Leadership for Social Justice, Annotated Bibliography Example

Ali Al-Sahel, R.( 2005). Teachers’ Perception of Underachievement in Elementary Schools in Kuwait. School Psychology International 26(4), 478-493.

This article discusses teachers’ perception of underachievement problems in elementary schools in Kuwait. Teachers concluded that most students who were underachieving were experiencing problems at home. Teachers also believed that those students were also having difficulty with reading and writing skills. These children rarely completed homework and spent classroom time daydreaming. Teachers did not feel that one gender was lower achieving than another. The school system in Kuwait consists of three stages: elementary, intermediate, and secondary.  Each stage takes place for a total of four years. The author noted two strengths of the Kuwait educational system: first, the educational committee creates and improves curricula each year; secondly, the Ministry of Education has established protocols to regulate how teachers may punish students. Yet, the main limitation of the educational system was the structure. Because the system is divided in four year intervals, students leave elementary and begin intermediate at the age of ten. As a result, young children and teenagers are in the same school. With such a large age difference, school officials are not able to adequately address students’ psychological, mental, and physical needs. Several factors played a role in teachers’ perception of underachievement. Those factors were: negative expectations and teacher’s gender. The two aims of the study were to explore teachers’ awareness and perception of underachievement and to determine if a teacher’s perception was influenced by the teacher’s gender, years teaching, and school location.

A total of five hundred and twenty teachers participated in the study. The participants completed a questionnaire that consisted of 23 questions. The questionnaire was written in Arabic. The questions were divided into four sub-groups. Category 1 dealt with the teacher’s beliefs and opinions about underachievement. The second category dealt with problems associated with underachievement. The third category dealt with the techniques that teachers used to try to remedy underachievement. The fourth category dealt with the underlying problems that student may have when they are not achieving on level.

The results indicated that about 66 percent of teachers have positive attitudes towards the issue. About 73 percent of the teachers felt that working with underachieving students was not a waste of time. Amazingly, nearly 95 percent of the teachers believed that underachieving students can achieve. Daydreaming, according to 43 percent of teachers, is a major cause of underachievement. The overall results indicated that most teachers in Kuwait believe that family factors are the root cause of underachievement and the best way to improve underachievement is through rewards and attention.

Awadh Alharbi Michael Middleton (2011). The relationship between academic library usage and educational performance in Kuwait. Library Management, 33 (1/2), 86 – 94.

This article examines the role of the university library in regards to the mission and philosophy of the institution. Many studies have conveyed that library usage affects educational performance in a positive way. However, the authors believed that in order to increase achievement, the factors that lead to library usage must be better understood. First, the authors conveyed the importance of the library environment. The library should be quiet and comfortable. It should also be open hours that are suitable for the students. The purpose of this study was to determine the perception of library users and how that influences their educational achievement. The study involved 792 student participants, 121 administrators, and three university libraries in Kuwait. These participants were among 142 academic fields within the universities. The information was gathered through validated questionnaires. The questionnaires were originally in English, but later translated into Arabic in hopes of overcoming language barriers of the participants. The independent variables were: IT services, collection, facilities, and equipment, training and library environment. The library environment was highest on the priority list among users of the institution’s library. However, training was the lowest on the list of priorities. The results of the study indicate that for the majority of students and administrators, the library does not play an important role in their success at the institution. The authors recommended that a variety of IT rooms be offered to meet the needs of both students and professors. Having coffee shops or common rooms would be a great asset beyond the basic library services to entice patrons to the library.

Bogotch, I. & Reyes-Guerra, D. (2014). Leadership for justice: Social justice pedagogies. RIEJS, 3(2), 33-58.

This article sought to determine if there was a correlation between educational leadership and practices of social justice. For years, researchers have been trying to define educational leadership for social justice.  The author of this article examines how pedagogical approaches in teaching social justice have resulted in differing views of social justice.  Leadership during the current age of educational reform has gotten away from authoritarian behavior. Many people feel like less aggressive behaviors have caused many issues in the school systems. Leaders are being told to turn their schools around by eliminating obstacles and restructuring the learning environment. The author discusses how pedagogies are often replaced with policies. With that in mind, curriculum and instruction should have three goals in mind: meeting the achievement levels of all students, produce productive members of society, and ensure academic success in conducive environments.  This article conveys that leadership for social justice must go passed schools into the communities of societies.  Students are taught one concept in the classroom, but once they enter the outside world, they are faced with so many contradictories.

