Realising the Vision of Technology Integration: A Case Study of K-12 Private Schools in the United Arab Emirates

Heralded by the release of government policies such as Vision 2021, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has joined the worldwide impetus for the integration of Information Communications Technologies (ICTs) into its K-12 education system as a central plank of reforms to its economy and education system. This presents challenges for schools in both public and private sectors in the UAE as they strive to adhere to national government and local education authority guidelines and standards for educational innovation. Whilst the UAE Government has invested heavily to support technology integration in public schools, private schools must fund their own technology integration initiatives. In a context of strong growth in the private K-12 sector and reported high teacher turnover rates, private school leadership faces particular challenges related to decision-making about investment in suitable technologies and support systems, including teachers‖ professional development. This chapter reports some preliminary findings from a qualitative case study investigating the teacher, school and system-wide factors impacting on technology integration in selected private schools located in four Emirates. The study combines policy analysis with semi-structured interviews of a purposive sample of private school K-12 educators to yield a detailed understanding of the challenges faced by private sector UAE schools in implementing technology integration in response to national government policy directives. The findings will inform the development of an implementation framework providing guidance regarding critical success factors for effective technology integration in private schools with particular implications for school leadership and teachers‖ professional learning.

A Discussion of Servant and Ethical Leadership Styles

With an increasing number of studies on leadership, the concepts of ethics and servant-hood occupy a greater presence in educational management literature. Today‖s school leader could achieve more recognition, become more credible and legitimate in their schools, with their stand in ethical dilemmas and welcoming the needs of the teachers and learners in the first place. It is believed that servant leadership presents organizations with a chance to attain their goals in ethical leadership practices. When the literature is examined, there seems a tendency to assume servant leadership as an influential factor in ethical outcomes. Thus, this chapter will seek to examine the related terms in ethical and servant leadership, the link between both leadership styles and will explore conceptual and empirical findings related to both leadership styles. The chapter is focused on studies in business and education settings, to give more comprehensive idea to the readers on servant and ethical leadership styles.

Integrating Universal Design for Learning in Schools: Implications for Teacher Training, Leadership and Professional Development

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has gained momentum in K-12 education over the last decade. It enables educators to go beyond deficit model approaches to inclusion, and offers sustainable practices for the inclusion of diverse learners through intentional design for instruction and assessment. Promotion of UDL has taken many forms, from provincial projects to school communities of practice. A challenge remains, however, when comes time to widen implementation efforts. There remain specific challenges with regards to the scaling up of implementation strategies across schools and school boards. The process of management of change towards wider UDL buy-in is complex and leads to a necessary questioning of current professional development practices for in-service teachers, and of pre-service teaching in its present format. This chapter will explore these contemporary issues, as well as the wider reflection around leadership that must accompany this process.

Educational Management vis-à-vis Educational Leadership

This chapter offers the general concepts, definitions, characteristics, brief history and theoretical framework of educational management in comparison to educational leadership. It deliberates the diverse modern educational leadership and management models, and how they might be applied within different educational situations. It is also an introduction to the concept of educational change, organizational change and the role of educational leadership in change. In addition, it will highlight the most important strategies in managing change, the challenges it faces and ways to overcome resistance to change. This chapter will be for researchers and leaders in the field of education, whether they are school principals, experts or school senior teachers and all those interested in leadership matters from practitioners of both students and administrators.

Developing Leadership Skills in the Classroom

There have been calls for pre-service teachers to be equipped with leadership skills. The 21st century urges schools and colleges to prepare the next generation of teachers to have leadership skills and to foster these skills among their students in the classroom. Pre-service teachers need to be equipped with leadership skills to be capable of making real changes in society. This study was conducted to examine to what extent pre-service teachers in Bahrain Teachers College possess leadership skills and the strategies faculty ought to use to improve those skills. A validated survey consisting of eight categories of leadership skills was used to collect the data. The sample consisted of 177 students from different majors (Arabic and Islamic, English, Maths and Science, and Cycle One). The results showed that pre-service teachers possess leadership skills and confirmed developing these skills in the classroom. The pre-service teachers enhanced their leadership skills in planning, problem-solving, self, and other management/controlling, communication, teamwork, decision-making, motivating, evaluation. Furthermore, the participants identified teaching strategies such as group presentation, group work, project-based learning, and problem-based learning as the strategies used by faculty in teaching, which they said facilitates the development of leadership skills in the classroom.

Research on Student Ratings of Instruction: Implications for Teachers and Professional Development Programs

Evaluations of teaching effectiveness have taken many forms over the years, but none have been as persistent or commonplace as student ratings of instruction (SRI). SRIs have become a fundamental component of evaluating faculty effectiveness in higher education. Support for SRIs comes from end-users of the data who believe that students are uniquely positioned to evaluate faculty based on their experiences and perceptions of the instruction they received. Pragmatically, institutions tend to rely on SRI results for teacher evaluations because they reason that students learn more from faculty who are highly rated by students. However, to what degree is this enthusiasm warranted? Are SRIs reliable, valid, or trustworthy at all? The main goals of this chapter are to present an overview of SRI research, explain ways of preparing students for SRIs (both formative and summative), and present methods for teachers to use when examining the SRI data. To these ends, this chapter will briefly review the SRI research, including evidence for the value of SRI data despite commonly held misconceptions about the possible influence of factors such as class size, GPA, gender, and professor rank. Attention is then given to understanding how to improve responses to questions that tap constructs students are unlikely to be readily able to respond to, such as “Did this course improve your critical thinking skills?” and to general agreement questions about learning, such as “The pacing of the materials was appropriate.” Techniques for interpreting constructed responses from students, such as “Stop lecturing!” are also provided. Finally, the paper moves on to highlighting the connection between collecting and acting on formative classroom surveys that support positive transfer to end-of-term SRIs and offers methods to analyze SRIs individually as well as outlining an approach to teacher development with SRI data and teacher-centered consultations by PD programs.

