Renata Relja

Managing the School: Principals as Managers

Vican, Alfirevic and Relja present the history and an overview of educational management/administration as a separate and applicative field addressing the specific issues of managing an educational institution. This is contextualized in terms of educational objectives to be realized, as well as boundaries set by educational policies and the ‘educational market’, either explicit or implicit. From the pragmatic point of view, the field is explicated by referring to principals’ activities and roles, as well as their influence to the ‘fit’ achieved by the school and its environment. The Anglo-American roots and the emerging ‘regional knowledge-bases’ and practices of educational management are discussed.

School Effectiveness and Educational Management: Editorial

This chapter provides a brief overview of the entire Palgrave Macmillan volume dedicated to school-effectiveness and educational-management research, focused on South-Eastern European research and its public-policy agenda.

Principals’ Educational Leadership

The decentralisation of the educational system, as demonstrated by an increased autonomy of schools regarding the content and methods of teaching, is an ever-more present practice in developed countries. It is given significant consideration in South-East European countries following their abandonment of the socialist regime. Principals’ vocational training is often obligatory in these countries, although discrepancies are emphasised between education and modern-leadership requirements, as is the case with the importance of introducing principal licensure. Efficiency of leadership which attends to teachers’ needs is observed, and enables teachers to participate in decision-making. South-East European countries’ teachers are seen as participating less in school management compared to more developed countries, and as having less possibilities for the vocational development required for informed responses.

School Effectiveness and Educational Management: Toward a New Research and Public-Policy Agenda

Alfirevic, Burusic, Pavicic and Relja draw on the theoretical discussions provided in the previous chapters of the Palgrave Macmillan volume dedicated to school-effectiveness and educational-management research. They identify the weaknesses of the existing knowledge base and identify the challenges for future research and the public-policy agenda in South-East Europe and beyond.

School management innovation and principal support systems: toward the agenda for Croatian school reform

Abstract In this paper, we discuss if the current educational management practices in Croatian schools are in line with the constructivist prescriptions and what is their relationship with the available principal support tools. Our research is based on previous empirical results, related to the perceived needs of school principals for training and support. Namely, in 2011, the surveyed school principals required additional competencies to be developed in the fields of school marketing and management. At that time, the primary school principals are being surveyed, related to their managerial practices and the obtained results are interpreted in the context of the already announced, comprehensive school reform in Croatia, designed according to the constructivist educational theories. The empirical results demonstrate that the managerial practices of Croatian primary schools are not compatible with the constructivist theory of education. One group of principals (27.6%) have adequate delegation skills and focus on the specific fields of project management and school marketing, while the majority demonstrate one (or several) forms of ineffective practices. There is limited empirical evidence of the statistically significant differences in the usage of principal support tools/approaches, although the specific usage patterns have been identified.