Safary Wa-Mbaleka

Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies

Summer 2001

In most African societies, as well as other societies over the world, leaders are facing so many difficulties in their leadership activities. Most of them do not understand how those problems started, and they find it hard to handle those problems. Consequently, employers and employees have argued endlessly and are unable to come to terms because of some problems that they are unable to handle.

It has been noted, especially in the educational system, that there are African leaders who become leaders with a very little basic training in leadership. They only have little knowledge, strategies, tools, and skills in leadership. Some are called to be leaders, not because they were trained to be so, but just because they have a high degree from a famous school or a private school belonging to one of their relatives. Those kind of leaders are likely to encounter many difficulties, because when they face leadership problems they would not know what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and why they are doing it.

This project will provide different theories that can be applied in the African educational context. It is an analysis of how the modern various theories can contribute to problem solving or to leadership effectiveness in the African educational system.

Before a leader assumes his position, he should have in mind what leadership is all about. Below are different definitions of leadership cited from several authors:

1. To lead means to guide, to accompany, to conduct, to shepherd, to pilot, to induce, to direct (Hawker & Cowley, 1997).

2. Leadership is an art. Its signs appear primarily among the followers (De Pree, 1989).

3. Leadership is a concept of owing certain things to the institution. It is a way of thinking about institutional heirs, a way of thinking about stewardship as contrasted with ownership (Greenleaf, 1991).

4. According to Kenneth O. Gangle (1981), a Christian author, Biblical leadership is a response to God's call. The person who responds to God's call exercise leadership as a servant and steward, sharing authority with their followers, and affirming that leadership is primarily ministry to others, modeling for others, and mutual membership with others in Christ's body.

Considering all the modern definitions of leadership, leadership seems more to mean serving and modeling rather than commanding people to do what the leaders want.

CHAPTER I

CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE LEADERS

Today, if in many organizations people speak of ineffective leaders, there must also be effective ones. This chapter gives a description of effective leaders, and how to help the ineffective or the less effective become more effective.

Covey's Classification

Principle-centered leaders apply the natural laws which are universal. According to Covey (1990, pp. 33-39), leaders are characterized by eight different behaviors or attitudes.

They are Continually Learning

They continually learn through different experiences--reading, training, listening to others. The leader as a learner is someone who: (a) seeks to be reflective of his/her values; (b) wants to get feedback from others; (c) monitors and reviews his/her performance; (d) tries to identify new skills and knowledge to be acquired for improvement; (e) exposes

himself/herself to new challenges; (f) listens to others because there is trust among them; and (g) understands the way others learn.

Ineffective leaders think they know everything, but for those leaders who read, the more they read the more they realize that they are still ignorant in many matters.

They are Service-Oriented

Everyday they have in mind the spirit of serving others; "they 'yoke up' and put on the harness of service" (Covey, 1990, p. 34). If leaders do not have a sense of responsibility, service, and contribution, it becomes a futile endeavor for them to lead.

They Radiate Positive Energy

They spread out all their positive strength for the service. They are cheerful, pleasant, happy, and their attitudes are optimistic and always positive. They have an enthusiastic, hopeful, and believing spirit.

They Believe in Other People

They do not over-react to negative behaviors, criticism, or human weaknesses. They have the desire to help people overcome their weaknesses. They try to avoid prejudgements as most leaders do.

They Lead Balanced Lives

They have good social relationships with their subordinates. They are friendly and they have a healthy sense of humor. They can easily laugh at themselves and not at others' faults. They are seriously glad for the subordinates' successes, and they do not intimidate subordinates. At the same time, when they want improvements in productivity, they also think about improving their subordinates' satisfaction. It can be qualified a joke to expect a change in productivity when the leaders do not think of improving the salary of the workers.

They See Life as an Adventure

These leaders savor life and they enjoy challenges. They don't feel threatened because they are secure in their work. They have enough security because they have involved everybody in the leadership process. If we consider the following table (see Table 1), they are nearing the 9.9 point. They feel secure also because they are initiators, resourceful, creative, courageous, confident, and comfortable. They use different communication skills when they talk to different kinds of people (Ornstein & Lunenberg, 1991, p. 150).

They are Synergetic

They are change catalysts. They always want to improve the situation where they are in. Their amazing productivity is the fruit of new and creative ways. They use all their strengths for improvement and they let other people's strength compensate for their weaknesses. That is why delegation is easy and natural for them because they believe in other people. They do not fight for positions, instead they focus on the other person's interests. Their subordinates gradually become part of the creative problem-solving process. Together they arrive at synergetic solutions rather than compromise solutions.

