The Relationship Between Longevity and a Leader’s Emotional Intelligence and Resilience

The role of an educational leader is complex, challenging and, at times, fraught with adversity. Overcoming the many challenges and hardships, and flourishing as an educational leader, requires resilience and an instinct for survival. According to Maulding, Leonard, Peters, Roberts and Sparkman (2012), understanding how to prevail in the face of difficult conditions, by employing one’s emotional strengths as well as vulnerabilities and how to increase one’s ability to remain resilient, is valuable for an educational leader to succeed in the face of adversity. The purpose of this study was to research Montana educational leaders to discern whether emotional intelligence (EI) is necessary to remain resilient and successful in a leadership role despite adversity. This quantitative research was undertaken as a non-experimental, ex post facto, or after-the-fact research. Participants for this study included sixty-one superintendents, principals, and assistant principals, from a population of 935 educational leaders, who held a leadership position in the State of Montana during the 2017-2018 school year. A linear regression was used to examine the proportion of variance in years in a leadership position that can be explained by emotional intelligence and resilience. This analysis demonstrated that some EI competencies appear to have an effect on the longevity of an educational leader in a position. However, the effects vary between assistant principals, principals, and superintendents, not all competencies were equal. The coefficient of determination showed assistant principals and principals’ years of service is more strongly influenced by all emotional intelligence competencies than is that of the superintendent.

The Assistant Principalship: A Keystone or a Stepping Stone

Schools are dynamic environments surrounded by static brick and mortar. Schools are a complex entanglement of systems clinging to normalcy led and composed of individuals seeking growth and progress. There is constant turnover as students move through the systems, gaining mastery, seeking support, and receiving guidance. Employees similarly move often as they change roles and responsibilities, as cultures emerge and evolve, and as individuals retire, are hired, or move on to other positions, commonly referred to as “job rotation.” This constant change affects a school’s culture and climate as each is achieved through sustained efforts. When change is present within the school leadership, specifically those identified as assistant principals within their organizational hierarchy, the impact on school culture may be even more dramatic than the effects felt with the turnover of students and teachers.

Awareness of Child Rights Laws among School Principals in Oman and its Impact on their Daily Practices

The study aimed to investigate the degree of awareness of school principals in Oman about the International Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Omani Children's Law and to determine the impact of this awareness on their daily practices towards children. The population of the study consisted of school principals and assistant principals in five provinces: Muscat, Addakhiliyah, Albatinah, Musandam, and Zafar; where child-friendly school’s initiative was launched as part of the collaboration between the Ministry of Education and the UNESCO Office in Oman. The sample of the study consisted of principals and assistant principals in 48 schools in these five provinces. The results of the study showed that the awareness of the child rights laws had a positive impact on the practices of school principals in general and on the legal, cultural, and political rights of children in particular. The results also indicated a statistically significant difference according to gender in favor of females; while there was no effect based on the type of school. The study endorsed the importance of activating the child-friendly school’s initiative and the necessity of developing the tasks of school principals in the light of child rights laws. Keywords: Child’s rights laws, school principals, child friendly schools

What Are the Sources and Negative Effects of Assistant Principals’ Work Intensification?

This study sought to provide an understanding of the sources of work intensification and its effects on assistant principals in Turkey, and the coping strategies they use. The participants of this qualitative study were a sample of 18 assistant principals. The current qualitative study was based on semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was performed through descriptive and content analysis. This study revealed that assistant principals had work intensification related to heavy paperwork, a variety of administrative affairs, a variety of tasks, school size, and lack of experience. Assistant principals’ work intensification caused negative psychological and physical health, work-family conflict, limited social relationships, and a decrease in professional commitment. Assistant principals spent time with their families, engaged in task sharing, received support from colleagues, took part in various social events, planned work habits and managed priorities to reduce the negative effects of work intensification.

School leaders' preferences for teacher applicant characteristics in a large urban school district

PurposeWe surveyed educational leaders in a large, urban school district in the southeastern United States, examining: (1) the factor structure of scores from a new measure of administrators' preferred teacher applicant characteristics, and (2) the relationships between administrator demographics and their preferences.Design/methodology/approachWe implemented a non-experimental, cross-sectional survey design using the Preferred Teacher Applicant Characteristics Survey (PTACS). We undertook descriptive and exploratory factor analyses in order to examine dimensions and underlying patterns among the 31 survey items. The retained factors served as the dependent variables in our multiple regression analyses.FindingsWe identified a four-factor structure: (1) personal, (2) professional, (3) student outcomes, and (4) demographics. Our analyses suggest that there was not meaningful variability in administrators' preferred characteristics of applicants across racial and gender variables, but revealed a significant difference between principals and assistant principals for applicant demographics.Research limitations/implicationsOur findings are limited in their generalizability to the respondents from a single urban district who completed our survey in spring 2018. Although we cannot establish causation, the significant difference between principals and assistant principals for demographics may result from principals feeling greater pressure from district targets to hire diverse staff than their assistant principal counterparts. It is important to note that preferences for teacher applicant characteristics are different from actual hiring decisions and the availability of preferred characteristics.Originality/valueOur study is the first large-scale use of the instrument in a large US urban school district, a context, which poses significant challenges to the education of youth as well as the hiring and retention of educators.

