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A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITIES- INCORPORATING PERSONNEL FROM OUT SIDE THE FIELD OF EDUCATION INTO EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP POSITIONS
Kfar Shmaryhu Hof Hasharon School (ISRAEL)
About this paper:
Appears in: ICERI2013 Proceedings
Publication year: 2013
Page: 5166 (abstract only)
ISBN: 978-84-616-3847-5
ISSN: 2340-1095
Conference name: 6th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
Dates: 18-20 November, 2013
Location: Seville, Spain
Abstract:
The challenge to find and train educational leaders who will translate their commitment into a vision, raise standards and aspirations across school, community and society is a worldwide challenge.
But where will these educational leaders come from? What mission will they be qualified to accomplish? What challenges will they be competent to face? One way of responding to the challenge is by re-training and developing qualified people within the education field and beyond. But can changing competencies, developing abilities and capabilities through appropriate training, qualify persons from non-education field for the assignment of school leaders as professional experts?
The acceptance of incorporating personnel from out side the field of education is a revolutionary step, which opens a window of opportunity. Since up to now this approach was not a recognized possibility, and cases of a structured institutionalized re-training for personnel from out side the field of education for educational leadership have been rare.
A characteristic of the contemporary employment environment is career mobility, either within the same line of occupation or between professions, especially at managerial level. Some of these career changes are characterized as a “mid-life changes of career”. Change is seen as a chance to restructure professional life and for others as an expected development.
Sergiovanni (1992 and 1995) commented on the fact that since school principals require qualifications and qualities different from the past, there is a need to try and recruit principals elsewhere, indeed from outside the educational world. Schoolteachers are one source for school leadership, but the changing elements in educational leadership raise the need for a new source to be found.
This change in the school world goes hand in hand with Handy's (1995) perception that "new organizations need new people to run them, people with new skills, new capacities and different career patterns” (p.119); people with a multi item professional portfolio (p.148-9) who have gained their abilities by experiencing a variety of jobs or occupations and are able to implement their abilities with the proper training into new fields. Regular teachers do not fulfil this pre-requisite and there is a tendency to look at school not as a "new organization" but rather as an old one with some modifications. This reason leads to regular teachers being regarded as the main source for principals. Here the willingness of the National Educational leaders (Sweden U.S.A, Brittan Israel )to accept candidates from elsewhere is a response to and an understanding of Handy's (1995) perception of school as a new organization needing new people in leadership roles. In short people with new skills, capacities, and caricaturized by different career patterns
The presentation will refer to both incorporating and training of teachers and principals, from outside into the world of education. Once this initiative is open to a wider range of candidates, it requires for a completely new/original and different concept of training to be developed.

References:
Handy, C. (1995) The Age of Unreason, London: Arrow Business Books
Sergiovanni, J. T. (1992) Moral Leadership, San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.
Sergiovanni, J. T. (1995) The Principalship: A Reflective Practice Perspective, (3rd edn) Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Keywords:
School principalship, effective principalship, emotional literacy, management, leadership, pedagogy.