Y. Mehralizadeh; H. Sepacy; F. Atashfeshan
Abstract
School- Based Management (SBM), rooted in the theoretical idea of participation, decentralization, authority delegation, and competition, believes that all school teachers, pupils, families and other stakeholders in the school should be involved in the process of school decision making. Bearing this ...
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School- Based Management (SBM), rooted in the theoretical idea of participation, decentralization, authority delegation, and competition, believes that all school teachers, pupils, families and other stakeholders in the school should be involved in the process of school decision making. Bearing this in mind, with help of Lawler’ (1992) theory and other researchers’ views, the problem of SBM was addressed. The main aims of this study were to recognize major barriers of SBM in Iran, particularly in public secondary schools of Ahvaz. The main questions were: 1) How much do teachers, principals and LEA authorities know about SBM’ 2) How much teachers, principals and LEA authorities are agreed about SBM? 3) To what extent is application of SBM necessary? 4) To what extent SBM is feasible in Ahvaz secondary schools? 5) What are the barriers and difficulties facing SBM? 6) What are the weaknesses and strengths of SBM? By using a questionnaire and holding interviews data were collected from secondary schools. On a 1-5 Likert- type scale the respondents’ mean scores were as follows: a) Knowledge about SBM, 3.09; b) agreement among respondents concerning decentralization and SBM, 3.49; c) importance of the application of SBM, 3.51; d) feasibility of application of the present SBM model, 2.51. Five factors were discovered to be the main barriers of SBM implementations, i.e: 1) political and power factor with an average of 3.80 (out of 5); 2) Structural and facilities factor, (3.79); 3) principals’ and teachers’ knowledge and information factor (3.72); 4) socio- cultural factor (3.52); and 5) management factor (3.24). It is concluded that the SBM scheme has not been developed in a suitable way and requires to be reconsidered by education policy makers. Suggestions are made toward smoothing the implementation of SBM in Ahvaz.
