The Mauritius Institute Of Education On Teachers Education Essay

The Mauritius Institute Of Education On Teachers Education EssayEducation has always been among the top priorities of each presidential term into power. In Mauritius, grooming was decl atomic number 18d free after the country gained independence from the British in 1968. Since then, every child of the country had the opportunity to go to naturalise and learn. After the decision of free cultivateing, the government found the need to train sufficient teachers to study in the schools in regions where there were growing demands. such training course is still being delivered by the Mauritius Institute of Education (MIE), which equip the future teachers with the inevitable skills to deliver a quality service.From the beginning of the 21st century much focus is put on the quality of teaching and attention in schools as it has been proven that schools with strong good codeal managing members outperformed other schools in the academic results. It has always been said that Discipli ne is the give away to success those schools realised it through hard and integrated pass water and achieved the break down results. Discipline is not cerebratet for pupils only and applies for teachers and flush top management of the schools. Certain schools even set codes of conduct for their teachers to abide too which provide a clear line of conduct pass judgment from the teachers. These codes of conduct ar simply moral principles of care, justice, critique, concern and corporation put into phrases which demonstrate the expected deportment of top management and teachers of the schools.Review of LiteratureThe significance of school management and leadinghipThere is huge concern in educational leadinghip in the early part of the 21st century. Since peck opine that the quality of leadership quarters a significant difference to school and student outcomes. In many move of the world, there is recognition that schools require effective leaders and managers if they are to provide the best possible education for their learners. As the global economy gathers pace, much governments are realising that their main assets are their people and that remaining, or becoming, competitive depends increasingly on the modernizement of a highly skilled workforce. This requires trained and committed teachers but they, in turn, need the leadership of highly effective principals and the support of other senior and middle managers (Bush, in press).The shape of deciding on the aims of the organization is at the heart of educational management. In most schools, aims are obstinate by the principal, often working in association with the senior management team and perhaps also with the school governing body. However, school aims are strongly influenced by pressures from the external environment, and particularly from the expectations of government, often uttered through legislation or formal policy statements. Schools may be left with the residual labor of inte rpreting external imperatives rather than determining aims on the basis of their own assessment of learner needs. The key issue here is the extent to which school managers are able to modify government policy and develop alternative entreees based on school-level values and quite a little. (Bush 20031-2).Distinction between school management and leadershipThe apprehension of management overlaps with that of leadership, a notion of great contemporary interest in most countries in the unquestionable world. However, despite these developments management remains the dominant term in the debate about aspects of school organisation.Cuban (1988) provides one of the clearest distinctions between leadership and management. He links leadership with change dapple management is clavern as a maintenance activity. He also stresses the importance of both dimensions of organisational activityBy leadership, I mean influencing others actions in achieving desirable ends. Leaders are people who s hape the goals, motivations, and actions of others. Frequently they initiate change to tump over existing and new goals Leadership takes much ingenuity, energy and skill.Managing is maintaining efficiently and effectively current organisational arrangements. While managing puff up often exhibits leadership skills, the overall function is toward maintenance rather than change. I prize both managing and leaders and attach no special value to either since different settings and times call for varied responses. daylight et al.s (2001) study of twelve effective schools leads to the discussion of several dilemmas in school leadership. One of these relates to management, which is linked to systems and paper, and leadership, which is sensed to be about the development of people. Bush (1998 2003) links leadership to values or purpose while management relates to implementation or technical issues.Leadership and management need to be given relate prominence if schools are to operate eff ectively and achieve their objectives. Leading and managing are distinct, but both are important The challenge of modern organizations requires the objective perspective of the manager as well as the flashes of vision and commitment wise leadership