The training needs of primary school leaders in Al-Kharj governorate in light of the transformational leadership requirements: الاحتياجات التدريبية لدى قائدي المدارس الابتدائية بمحافظة الخرج في ضوء متطلبات القيادة التحويلية

The study aimed to determine the training needs of primary school leaders in Al-Kharj governorate in light of the transformational leadership requirements from their point of view regarding the dimensions of (leadership attractiveness - inspirational communication - mental stimulation - personal appreciation). The researcher used the descriptive survey approach. It was applied on a sample of (44) Leader in primary schools in Al-Kharj governorate and the tool was a questionnaire. The results of the study revealed; The tool obtained an overall mean (3.38 out of 4) at the dimensional level; The leadership attractiveness dimension got the highest average (3.50 out of 4), then after inspirational communication with an average (3.40 out of 4), then after personal appreciation with an average (3.37 out of 4), and finally after mental stimulation with an average (3.26 out of 4), all of them rated as need (big); based on the results of the study, the researcher presented a set of recommendations and proposals.

Reading and analysing short story collections. An empirical study of readers’ interpretation process of Benni’s Il bar sotto il mare

This article confronts the theoretical tenets of reader-oriented short story collection theory and its implications for a literary analysis of Benni’s Il bar sotto il mare (1987) with the results of an empirical study of 12 readers. Through free recall tasks and open questions, we collected their recall of stories, specific passages, recurring topics and general interpretation to assess the processes of reticulation (i.e. searching for recurring elements in stories) and modification (i.e. modifying initial hypotheses based on the identification of new elements) advanced by Audet (2014). This confrontation revealed noticeably disagreeing results. Our findings suggest that flesh-and-blood readers adopt a more straightforward and intuitive approach when reading and interpreting collections as they are subject to a strong primacy effect, privilege personal appreciation of specific stories and passages, and rely on a disinclination to alter initial interpretative hypotheses. The findings pave the way for further investigation into the readers of SSCs.

An Appreciation of the Ethnographic in Connell’s The Men and the Boys

In this short personal appreciation of The Men and the Boys, the author admires the ethnographic and writing skills Raewyn Connell displays—the craft and artistry that animates her insightful theories. From her prose’s clarity to the deftness of her interviewing, Connell models how to empirically ground foundational social theory.

Editor's Note

In my college years I took a folklore class from Barre Toelken, one of the modern giants of folk studies. Along the way I gained a personal appreciation for aphorisms and idioms—short sayings commenting on a situation by comparing it to something else, usually unfavorably. Dictionaries boil down an aphorism to “a pithy observation that contains a general truth.” An idiom is an aphorism with cleverness thrown in for good measure. Anyone who has sworn “when hell freezes over” has used an idiom. The seafaring people of northern Europe occasionally invoke a folkish comment describing a futile effort. “That Jan,” someone might say, “he’s sweeping back the tide with a broom.”