atiye mansouri aval; rezvan Hosseingholizadeh; Somaie Ebrahimy Kooshak Mahdi
Abstract
This study was conducted toexplore and describe the characteristics and practices used by successful school principals in Mashhad city. The qualitative case study method was adopted. Participants included four principals of successful elementary schools in Mashhad city. In order to collect data, semi-structured ...
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This study was conducted toexplore and describe the characteristics and practices used by successful school principals in Mashhad city. The qualitative case study method was adopted. Participants included four principals of successful elementary schools in Mashhad city. In order to collect data, semi-structured interviews were conducted. To analyze data, Strauss and Corbin’s open and axial coding technique was used.Findings showed that the most important personal and professional characteristics of the principals included: playing the role of leader, constructive relationships with the staff, principals’ command of school affairs, principals’ self-development (attempts for professional learning), and achievement of administrative success. Furthermore, the participating principals often made use of the following for managing their schools: planning and goal setting strategies, division of labor, teacher co-operation and involvement in school affairs, creating a friendly and positive climate at school, utilizing parents and colleagues’ potentials, encouragement and appreciation of teachers, supervising and evaluating teachers’ performance, concerning on improving students learning, improving teaching through teachers’ professional learning and development, focusing on students’ life skills and conflict management. In doing this, they also faced important challenges include concerning financing school expenses, high workload pressures, the high number of students, and poor class management. This is while some prominent features of successful managers in international experiences include defining the mission, vision, and values of the school, concerning student and support, equality and cultural accountability, the participation of the local community, attention to the curriculum, and the use of a competent teacher were not observed in this study.In general, according to the findings of this study, playing a leadership role, constructive human relationships with staff, principal control over school affairs, principal self-development (striving for professional learning), administrative success, planning and goal setting, division of labor, cooperation and participation of teachers in school affairs, creating a friendly and calm climate of school, utilizing the capacities of parents and teachers in school, encouraging and appreciating teachers, monitoring and evaluating teachers' performance, concerns about improving students' learning, improving education through learning and developing teachers' professions, students’ life skills, conflict management, concerns about school funding, high levels of administrative workload, large number of students, and poor classroom management are also international experiences that are consistent with the characteristics of studied successful principals in this research.
educational technology
Seyyed Abbas Razavi; Ahmad Mansouri; Sakineh Shahi
Abstract
The aim of the present study was to investigate the status of communication and information technology(ICT) application in the teaching-learning environment of elementary smart schools at Shush City. A mix-method was used in this research. This study was conducted in the boy elementary smart schools ...
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The aim of the present study was to investigate the status of communication and information technology(ICT) application in the teaching-learning environment of elementary smart schools at Shush City. A mix-method was used in this research. This study was conducted in the boy elementary smart schools of Shush City. In the quantitative section, Due to the small size of the school teaching staff, all teachers participated in the study(N=70). The quantitative data were collected using a researcher- made questionnaire. The validity of questionnaire was confirmed by specialists in education. The reliability was estimated by Cronbach alpha (α=0.94). Also in quantitative section, the descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation) were used and in the inferential statistics the one-sample t test was used to analyze data. In the qualitative section, 10 principals and 10 teachers were interviewed. For analyzing qualitative data, open and axial coding was used. The findings showed that the status of ICT application in the 5 components of (i) use of electronic content (multimedia) by teachers, (ii) designing an electronic content (multimedia), (iii) the role of students in preparation of electronic content (multimedia), (iv) use of ICT to continuing the teaching-learning process(v) encouraging the students to deploy ICT to learn deeply and widely by teachers; was lower than the desirable level. The qualitative results identified important obstacles such as: (a) lack of sufficient knowledge and skills on the part of teachers, students and families (b) cultural, attitudinal and motivational problems related to teachers, families and students, (c) problems related to infrastructure, facilities and financial resources, and (d) the curricular problems.