Table 1

Leadership Effectiveness

1.9 9.9

Country Club Management Team Management

Thoughtful attention to the needs of Work accomplishment is from

people for satisfying relationships committed people: interdepend-

lead to a comfortable, friendly ence through a "common stake"

organization atmosphere and work in organization purpose leads to

tempo. relationships of trust and respect.

5.5

Organization Man Management

Adequate organization, performance

is possible through balancing the

necessity to get out work with maintaining

morale of people at satisfactory level.

1.1 9.1

Impoverished Management Authority-Obedience

Exertion of minimum effort to get Efficiency in operations result

required work done is appropriate from arranging conditions of

to sustain organization membership work in such a way that human elements interfere to a minimum degree.

They Exercise Self-Renewal

In order for them to maintain their strength, they exercise self-renewal. They exercise to the fullest the four dimensions of human personality, that is, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual: physical-through the exercise of muscles, heart, and lungs; mental-through reading, problem solving, and writing; emotional-through efforts to be patient, loving, empathetic, and sympathetic; spiritual-through prayer, meditation, fasting, and study of the Scriptures.

Ellen G. White's Classification

Leaders of the churches, as well as leaders of any other church organization, are shepherds, prophets, priests, and ministers. They are servants of God. The following should be their characteristics, according to E. G. White (1995):They work for God. They realize that God is the Creator of everything so they are caring and tender to the children of God. They serve the children of God knowing that by doing so they are serving God Himself.

They have confidence in their work. Those who work in soul winning need integrity, intelligence, industry, energy, and tact.

They are kind, courteous, meek and loving like Christ.

They are not dictators, instead they serve people, because they are called servants of the Lord.

They are counselors, and they ask wisdom from above to help them find specific solutions to any problem they encounter in their leadership activities.

They encourage and respect others. They open their plans before their subordinates. They give freedom and encouragement to their subordinates to express their ideas and opinion.

Combining these two categories of characteristics, Covey's (1990) and E. G. White's (1995), which are not different from each other, a leader can conduct more effectively. Leaders need to have a high quality of social relationship, a high sense of productivity, and a close relationship with God whom they are serving.

In conclusion, leaders should know themselves, their strengths, and their weaknesses; they should be transparent, especially in financial aspects; be inner-directed by good values and purpose from within; they should be purposeful in pursuing their course of action and prepared to handle misunderstanding.

Frick and Spears (1996) stressed on some other characteristics of good leaders: goal setting, principle of systematic neglect, listening, language as a leadership strategy, value (honest, loving, and responsible), personal growth, withdrawal, tolerance of imperfections, and acceptance.

Online Women's Business Center (1997, Para. 3 & 4) gave the following: emotional stability, enthusiasm, conscientiousness, social boldness, toughmindedness, self-assurance, compulsiveness, high energy, intuitiveness, maturity, team orientation, empathy, and charisma.

By considering the above characteristics of effective leaders, leaders, in order to be effective, should develop important traits like organizational power, coalition power, participative power, etc.

CHAPTER II

CHRONIC PROBLEMS OF LEADERSHIP AND THE POSITIVE

HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE LEADERS

According to Covey (1990, pp. 40-47, 163-171), there are seven chronic problems of leadership ruining multitude of enterprises all over the world. Consequently, there are seven suggestions how leaders can handle or avoid these chronic problems. This chapter intends to point them out.

Chronic Problems of Leadership

Everyday leaders are bombarded with different kinds of problems. Some try to prevent the occurrence of these problems, but these problems still exist and leaders don't understand how these come out. One of the reasons is that most of the leaders do not know how conflicts started, or they do not have any idea about the chronic problems, or they just do not care at all. Knowing the following chronic problems, as stated by Covey (1990), will help leaders achieve an effective change.

No Shared Vision and Values

It is a fact that in certain organizations there is no mission statement, or there is no

commitment to and deep understanding of the mission at any of the levels of the organization. In this case, leaders cannot share the organizational goals and aims of the organization to their subordinates, thus, they cannot delegate to their subordinates effectively. Those leaders are centralized. Some leaders' difficulties are caused by the fact that they have no mission of their organization, and, if they do, they are not sharing this mission to their subordinates. They are not aware that a lack of shared vision and values is a strong root of a lot of problems.