provides (Bolman Deal, 1997).Leithwood et al. (1999) make the important point that, in practice, principals in their day-to-day work are rarely aware of whether they are leading or managing they are simply carrying out their work on behalf of the school and its learners. However, the nature of that work should reflect the school context and, in particular, its needs at any one time. Underperforming schools may require a greater emphasis on basic management, fashioning the organization functional, rather than a visionary approach. This may involve ensuring regular and timely attendance by learners and educators, maintaining order and discipline in classrooms, and proving adequate resources to enable learning to take place. Once schools are functional, leaders can progress to developing vision, and outlining clear aims and policies, with the confidence that systems are in place to secure their implementation.Models of educational leadership and managementTheories of educational management for over 20 years (Bush, 1986 1995 2003) confine been presented and classified into sextette study models formal, collegial, political, subjective, ambiguity, and cultural (see Table 1).More recently, the author of these theories has reviewed concepts of educational leadership, notably in work undertaken for the position National College for School Leadership (Bush Glover, 2002). The literature on leadership has generated a number of alternative, and competing, models. Some writers have sought to cluster these various conceptions into a number of broad themes or types. The best known of these typologies is that by Leithwood, Jantzi and Steinbach (1999), who identified six models from their scrutiny of 121 articles in four int ernational journals. Bush and Glover (2002) extended this typology to eight models. These are among the nine leadership models shown in Table 1, alongside the management models mentioned previous.Table Typology of management and leadership models (Bush, 2003) concern modelLeadership modelFormalCollegialPoliticalSubjectiveAmbiguityCulturalmanagerialParticipativeTransformationalInter person-to-personTransactionalPost-modernContingencyMoralInstructionalhonorable motive morals refer to accepted norms and standards set by people considering them as good practices that one must follow in terms of behaviour and action. Ethics are frequently interchanged with other words such as values, morality, norms, principles and beliefs.According to Fraenkel (1973 49), values represent everything that people regard as important in life. They represent ideas on what is good, beautiful, effective and appropriate, . and therefore deserving having, worth doing, or worth striving to attain.Ethics and Va luesEthical framework for educationThe literature provides ve major paradigms used to analyse ethics and good dilemmas.Ethic of JusticeThe first type of ethic is the ethic of justice. This ethic often provides a basis for legal principles and ideals. Here, one may ask questions related to the regulation of law and the much abstract concepts of fairness, equity and justice. Starratt (1994) characterizes this ethic as originating in two schools of thought, one focus on the single as central and the other stressing society as its key component. The former chiefly involves the concept of social contract where the individual gives up certain rights for the good of society it includes the work of earlier philosophers including Hobbes and Kant and more(prenominal)(prenominal) contemporary scholars such as Lawrence Kohlberg and John Rawls. The latter conceptualizes justice as emerging from common understandings (Starratt, 1994, p. 50). Also writing within this paradigm is Kenneth S trike, a scholar who focuses on justice and its inuence on educational decision making by stressing concepts such as maximum benets and its relationship to respect for individual needs (Strike et al., 1998).Ethic of careSecond is an ethic of care. Out of the ethic of justice, the ethic of care shifts the emphasis on rights and laws to compassion and empathy. When the ethic of care is valued, school leaders emphasize relationships and connections in the decision-making process, rather than techniques and rules associated with a hierarchical approach. Noddings (2003) work is central to this ethic as are the writings of contemporary scholars including Gilligan (1982) who challenged Kohlbergs (1981) model of honorable decision making as relates to women and Sernak (1998) who contends that school leaders must balance power with caring.Ethic of recapCritique is the third ethic. Firmly rooted in critical theory, the ethic of critique seeks to challenge the placement quo and give voice to the marginalized sectors of society. Under the ethic of critique, theorists such as Apple (2000, 2001, 2003), Capper (1993), Foster (1986) and Giroux (1991, 2000, 2003), among others, ask us to not only rethink laws and justice, but also consider other concepts such as privilege, power, agriculture and language.Here, one might question who makes the laws, who benets from them, and how they apply to a variety of different people. Grogan (2003) and Marshall et al. (1989) join the ranks of these contemporary scholars who urge educators