Selecting Senior Leaders in the Ministry Of Education According To Strategic Leadership and Experience of Other Countries

By

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Background of the study1

Leadership in Educational Organizations2

Research Aims and Objectives2

Aims2

Objectives3

Problem Statement3

Research Questions4

Dissertation Layout4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW6

Qualities of Leadership6

The changing educational environment7

The strategy of learning communities8

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY9

Introduction9

Research methods9

Selection and Number of Cases10

Secondary research method10

Ethical consideration10

Limitations11

REFERENCES12

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

Leadership is a subject that has generated interest and speculation among people for centuries. Researchers have included several common components in their explanations of leadership in different contexts, including that leadership involves a leader, a follower, an organization, and an environment. From this foundation, researchers over the past 100 years have sought to define leadership and have formulated theories conceptualizing and explaining leadership (Bush Middlewood 2010 ). In 1911, Frederick Taylor published his foundational book on Scientific Management, which marked the formal beginning of the study of leadership in organizations. Since that time, the understanding and application of leadership has evolved through different eras to address new questions and to respond to different emerging leadership contexts. In the early eras of the study of leadership, research questions focused on how to identify and develop effective leaders.

As the leadership field developed and the complexities of leadership emerged, research began to examine many additional factors that contributed to effective leadership. In the last two decades (1990-2010), as the global and external organizational environments became increasingly dynamic, leadership research and literature has evolved once again to understand how effective leaders promote and facilitate change. Leaders in many organizational contexts have been informed by this leadership literature, mostly grounded in the field of business, to improve their leadership and improve their organizations (Bryman 2006 ). One of these organizational contexts is educational leadership—the leadership of educational institutions. However, given that the external environment of educational institutions has generally remained stable longer than business environments, educational leadership did not experience the challenges of or need for dynamic organizational change as soon as leadership in the business context. Yet, beginning in about 1990, education's external environment began to shift more rapidly and create new pressures for dynamic organizational changes. These changes created the catalyst for educational leadership to specifically examine how educational leaders could be more effective in ministry of education.

Leadership in Educational Organizations

The understanding of leadership within the field of educational leadership has generally been influenced by and mirrored the general base of evolving leadership literature. The influence of the leadership literature in education was particularly clear in the earlier eras while the external environments were stable. However, when the external business environments began to change and leaders in these contexts had to respond respectively, educational leaders were generally still able to continue with the effective leadership strategies that worked in stable environments. When the educational environment began to change more rapidly, educational leaders responded by leading change through the development of learning communities (Wilcox 2009 ).

Research Aims and Objectives

Aims

The purpose of this research study is to find out the leadership challenges in ...