No Strategic Path

Just as the wind does not have a definite direction to follow and just strikes anywhere, likewise leaders who do not plan and set goals for their organization create a strong barrier to their productivity. The old strategic planning was characterized by ends-which means "where we are going;" ways-which means "how we are going to get there;" means-which means "the organization of the resources" (Covey, 1990, p. 166). On the other hand, the new models for planning encourage people to use a compass and to stick to the goals, set principles and values, and create ways to achieve the end.

Poor Alignment

There is poor coordination between organizational structure and values, between vision and systems. The organizational structure and systems contribute poorly to the reinforcement of strategic paths. There are leaders that are effective speakers but ineffective doers.

They talk about the goals and how they can be achieved, but their actions are incompatible with what they say. They pursue actions that are not aligned to the goals and purposes of the organization.

Wrong Style

Sometimes the leadership style does not match the vision and values of the mission statement. The management philosophy is inconsistent with the shared vision and values. There are different leadership styles, but none of them is best in every place, time, and situation. If there are leaders who dominantly use only one style, they are likely to use the wrong style not because it is naturally wrong, but because it is inappropriate in a given situation. What is good with one situation may be bad in another. A leader who is not creative is a leader who is running into many leadership risks.

Poor Skills

Having poor skills lead many managers to use their visions wrongly. In some private organizations, leaders were selected not because they were found capable or skillful but just because they have familiar relationship or friendship with the managers. This may create a significant failure or complex problems. They use the principles of employment by "familism and regionalism." This principle consists of employing people who came from their own place or family; in brief, people from the same origin.

Low Trust

Low trust results mainly from the fact that leaders have closed or poor communication with their subordinates. Leaders who have reluctance in problem solving, poor cooperation, and poor teamwork are not trusted by their subordinates. This is an interpersonal relationship problem.

Covey (1990, p. 72) provided the typical qualities of administrators with poor interpersonal skills:

1. They are aggressive in speech and mannerisms, with attempts to intimidate others.

2. They are overly accusatory, negative, or sarcastic.

3. They are more interested in being understood than in listening and acknowledging others' viewpoints.

4. They are inconsistent and manipulative.

5. They fail to provide accurate feedback to others.

6. They are not frequently accessible and not visible at the workplace.

7. They avoid conflicts and fail to confront sensitive issues.

Some leaders do not easily realize that they have poor interpersonal relationship with their subordinates. Having some of the above qualities is already a sign of interpersonal relationship problems.

Trust determines the quality of social relationships between different people. To alleviate the problem of low trust is a complex issue, because it involves all other chronic problems that were already mentioned above.

In most African organizational systems, low trust comes generally from three dominant factors: lack of transparency or clearness in the financial transactions, no cooperation with subordinates, and managers having very close and usually private relationship with the workers of the opposite sex. These matters ruin many enterprises easily, and subordinates develop low trust toward their leaders, which leads to dishonesty on their part.

No Self-Integrity

Values and habits do not have the same meaning. What is taken as the value is probably different from the belief. Administrators who fail to lead according to their value systems probably do not have any mission statement. A company that lacks integrity has difficulties in satisfying its customers. If a company does not have integrity, it will not build an emotional satisfaction to the workers, it will not be trustworthy, and it will not promote a culture of trust among the workers.

Positive Habits of Highly Effective Leaders

In this section, the seven habits associated to leadership effectiveness will be pointed out. These habits are going to show the unique human endowments that will help in identifying the important human capabilities (Covey, 1990, pp. 40-47).

Self-Awareness or Self-Knowledge

This is the ability of the leaders to be responsible. When leaders blame their

subordinates, they transfer their authorities without realizing it. The idea of self-awareness should be incorporated in the minds of the subordinates. For instance, the leader allows the subordinate to act willingly with the belief that "quality starts with me, therefore, I need to make my own decisions based on carefully-selected values and principles." Proactively, the leader has cultivated freedom in the minds of the subordinates.

Imagination and Conscience

Effective leaders begin with the end in mind. This involves the process of planning. Planning is also one of the problematic issues of many leaders. Steller (1980, p. 10) cited, "there is no single, accepted definition of planning among school administrators. A working definition may state that planning is the clarification of one's present status, deciding where one wants to be, then determining how to get there."

According to this author, planning is very important because it encourages change and improvement, it facilitates integration of various parts of the system by focusing on an agreement. Moreover, it is a pedagogic tool producing greater knowledge of the organization, its purposes, and its operation by those participating in it. It also helps in achieving accountability in a given achievement.