Innovating Teacher Pre-Service Education in Bahrain: An International Partnership Model

This chapter reports on the process used to develop a revised curriculum for initial teacher education in the Kingdom of Bahrain, using this case-study institution to reflect on the evolving nature and purpose of teacher preparation in the twenty-first century (McMahon, Forde & Dickson, 2015), and the drivers and impediments in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to ensuring that teacher education programs keep abreast of wider social change. The chapter, therefore, contributes to the burgeoning literature analyzing the worldwide evolution of teacher education (Tan, Liu & Low, 2017). The chapter begins by explaining the reasons underpinning a proposed revision of the Bachelors in Education (BEd) programme. It next reports on the process that was adopted to undertake the curriculum revision, arguing that the concepts of ―policy borrowing‖ and ―policy learning‖ are both problematic, and suggesting that these should be replaced by the idea of ―institutional partners‖. The chapter subsequently examines how potential tensions between local and global practices were leveraged in the revision through this partnership model. This case study in the development of a pre-service teacher education curriculum is of interest to international scholars as it explores the place of teacher education in both driving and reflecting social change, and it raises questions about how competing conceptualizations of teacher education reflect contrasting visions for society (Säfström & Saeverot, 2017). Interweaving sociological and philosophical perspectives on teacher education and development, this chapter will be of interest to curriculum developers, teacher educators, and teacher practitioners alike.

Professional Learning Communities Approach: Implications for Policy and Practice

Over the last decades researching and developing teachers‖ professional development frameworks and practices had underwent a paradigm shift. This shift was driven by the complexities of teaching and learning requirements, an increased necessity for reforming educational systems, and more need for accountability and quality outcomes (Vescio, Ross & Adams, 2007). The main feature of these new approaches is that they shift professional development beyond merely focusing on a teacher‖s simple attainment of knowledge and skills to a framework that requires teachers to deeply reflect on their own practices, to innovate new classroom pedagogy, and authentic understanding and expectations of student outcomes (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995).These new approaches of teacher professional development include a variety of practitioner-based activities such as: peer observation and assessment, working cooperatively on shared projects such as curriculum development or strategy planning, engaging in lesson study groups, conducting action research, and participating in individually guided activities such as online distant learning or academic higher educational programs. When teachers engage in professional development activities that entail sharing questions, finding answers, experimenting practical actions and engaging in a productive dialogue, this may promote their sense of belonging as knowledge workers in their professional learning communities, and this would support them in achieving their learning and teaching goals which would reflect at the end on their students‖ knowledge, skills and values (Al-Mahdi, 2019a, Al-Mahdi, 2019b, Al-Mahdi & Al-Wadi, 2015). This chapter aims to explore professional learning community as an innovate approach in teachers‖ professional development and discuss possible ways for implementing it in Bahrain Teachers College, University of Bahrain. The following sections will focus on: defining professional learning community, characteristics of a professional learning community, leading professional learning community, international research on professional learning communities, professional learning communities research in GCC countries, and reflections on the educational context in Bahrain and implications for policy and practice.

Will the Increasingly Globalized Knowledge Base for Educational Leadership Increase the Professional Status of the Field?

Purpose: This chapter examines the global applicability of the knowledge base in the field of educational leadership from the lens of occupational professionalization. Design/Approach/Methods: Abbott‖s (1988) model of field professionalization is applied to the work of educational leadership as it pertains to a potentially universal knowledge base for efficacious practice. Findings: The knowledge base for the field of educational leadership has already demonstrated international appeal. But from a theoretical perspective, bolstered by still early empirical findings, the work of educational leadership will struggle to reach the purest form of sociological professionalism. The work of educational leadership is often tied to social and political values that do not persist across international borders. Originality/Value: As empirical research in the field of educational leadership grows on an international level, the field must articulate how such knowledge can be utilized in policy and academic preparation programs.

The Leadership Practices of the South African Primary School Principals in Promoting Shared Decision Making

Decision-making is a very critical aspect of management in the schooling environment. The purpose of this chapter was to investigate the role of primary school principals in engaging role players (particularly teachers) in decision-making in South Africa. Before the democratic dispensation in South Africa, decision-making was predominantly top down. This means that school leadership and principals in particular, made most decisions on their own and teachers were expected to implement these decisions without asking questions. The current study was conducted in the Waterberg Education Department, which is one of the education districts in South Africa. A descriptive research method was used and one hundred and seventy questionnaires were administered to teachers. The study revealed that the majority of principals do promote shared decision-making. This is demonstrated by the fact that the findings further indicate that principals create opportunities for decision-making, they provide feedback and expect engagement of the feedback and allow the views of stakeholders in the work allocation process.