use of technology in accounting implemented compulsory if teachers want to keep up with changes accounting profession. Furthermore, schools’ constitutions need to be amended to promote the use of available technologies in the classroom, albeit in a highly structured, managed, and efficient way. Researchers recommend that learners be allowed to use their own personal devices in the classroom, to enhance learning. School principal be encouraged to develop school plans outlining how s/he would support use of technology in school.

Parents’ Use of Digital Literacies to Support their Children with Disabilities in Online Learning Environments

An emerging research base has highlighted various roles and responsibilities that parents of students with disabilities accept when they enroll their children in online schools. Since finding and using online texts and using various programs and applications that require search and evaluation skills to do work are typical for online learning, it follows that part of parent responsibilities in many families might involve using basic technological literacies or even more advanced digital ones. To focus on the range of technological literacies that parents employ, researchers gathered self-report data from parents about how they engage with online education technologies while working with their children with disabilities. Interviews with (n = 32) parents across six states in the West, Midwest, and Southern United States revealed that parents employ various skills with a specific set of purposes in mind. Literacies were used to (a) perform basic technological computing tasks, (b) evaluate information to supplement existing instructional materials, and (c) communicate with the school about children’s needs. Reported purposes for using these skills emerged as (a) instructing, (b) monitoring, (c) advocating, and (d) learning school expectations. Implications of this study include the potential for literacy-based approaches to parent preparation for supporting vulnerable children in online settings.