According to F. H. Jones (1987, p. 49), "whether in parenting, teaching, or managing an organization, effective leaders plan, anticipate, structure, and prepare both themselves and the people for whom they are responsible for the upcoming task. Ineffective parents, teachers, and leaders of organizations tend to do a poor job of preplanning, anticipating, and preparing. They launch into a situation and then find themselves in the middle of something that is not going according to plan. They are constantly in a reactive mode, a crisis management mode, a thrashing about to reduce loss rather than to maximize gain."

Below are steps suggested by Dayton and Engstrom (1999, pp. 86-89) in order to make an effecting long-range plan.

1. Clearly state the purpose of the organization. 2. Do not confuse the official organizational statements of faith with statements of purposes.

3. Set both broad and specific goals to reach these purposes.

4. Involve as many people as possible.

5. State your assumptions about the present and the future.

6. Develop realistic expectations.

7. Study alternative courses of actions.

8. Have the courage to make necessary decisions.

9. Develop detailed plans or guidelines.

10. Set dates when you will review your planning.

The planning process can be summarized in five points: setting objectives, allocating resources, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating.

Put First Things First

In their effectiveness, leaders need to focus heavily on the highly important but not necessarily urgent things to do. This point puts a particular emphasis on the planning process. Leaders will not know the priorities of their work if they do not have any planning. Since many international companies, especially the African organizations, are facing financial problems, knowing the priorities of the work is very important.

Think Win/Win

As much as possible, leaders should try to use the win/win leadership style. This means that when the leaders win, the subordinates will also win. This means that there should be equity in the advantages received from productivity.

It should be win/win if there is somebody who should win. It should be lose/lose if there is somebody who should lose. If there is one to win and another to lose, the leader should be the one to lose. Pollard (1996, pp. 244-247) emphasized servant leadership by saying that the leader who serves is not the

- president, but the role model;

- highly-paid employee in the group, but the risk taker;

- person with the most expensive car, but the servant;

- person who promotes himself, but the promoter of others;

- administrator, but the initiator;

- taker, but the giver;

- talker, but the listener.

Moreover, Dunbebin (1999, p. 5) cited that "today's employees want administrators who lead instead of manage. They want leaders who do not depend on power and authority to achieve their goals. Today's successful administrators are more likely to be those who work with and for people, empowering and inspiring them to achieve personal and corporate goals."

In general, today's effective leaders are those who apply servant leadership and have good interpersonal relationship.

Seek to Understand Before Being Understood

Leaders should be sensitive to their subordinates' needs. According to Carnel, Norbert, and Hatfield (1995, p. 208), the following table describes ways to meet the different needs of the subordinates (see Table 2).

Creativity

Through the participation of two minds by communicating together, leaders can get solutions that may be probably far better than solving problems by themselves.

E. G. White (1903), a Christian author, cited that "every human being, created in the image of God, is endowed with a power akin to that of the Creator- individuality, power to think and to do. The men in whom this power is developed are the men who bear responsibilities, who are leaders in enterprises, and who influence character. It is the work of true education to develop this power, to train the youth to be thinkers, and not mere reflectors of other men's thoughts" (p. 17).

