Session Information
26 SES 13 B, The Imposition of Government Education Policy Initiatives and School Enactment: Responses in Mediterranean Countries
Symposium
Contribution
In recent years, the Israeli government has introduced several major reforms into its educational system that increased market forces, standardization and accountability. These reforms aimed at reconstructing the principal's and the teacher's roles and at changing traditional forms of school organization in terms of school members' time, scope of work, and nature of tasks. Thus, teachers have been requested to work longer hours in schools, report on their work to different constituencies, and meet new instructional standards. Principals have been expected to appraise teachers' work, encourage their staff to participate in professional development programs, and report on the school's activities to many constituencies. These reforms have led, among other things, to greater levels of principal workload and work dissatisfaction. Through semi-structured interviews conducted among 50 elementary and secondary school principals, 10 schoolteachers, and 10 supervisors in Israel, it was found that school principals have to deal with complex, varied role tasks which, in turn, lead to a lack of sufficient time as well as to their inability to handle these tasks thoroughly and profoundly. Among the factors leading to increased principal workload are the need to respond to multiple stakeholders, political pressures, current regime of exams, complex human resource management in school, and the like. The principal tends to cope with the stressful situation by ignoring some policy directives, delegating authority to other rule incumbents in school, and planning their workday more effectively than before.
References
Darling-Hammond, L & Rothman, R (2011) (Eds.) , Teacher and Leader Effectiveness in High-Performing Education Systems .Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education and Stanford, CA: Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Garratt, D., & Forrester, G. (2012). Educational policy unraveled. London: Continuum. Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2011). Globalizing education policy. London: Routledge. Bernhardt, V. (2004). Data analysis for continuous school improvement. Larchmont: Eye on Education.
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