Assistant Principal Mobility and Its Relationship With Principal Turnover

Assistant principals (APs) are important education personnel, but empirical evidence about their career outcomes remains scarce. Using administrative data from Tennessee and Missouri, we provide the first comprehensive analysis of AP mobility. While prior work focuses on promotions into principal positions, we also examine APs exiting school leadership and transferring across schools. We find yearly mobility rates of 25% to 28%, with 10% of APs leaving school leadership, 7.5% changing schools, and 7.5% to 10% becoming principals. We also document a strong relationship between AP mobility and principal turnover, where higher-performing APs are substantially more likely to replace their departing principal. Finally, principal transitions appear to increase the likelihood that APs exit school leadership and change schools.

Can Assistant Principals’ Years of Experience Make a Difference in School Suspensions? A State-wide Analysis of North Carolina Assistant Principals

School discipline disparities within the U.S. P-12 public schooling system have been a staple issue for over four decades. The enforcement of out-of-school suspensions, in particular by inexperienced teachers, have traditionally impacted Black and Latinx students more than White students. Yet teachers are not the final decision-makers regarding student discipline which rests primarily on the shoulders of assistant principals and principals. While researchers have clearly linked teacher experience to discipline disparities, more research is needed to fully explicate the tenure of assistant principals; who often are the final decision-makers when it pertains to suspending a student. Utilizing human capital theory, this study examines school discipline data and North Carolina personnel data from the 2015–2016 school year to determine if assistant principals’ years of experience in the current role, and their years of experience as teachers could predict out-of-school suspensions by gender and race. The findings suggest that Black males’ suspension could be predicted by assistant principals’ years of experience as a teacher; and Latinx females’ suspensions could be predicted by assistant principals’ longevity in their current position and in their roles as classroom teachers. Interestingly, the findings illuminate that assistant principals are relatively inexperienced within the state, with most having less than one-year worth of experience in these positions.

Values and Dispositions of Omani Novice Teachers as Perceived by School Principals and Assistant Principals

Equipping teacher candidates with values and dispositions has become an important part of the conversation about effective teaching and teacher preparation programs are increasingly expected to integrate dispositions in their agenda. The purpose of the present study is two-folded. It aims at investigating the kind of dispositions of novice Omani teachers as perceived by school principals and assistant principals. It also aims to identify the type of factors that affect the shaping of novice teachers’ dispositions/values. Interviews were conducted with ten school principals and five assistant principals from various public schools in two different directorates of education in Oman. Data of the interviews were analyzed qualitatively by identifying the most emerging themes in terms of the most and least developed dispositions as well as factors shaping them. Findings revealed that dispositions related to ambition and flexibility were highly observed among novice teachers while dispositions related to sense of belonging and commitment and responsibility were less observed. The study also showed that there was a range of factors shaping the development of novice teachers dispositions ranging from broader macro factors such as how the society views a teacher and the appointment situation in Oman to more micro institutional factors such as the huge demands of the job and the type and level of support that schools provide to novice teachers. The paper makes recommendations relevant to both teacher preparation programs and the Ministry of Education.

Evaluating Practices Related to Delegation of Authority and the Relationship between Delegation and Decision-Making among Secondary Schools Principals in Jeddah: تقييم ممارسات تفويض السلطة وعلاقتها باتخاذ القرار لدى مديرات المدارس الثانوية بمدينة جدة

The research aimed at discovering the relationship between the delegation of authority and decision-making among the Secondary Schools Principals in Jeddah from the point of view of female assistant principals, through identifying the degree of delegation of authority and identifying the degree of decision-making. The researcher used the descriptive survey method. The researcher used the questionnaire as a study tool, . The questionnaire was distributed to a sample of (112) female assistant principals, or approximately 80% of the study community, which was randomly chosen. The study used the SPSS statistical analysis program to analyze the study data, and the study reached some results, the most notable of which was that: The degree of delegation of authority among school principals has obtained a total average (3.14 out of 5) j with a degree (medium), and at the sub-aspects level; the administrative aspects got an average of (3.20) followed by the delegation in the educational aspects with an average of (3.02) and finally the technical with an average of (3.20) While the degree of decision-making obtained an overall average (2.94 out of 5) and at the level of fields, the field of planning obtained an average (3.0) and the field of implementation got an average of (3.24) and both with a degree (average) while the field of evaluation got an average (2.58), i.e. (Weak). There is a strong positive correlation between the degree of delegation of authority and the degree of decision-making among principals of secondary schools in schools south of Jeddah, which amounted to (0.673). And that there is a positive and positive correlation between the degree of delegation of authority and the degree of decision-making among the principals of public secondary schools, and this is supported by the value of the correlation coefficient, where it reached (0.673). Based on the results of the research, the researcher recommended the most important of them: The study concluded some recommendations, the most important of which were: - Training courses shall be held for high school female principals in Jeddah to train them on the delegation, its foundations, its components, and its importance. - Providing female principals with financial and moral incentives to motivate them to make delegation of their authorities, which creates a second tire in the chain of command in the school.