Table 2

Different Needs

A. Physical Needs

1. Furnish pleasant and comfortable environment.

2. Provide for ample leisure.

3. Provide for "comfortable" salary.

B. Security Needs

1. Adhere to protective rules and regulations.

2. Minimize risk-taking requirements.

3. Provide strong directive leadership and follow chain of command policy.

4. Provide well-defined job descriptions.

5. Minimize negative stroking and threatening behavior.

6. Provide information about firm's financial status and projections.

7. Provide "just" compensation and supportive fringe benefits.

C. Social Needs

1. Encourage the team concept.

2. Systematically use organization-wide feedback survey.

3. Use task groups to execute projects.

4. Provide for firm and/or office business and social meetings.

5. Provide close personal leadership.

6. Encourage professional-group participation.

7. Encourage community-group participation.

8. Compensate on basis of total team performance.

D. Self-Esteem Needs

1. Include employees in goal-setting and decision making processes.

2. Provide opportunity to display skills and talents.

3. Provide recognition of advancement-e.g., publicize promotions.

4. Provide recognition symbols-e.g., name on stationery.

5. Assign associates and support staff for coaching and development.

6. Provide personal secretary to associates.

7. Use positive-reinforcement program.

8. Pay attention to office size, office location, parking spaces, etc.

9. Institute mentor system.

10. Compensate as recognition of growth.

E. Self-Actualization Needs

1. Provide for participation in goal-setting and decision making processes.

2. Provide opportunity and support for career-development plan.

3. Provide staff job rotation to broaden experience and exposure.

4. Offer optimum innovative and risk-taking opportunities.

5. Encourage direct-access communication to clients, customers, suppliers, vendors.

6. Provide challenging internal and external professional development opportunities.

7. Provide supportive leadership that encourages a high degree of self-control.

8. Compensate as reward for exceptional performance.

Through this quotation, it can be concluded that creativity in leadership is very important. Some creative characteristics would include adaptability, aesthetic interests, excitement of novelty, expressiveness, goal-oriented, high-energy level, inner motivation, intense concentration, mental mobility, endurance, preference for complexity, self-confidence, sense of humor, sensitivity, and spontaneity.

Sharpen the Saw

This is the fact of continuous improvement or self-renewal of performance. If some leaders do not seek continuous improvement and self-renewal, they are likely to fall in entropy, which is a box of closed ineffective systems and styles.

The American Association of School Administrators (1992, p. 25) suggested four steps to follow in the process of making a continuous improvement:

1. Step 1: Planning. This is the foundation of the whole process. Most of the time, the beginning is boring, hard, costly, and frustrating. People usually use a short-cut when they are on this step. They find it difficult to wait to get into motion, to be active, to look busy before moving to the second step.

2. Step 2: Doing. Here, people carry out the new theory or suggestions of the work. Data are now kept on first real practice. The process is implemented.

3. Step 3: Studying. On this stage of the process, people examine the results of the experiment. They look at the data, control measurements which were done. This is the time to know if the results correspond with hopes and expectations. If not, then you need to ask what went wrong. Any necessary revisions or changes needed for improvement can be made.

4. Step 4: Acting. The new theory is adjusted in accordance with the assessment. These four steps are used for individuals, groups, and entire systems.

In conclusion, it is important to remember what Farren and Kaye (1996, p. 179) wrote about the roles of leaders. According to them, a leader should be a/an

1. Facilitator--someone who can help people understand and articulate what they want from their career.

2. Appraiser--someone who evaluates specific actions that individuals can use to improve their performance and reputation.

3. Forecaster--someone who can foresee emerging trends and new developments that may affect people's career prospects.

4. Advisor--someone who can point out possible sources of support and obstacles to achieve career goals.

5. Enabler-someone who helps people to achieve their goals by making useful contacts with people in other areas of the organization.

6. Bridge--someone who connects people to the future.

The last fifty years have been a period of great evolution of new organization forms. This change has affected all the organizational systems. Organizational processes have become more complex, with a great need for change.

This chapter deals with two main sections that will answer questions such as: "How can we break with the past?" and "How to get power in the new organizational systems?"

Chapters four and five suggest some guidelines to be involved in the organizational change process.

Change means innovation. According to Allan (1993, p. 93), "innovation is a process that generates something new--products, applications, processes, practices, or systems. It is a creative process of seeing new applications for existing knowledge, combining different bits of knowledge to create a new capability or inventing new solutions." Besides, Schlechty (1997, p. 204) said that superintendents, top-level union leaders, and board of education members are the people in the school district who are positioned to relate to the larger community and sources of political and economic power in ways that make it possible to sustain serious change efforts over a long period of time.

It is important to know that the key to innovative change does not start with subordinates, but it starts with leaders. Administrators are the ones to promote and sustain reform efforts. They should not only focus on theories of change, but they should focus on the practical aspects of change.

Break With the Past

In every break with a traditional practice, there is much to do with courage and commitment. Covey (1990) suggested three main ways that can be useful to break with tradition and six conditions of empowerment.

There are some organizational structures that were very productive in the 1950s or earlier that are no longer useful in the modern organizations. At the same time, there are some that were useful in the past and are still useful today. In this section, it will be pointed out how to break with the practices that are no longer productive.

A Set of Principles at the Center

This is done by communicating vision, clarifying purposes, making a congruent correlation between behavior and belief, procedures and principles, roles and goals. Using this new organizational shift, leaders can expect to make a change in their organizations and their subordinates.

