Educational Administration and Leadership

Educational Administration and Leadership: CONCEPTS AND PRACTICES

The focus of this book is on the human and leadership aspects of educational administration. The administrator is seen as accountable as well as responsible for a human system responsive to the leader’s motivations and responses to situations and interactions with people. The topics discussed relate to day-to-day problems that modern administrators face. All is brought to focus on the administrators in action, as both administrator and leader. Even the Systems’ concepts for planning and decision-making are discussed in the book to help administrators perform as human beings in a human system while making optimum use of scientific theories. Administrative effectiveness and better educational institutions is the outcome envisioned and therefore, the orientation of the book is also behavioral and reflects a deep commitment in increasing the administrators’ capacity on each level of the institution to humanize the educational institutions. This book presents Educational Administration, Character Building, and Leadership Development.

As my daughter Sonia said, “You have an obligation and responsibility to share your knowledge and experience with other human beings who can benefit from your learning.” Therefore, in this book, I share practical advice based on my years of administrative, coaching, and experience with educational administrators, managers, supervisors, teachers, and students.

Watching violence on television daily awoke the sleeping writer, educator, and leader within me. The way leaders of different countries worldwide, and students in particular are acting and shooting in schools is contrary to moral and social values I was raised with. Leadership is serving the organization or a country is what I had learned during my Specialist degree in Educational Administration and Supervision from Wichita State University, U.S.A., and the doctoral program in Higher Education Administration from Oklahoma State University, U.S.A.

Even the leaders of most educated countries are behaving in ways never heard of before. I have read the life histories of renowned leaders of the world like Prophet Mohammad, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela; men of noble character who belonged to less educated countries, yet changed the history and brought revolutions with their leadership qualities and styles. This led me to write the book.

The personality traits of the leaders, whether in the educational institutions or in the corporate world, have their roots in childhood, nourished during their upbringing by wise parents and education by good teachers, their own quest of learning, and their knowledge of the world leaders to handle different situations a leader faces. Leadership of a country is the climax whereas its roots are in the family. The family is the basic unit of the State. In his interview with Oprah Winfrey aired on November 12, 2017, Joe Biden repeatedly referred to what character traits his mother and father instilled in him from his childhood, which gave him overwhelming confidence.

Therefore, in the first part of the book, consisting of four chapters, I have explained the basic elements of educational institutions such as Educational Administration, Management, Supervision, Educational Planning, Curriculum, and Infrastructure and Facilities. The second part of the book consists of two chapters. In the fifth chapter, I have explained with reference to recent research and my own experiences: What is Educational Leadership? What personality traits make a leader of an educational institution? What are the basic principles of leadership in educational institutions? What are the professional ethics to be followed by the educational administrators and managers? What is the role of the Principal in a school, or the President of a university or a national organization in relation to the people or the nation concerned? How important is it for the educational administrators to be concerned with their relationships with the staff and students as well as relationships with the community, and others around one’s organization and the world at large?

In the sixth chapter, I have elaborated the Role of Educational Institutions in Leadership Development. We need to pay more attention to our Educational Institutions, Character Building and Leadership Development to produce more educated men, women, and children, who become leaders of the organizations and the nations. The emphasis on moral values is necessary in the upbringing of the children from the very beginning.
Thus, this book can be used for undergraduate and graduate classes in educational administration and leadership development. It is well suited as a supplementary text for in-service training of the educators at each management level, teachers, and administrators in other leadership-development programs. For information about the course and exercises, please see Appendix I