to consider issues of social justice in their honorable decision making.Ethic of the jobThe ethic of the profession (Shapiro and Stefkovich, 2001) calls for school leaders to consider paid and personal ethical principles and codes, as well as standards of the profession and individual skipper codes to create a dynamic model that places the best interests of the student as central. This paradigm considers the other frameworks as well as issues such a s what the profession expects, what happens when personal and professional ethics clash, and how community inuences educators ethical decision making. This paradigm of the profession moves beyond a multi-paradigmatic approach and strives to consider moral aspects unique to the profession and the questions that arise as educational leaders become more aware of their own personal and professional codes of ethics (Shapiro and Stefkovich, 2001, p. 18). As Walker (1998, p. 300) points out The well-considered shibboleth that the best interests of children will be taken to override conicting interests may be considered both a inviolable and essential grounds for educational decision making.Ethic of the CommunityFurman (2003) proposes a fth ethic for educational leaders that of community. Furman (2004) explicates this ethical posture in an article appearing in this issue of the Journal of Educational Administration. For Furman, community becomes the context within which the other ethical postures are applied as school leaders make decisions in an ever-changing environment. She denes the ethic of community as the moral responsibility of educators to engage in communal processes. Here, the communal, rather than the individual, is the major focus of schools moral agency. This ethic is very different from Sergiovanni (1994) who views community as an entity and Shapiro and Stefkovich (2001) who see community in relation to the individual.Each of these ve paradigms is important to educational leaders who are asked to make ethical decisions. By considering the paradigms as complementary parts of a whole, the school leader has access to a more advanced set of tools for decision making.Ethics in School Management and LeadershipFor a better understanding of the impact of ethics in school management and leadership, a framework would be much appropriate. In their book, Ethical Leadership and Decision Making in Education, Shapiro and Stefkovich (2001) propose a framework for res ponding to ethical dilemmas.Ethical paradigms based on models of justice, caring, and critique are merged into a fourth paradigm, that of the profession. At the concentre of this conceptualization is the best interests of the student. Educators have often used this concept to justify important moral and ethical decisions therefore it seems apt that this concept would lie at the heart of a professional paradigm.Application of Ethics in School Management and LeadershipThe point that school administrative decision making requires more than the mechanical application of existing rules, regulations and various levels of school and school-related policy has been well established (Hoy and Miskel, 2005). The essential aspects of school leadership are more than simply possessing and carrying out certain technical skills to ensure effective and efcient management of organizational operations (Sergiovanni, 2009). The emphasis and preoccupation with bureaucratic scientism and management perspe ctives has given way to the importance of value, moral, and ethical bases for educational leadership decision making. There is an increasing recognition that putatively value free administrative decisions and actions are actually value-laden, even value-saturated enterprises(s) (Hodgkinson, 1978, p.122) that undergird our understanding of what Greeneld (1985, 1999), and others (Green, 1990) have articulated in more precise terms as the careful location of purpose and worth in things, or in other words moral education and moral leadership. This recognition of value-driven, moral leadership action, according to Hodgkinson (1978), is an administrative logic of a new order.The Ethic of the Profession and the Model for Promoting Students Best Interests (Shapiro and Stefkovich, 2001, 2005 Stefkovich, 2006), recognizes moral aspects unique to the profession that are primarily client-based and highlights the inevitable internal struggle experienced by school leaders delinquent to a wide va riety of considerations and factors that seek to inform and inuence their moral practice as school leaders. This existential struggle can be characterized as a phenomenon of intrapersonal moral discord experienced as part of the process of deciding ethically when faced with difcult moral choices centered on personal versus organizational and/or professional value discrepancy, described as a clashing of codes within the framework. The professional ethic recognizes moral aspects unique to the profession of educational leadership and grounds the moral dimension of the profession on the monothetic injunction to serve the best interests of the student (Shapiro and Stefkovich, 2001, p.23) whereby promoting the success of all students (ISLLC, 1996, p. 8) by focusing on the needs of children (Walker, 1998).