Process for Releasing Potential

Subordinates are considered the most valuable organizational stewards of certain

resources. They are the key to discovering, developing, and managing all other resources. So the higher they are motivated, the higher is their sense of personal contribution. Besides the subordinate, the leader has the task of identifying all the resources and find the appropriate process for releasing the potentials.

Harris (1989, pp. 2, 3) suggested some elements to be taken into account for releasing the organizational productivity or potential. These are the characteristics of the new work culture leadership.

1. Provide improved, more open communication and information to personnel.

2. Create more autonomy and participation by workers or democratization.

3. Promote an entrepreneurial spirit in the innovative systems.

4. Enhance the quality of work life.

5. Generate innovative, high performing norms and standards that foster competence and excellence.

6. Utilize more informal synergetic organizational relationships, that is cooperation and trust.

7. Advance technology transfer and venture, research and development.

Programs for Breaking Barriers and Facing the Obstacles in the Change Process

There are three main domains where change is needed: human resource development activities, strategic and other planning activities, and the introduction and mastering of new technology for doing work.

Covey (1990, pp. 49-77) suggested four useful ways to a change agent leader.

Overcome the pull of the past. The process of knowing how to handle the restraining and the driving forces (Covey, 1990, p. 220). The driving forces are the forces of the change leader, and the restraining forces are the forces of all the obstacles of change process. The leader is not capable of reducing the restraining force arrows with force. The effective leader should cooperate with and induce the subordinates to reduce the length of those arrows by themselves. Whenever the leader wants to push forcefully the arrows of the driving forces, the change encounters more obstacles.

The three great forces. (a) Appetites and passions are strong forces that make a barrier to change. The leaders should control their appetite and avoid passion with all its negative sense. (b) Pride and pretension-the leaders should be proud of their success as if it was their own efforts alone. They should know that change is the fruit of the effort of all the workers. (c) Aspiration and ambition-they should not fight for position and honor. These are not fought over, but deserved.

The daily private victory. Change is not a process of one day or two, but it is a daily and long process. Therefore, the change agents should be patient when dealing with the change processes.

Conditioning is important. Change happens gradually. During the change process, the leaders need to have proper perspective and gradually make decisions and commitments in the light of the perspective. Bardwick (1996) wrote that in influencing change in people, leaders have something to do on the emotional level. Therefore, leaders should generate: confidence in people who were frightened, certainty in people who were vacillating, action where there was hesitation, strength where there was weakness, expertise where there was struggle, courage where there was cowardice, optimism where there was cynism, conviction that the future will be better.

According to Sergiovanni (1991, pp. 259-260), there are four main agents of change:

-the individual as an agent of change: when the individual teacher is considered as the unit of change, needs, values, beliefs, and levels of readiness are important factors. For this case, Sergiovani mentioned seven stages that the teacher follows: awareness (I am not concerned with it), informational (I would like to know more about it), personal (how will using it affect me?), management (I seem to be spending all my time getting material ready), consequence (how is my use affecting kids), collaboration (I have to tell other teachers about what is going on in my class), and refocusing (I have some ideas about something that would work even better).

-the school as the unit of change: to be a unit of change, the school must organize its culture and its climate. Schools with good culture and good climate can easily implement change.

-the workflow as the unit of change: this requires the change goal, the change targets, the change protocols, the curriculum and teaching requirements, and the supervisory and staff development support.

-the political system as the unit of change: institutionalizing changes is not the power of a principal alone. It is also the power of the political system or the central office staff. Therefore a close communication between the principal and the political system is important.

This shows that, in a sense, there is a certain interaction between individual teachers, school, workflow of teaching and learning, and broader political context as units of change.

When everyone of the above units implies change, the role of the principal is:

(a) to be facilitator: responder, manager, initiator; and (b) to know the levels of leadership behavior: he should be administrator, humanitarian, program manager, systematic problem solver, etc.

Change should be an answer to ethical questions, a change facilitating team work, a change that has an educational meaning or purpose.

Principal's Empowerment

Through what has been already discussed above, some leaders who use force may think that this work is taking away their power. That is a wrong understanding. What is power? How can we acquire or apply power in our leadership? That's the concern of this section.

Definition and Classification

According to Hampton, Summer, and Webber (1987, pp. 150, 151), power is the influence led by someone on others' behavior. In other words, we can define the leader's power as his influence on his subordinates for the sake of productivity. Therefore, if the influence is positive, the productivity is likely to be positive too, but if the influence is negative, then the productivity has high probability to become negative.

