Editorial

Citation

Roberts, B. (2013), "Editorial", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 27 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijem.2013.06027baa.001

Editorial

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Educational Management, Volume 27, Issue 2.

In this second issue of 2013 I would first like to make reference to my visit for the first time to the ECER conference, Cadiz, Spain in September in 2012. This was a good opportunity for the publishers to exhibit educational journals and books to a large and diverse academic audience, many of whom were from Scandinavia and the UK although very many others were represented. The interaction with the delegates was fruitful and it was especially interesting to meet Dr Stefan Brauckmann of the DIPF (Centre for Research on Educational Governance) in Germany for the first time.

The authors in this issue hail from Israel, Nepal, Ireland, Australia, UK, Dubai, Kuwait, and Greece. The first paper is from Adam Nir of The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, with Bhoraj Kofle of Nepal on “The effects of political stability on public education quality”. The study reveals that political stability plays a major role in explaining the survival rate in education when used as a single predictor or when introduced in the analysis with GDP per capita.

The next work is from Barbara Flood and four colleagues from Dublin City University on the topic of burnout in Irish academics specifically in accounting and finance fields. The results show that the majority of those in the study experience low or average burnout with regard to emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation, but encounter a high degree of burnout when it comes to personal accomplishment. Whilst none of the background or work variables in the study explain variation in the levels of burnout experienced, some aspects of job satisfaction are significant predictors of the three dimensions of burnout. The paper has implications for wider fields of educational academic staff than those covered in the study.

Stephen Wilkins of the University of Bath and Melodena Stephens Balakrishnan of the University of Wollongong in Dubai offer research on “Assessing student satisfaction in transnational higher education”. The authors state that there exists in literature little research into student experiences in transnational higher education – the study seeks to identify the determinants of student satisfaction at international branch campuses in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). They found that levels of student satisfaction at UAE branch campuses were generally high. The factors that were most influential in determining whether or not a student at a UAE branch campus was satisfied overall with their institutions, were quality of lecturers, quality and availability of resources, and effective use of technology.

In the next submission, Ahmad Alfadly of the Arab Open University, Kuwait studied the efficiency of the learning management system (LMS) at the university (AOU) as a communication tool in an e-learning system. The integration of a LMS at the AOU, Kuwait opens up new possibilities for online interaction between teachers and students. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of the LMS at AOU as a communication tool in the e-learning system and to find the best automated solution possible. The study found that the majority of students welcomed the system at their university. However, there are many reasons why LMSs have failed, including the high cost of technology, poor decisions, competition, and the absence of appropriate (or any) business strategies, especially market assessment of consumer demand.

In the final paper Jasmin Sarafidou and Georgios Chatziioannidis of the University of Thessaly, Greece, offer a piece on “Teacher participation in decision making and its impact on school and teachers”. The paper examines teacher involvement in different domains of decision making in Greek primary schools and explores associations with school and teacher variables. The multidimensional approach to measuring teacher participation in decision making revealed quite high actual participation in decisions concerning students’ and teachers’ issues, but low levels of participation in managerial decisions. The discrepancy between the actual and desired levels of participation showed significant deprivation across all decision-making domains. Greater participation in decisions concerning teacher issues and lower levels of deprivation of participating in managerial issues were associated with teachers’ perceptions of better leadership and higher collegiality in schools. The strongest predictor of both teachers’ sense of efficacy and job satisfaction was their participation in decisions concerning teacher issues.

Brian Roberts