A Model for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Educational Leadership: The Case of Greece

Abstract

Educational leadership has been studied in depth so far worldwide. However, to our knowledge, there is a broad scope for further research in terms of measuring educational leadership effectiveness. Many attempts throw the years were undergone in Greece in order to establish an evaluation process for educational leadership, many reactions raised, continuous changes have occurred and the issue remains timeless. This study aims to introduce a model of assessing the outcomes of educational leadership considering the most important stake holders that affect. These stake holders according to literature review in broader categories are the academic staff, school community, students, local society, and administrative personnel. Educational leader’s effectiveness can be also assessed against their academic and operational duty results such as the implementation of national educational policy, administrative tasks and relative operational outcomes in budgeting, handling and overcoming managerial obstacles, meeting the legislation standards. The purpose of this research is to design a comprehensive, applicable and holistic evaluation model for assessing educational leadership based on the results on the above criteria. For this purpose an extensive relative literature review in educational leadership studies has been conducted in order to explore in depth the most significant recipients that educational leadership influence and affect direct or indirect respectively. The core idea is that the most influenced recipients by educational leadership could be the most appropriate evaluators for the results of it. Thus has been designed a model based on the most significant stake holders who affected by educational leaders, complimented with a questionnaire as evaluation tool, which is structured with particular questions for each broad category of stake holders. In this study a relative literature review, and a draft of a pilot evaluation model in assessing educational leadership presenting, while the ultimate target is in a following study the evaluation model to be implemented in real sample of participants in order to present the impact of educational leadership effectiveness with respect to subordinates of academic, managerial staff and students of an educational organization.

It is of a great importance to have an evaluation model for assessing the educational leadership effectiveness for all levels of education such as primary, secondary and higher education. Educational leaders affect many recipients such as students, faculty members, academics and community. Hence, a broader evaluation model should involve assessment criteria from all these stake holders due to the fact that educational leadership has a great direct or indirect influence in several micro and macroeconomic critical results, such as students achievements, learning outcomes, school climate, local society bonds, teachers behaviours, ethics, culture, civilization, and eventually national economy competiveness. A transparent evaluation model of school leaders could provide better understanding of the job left to be done for every educational leader, to recognise competences, to disclose weaknesses in order to work on them, to facilitate criteria for improvement, overcome obstacles and eventually to promote and improve educational efficiency.