In the traditional understanding, power has been carrying a negative connotation. The concept itself has created frustrations in many of the past organizations. Considering the concept "power" in general, there are three dimensions: downward, upward, and lateral. The following kinds of power are more based on the last dimension than the first two:

1. Coercive power-based on a worker's perception that an influencer has the ability of inflicting punishment.

2. Reward power-based on the influencee's perception that an influencer is able to administer some reward.

3. Referent power-based on a follower's desire to be like the influencer.

4. Legitimate power-based upon influencee's internalized values, which convince them to confer an automatic authority to the influencer.

5. Expert power-based on the influencee's belief that the influencer has some relevant expertise or special knowledge that the influencee does not have.

6. Representative power-based democratically on subordinates delegating power to the leader for the purpose of representing their interests and making decisions on their behalf.

Analyzing the above different kinds of powers, one finds that power has two opposite faces: the negative face, usually expressed in terms of domination, submission or downward power, or win/lose approach; the positive face, based on a concern for group goals. Here is collaboration, cooperation, a win/win approach.

Kyle (1984) classified powers into four: the warrior, the magician, the artist, and the sovereign.

1. The warrior: the power of intention. It is characterized by commitment, loyalty, service, faithfulness, and service. It is a power of force.

2. The magician: the power of wisdom. The magician leader is a transformer; has a nature of wisdom; is practical; has knowledge and understanding; makes change, attention, transparency, spontaneity, concentration; has focus, insight; makes observation, realization, synthesis, proposal drafting, incubation, and testing.

3. The artist: the power of compassion. The artist is an innovator, compassionate leader, spiritual, empathetic, sympathetic, humorist, creative, joyful, and forgiving.

4. The sovereign: the power of presence. The sovereign is a steward, likes order (vision), and ambition (mentorship).

Strategies of Influencing Power

Here are seven strategies that are used in leadership. They are classified from the most popular to the least popular (Hampton et al., 1987, p. 156).

1. Reason-use of facts and data to make rational ideas.

2. Friendliness-use of flattery, acting humble, and being kind before making a request.

3. Coalition-getting the support of people in the organizational deals.

4. Bargaining-use of negotiation through the exchange of benefits.

5. Assertiveness-use of forceful approach through demanding, repeating, ordering, and pointing out what to do.

6. Higher authority-getting the support of higher levels in the organization, applying dominantly downward power.

7. Sanction-use of organizationally deprived rewards and punishment.

Covey's Conditions of Empowerment

Morever, Covey (1990, pp. 132-194) classified six conditions or tasks of an effective leader in order to be an effective influencer.

1. Specify desired results-being specific in quantity and quality of the expected results.

2. Set some guidelines, communicating principles, policies, and procedures considered essential to getting desired results.

3. Identify available resources: financial, human, technical, and organizational resources that can assist employees in getting expected results.

4. Define accountability-the loss of accountability of the influencer leads to a gradual loss of sense of responsibility. This is the time when some people will be blamed for having poor performance.

5. Determine the consequences-thinking about what the next step will be when the desired results are achieved or not achieved.

6. Working toward self-management, helping people who were used to be fully dependent to acquire more and more independence and freedom to do things.

Lee (1997, p. 120) gave ten principles of power: persuasion, patience, gentleness, teachability, acceptance, kindness, knowledge, discipline, consistency, integrity.

CHAPTER IV

INTERACTION

The lack of communication and collaboration has created many negative factors in productivity. It is not useless to consider the saying "united we stand firm" in this chapter. It is only the people who are united who can set the same goals, think of effective strategies for high quality of productivity, and commit themselves to the fulfillment of their goals. People are united if only they cooperate, and they cooperate if they speak the same 'language,' meaning, they listen to each other's ideas and opinions in the decision-making process.

Communication and collaboration are the main elements which enhance interpersonal relationship. This relationship contribute to the quality of productivity. Having a good interpersonal relationship among workers is one of the most important aspect to consider in order to achieve self-actualization. It is at the same time one of the most indispensable factors of the achievement of organizational goals.

The communication and collaboration between the influencer and the influencee is characterized by moving considerable power, information, knowledge, and rewards to the lowest levels of an organization.

Communication

Effective communication is essential to high performance. Special attention should be given to this section because communication is the key to organizational excellence. As seen in most African organizations and companies, communication was identified as the greatest difficulty in business and leadership. The problem is that the parties involved do not really know what is involved in the communication process.