Nadeem A. Burney , Jill Johnes , Mohammed Al-Enezi & Marwa Al-Musallam (2013) The efficiency of public schools: the case of Kuwait, Education Economics, 21:4, 360-379

This article investigated the efficiency of public schools in Kuwait. The study took place from 1999 through 2000 and 2004 through 2005. Information will be gathered after receiving written permission from the Ministry of Education.  All data will be collected in the forms of text, event description, and comments by individual subjects. The interview method will be used guided by the researcher. All questions will be driven by the aims and objectives of the research to ensure that subjects are descriptive and explanative. Pen, paper, and audio recording will be used. All data collected will be kept under lock and key and properly disposed of after the conclusion of this research.  One distinctive conclusion that was noted is that all girls’ schools have higher efficiency than all boys’ schools. Over the years, the population in Kuwait has grown; consequently, more money resources have been allotted to the public education. To improvement overall performance, authorities have adopted many reformation strategies. However, the management of Kuwait schools is still under the control of government and school officials have very little power.  The study took place in two stages: first, technical allocations estimates were obtained. Next, some possible determinants of school efficiency were studied.  The researchers found that geographic location might affect the efficiency of schools. For example, funding varied from district to district, which means some districts did not have all the resources needed to adequately teach students.  Another cause of deficiency in schools was the size of the teaching staff. Some schools had smaller pupil teacher ratio than others and had teacher assistants in most classrooms. The next determinant was teacher’s salary. In Kuwait society, the salary of teachers reflects the quality of teaching. Within districts, there was no commonality among teacher salaries. Finally, the gender of schools affected efficiency scores. The most significant result was the impact of salary of school efficiency. Teachers with less experience and qualifications are paid less; these teachers are often less equipped to reach their students.  The authors suggested that since all girls’ schools are efficient, more investigation should be completed to study the management of such schools. The strategies learned can be implemented to all boys’ schools.

Saban, A.(2003). Turkish profile of prospective elementary school teaches and their views of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19(10) 829-846.

This article studied the characteristics and perceptions of new teachers entering the elementary field in Turkey.  The information was collected using questionnaires with fixed-responses-open ended questions were administered to all new elementary level teachers. The study took place during the 2000 through 2002 academic years on the campus of Selcuk University. The most significant difference that was found is that male and female students had different perspectives of the teaching profession.  The researcher pointed out that students have a perception of what a good teacher should be based upon their observations as a student. However, these perceptions can be both negative and positive, but the goal of the university is to positively change those perspectives. A questionnaire was the primary instrument used to collect data. The questionnaire consisted of two parts. The first part included only four fixed-response questions that pertained gender, age, secondary schooling, and socioeconomic status of the participants. The second part was composed of open-ended questions that were optional. The results indicated that there were no significant differences between students and their demographic information, but that male and female differ at the 5 percent level. Both male and female students shared common themes of: “The themes running through the written comments of these students can be classified as: (1) a love of children, (2) a devotion to the teaching profession, (3) caring for individual needs and interests, and (4) caring for the well-being of all students”.

Scott C. Bauer Ira E. Bogotch, (2006). Modeling site-based decision making. Journal of Educational Administration, 44(5), 446 – 470

This article sought to measure variables related to site-based management. The researcher examined what practices were most essential in promoting effective leadership. A path model was computed to identify the relationships between supports received by SBM schools. The author examined: team communication and decision making practices. School based management is an approach that will increase the authority and responsibility of individual school sites. By using this approach, officials are provided with mechanisms that will enhance educational outcomes within the school community. To ensure that the process is effective in the systematic approach must organize in such a way that change is feasible. The implementation must include four key resources: Power, Information, Knowledge/Skills, and rewards based upon performance.  Employees must obtain proper knowledge in order to be able to successfully manage their school system. First, employees must be trained to expand job related skills in order to widen their perceptive of their organization so that they will be willing to change in order for the program to be successful. Secondly, the employees must be trained in teamwork skills, communication, and decision making in order to participate in change efficiently. Training should be done primarily on school sites. The district should pay special attention to expanding teachers’ knowledge about the instructional practices and programmatic changes that will occur due to the changes in power. Any district implementing SBM should offer a variety of trainings for employees to help support the changes. Drawing upon the knowledge of the educators is not common practice within most districts. The results concluded that site-based team results were influenced by various factors, but communication was the most important. Yet, a plethora of external factors may affect SBM.