Beside the human communication, there is also the organizational communication which directly affects the performance and productivity of the work.

Human beings have different ways of perceiving the world, even though it is the same world. For instance, one leader will be perceived by a subordinate as bad whereas another subordinate would perceive that leader as good. This can happen even when the leader treats the two subordinates in the same way. Why is this so? Because each subordinate has his or her own impressions or perceptions on that leader.

Therefore, the question is, "What are the factors influencing the perceptions of a person in relation to communication?" Harris (1989, p. 67) showed the different elements influencing perceptions, and they are discussed in the following section.

I.e., Socio-economic, life-experience, religion or none, culture, environment, family, education. Not knowing the above elements has led many African leaders and administrators and managers to fail. People are not identical, even twins have different perceptions and different outlook. Two identical persons do not exist. The effective leader then, should try to identify the perception of each subordinate in order to improve the communication process.

Communication is a human process. A process which is circular between a sender and receiver of the message.

In this process, a person:

1. Displays his/her private world or perceptual field. Thus, one can communicate to someone properly by looking at the perceptions he or she displays.

2. Projects self into human communication. Everyone displays his/her needs, values, expectations, ideals, etc. An effective leader should think about these factors.

3. Is an instrument of communication. In some cases, observing a person may tell you part of what that person really is. However, this is not always the case because looks can be deceiving.

4. Communicates either verbally or nonverbally. Communication is done orally, in writing, by gestures, by shapes, colors, sounds, smell, etc. It is very important for leaders to not only consider the verbal communication but to look at the nonverbal communication of the subordinates also.

Below is the model of communication as perceived by Harris (1989, p. 70) (see Table 3). It shows that there is a lot of processes that take place between the sender and the receiver. When there is some distortion or noise in the communication process, then it can be said that communication is poor or it is a failure.

Table 3

Message Transmission

Indeed, communication is a very important factor in the organization. When communication is practiced properly, productivity is affected in a positive way; however, when there is poor communication, it can also be said that productivity will be affected in a negative way.

Jack R. Gibb (1961, pp. 141-148) showed the difference between the two kinds of communication in the chart below:

Table 4

Communication

Close -----------------> Communication Channels <----------------- Open

Evaluative-----------------------------------------------------------Descriptive

Controlling----------------------------------------------------------Problem-Oriented

Strategic-------------------------------------------------------------Spontaneous

Neutrality------------------------------------------------------------Emphatic

Superiority-----------------------------------------------------------Accepting

Dogmatic-------------------------------------------------------------Provisional

Threatens Ego Promotes Collaboration

Good communication promotes higher collaboration. When African leaders, administrators, and managers have good communication, then, it can be said that there will also be high collaboration between them and with their subordinates.

Collaboration

Collaboration is also called cooperation. It is a process of involving all the workers in the organization to work together toward a common goal. People will work as a team and not as independent individuals. They will set goals together, implement together, consult each other as to the result of the implementation, and do corrective actions together.

Involving all the members of the group in the organizational structure is a key to implementing and increasing the commitment to change. This is one of the greatest barriers encountered in the organizations, when the subordinates are only informed of a change but they are not involved in the whole process.

Collaboration can be analyzed in different stages: elements of effective team, sources of conflicts, conflict resolution, and general task of a team leader.

Key Elements of Effective Team

Collaboration effectiveness is much better seen in the organization of a team. A team can be effective only if there is high collaboration or cooperation. According to R. E. White (1995, pp. 15-30), there are several characteristics of effective team: enthusiasm, energy, humor and fun, support, focus and persistence, decision, thoughts and plans, share of information, listening skills, questioning for better understanding, learning from mistakes, clear roles, openness and honesty, convergent purpose and direction, involvement, commitment, flexibility, feedback, and review. Most of the problems start when there is weakness in of the above characteristics.

Sources of Conflicts

A number of leaders have difficulty in pointing out the origin of organizational conflicts. It is because they have been leaders without being equipped with the basic notions of conflicts. In order to equip leaders, they should know first the sources of conflicts. Cooper (1984, pp. 314-315) suggested seven sources of conflicts.

Organizational change. People are interested in traditional ways of doing their work because those ways have become part of those people. Changes require much effort and adjustment that is why it is one of the sources of misunderstanding.

Personality clashes. Not everybody thinks, feels, looks, acts, or works in the same way. Each one has a unique personality of its own. Workers need to respect each other's differences, accept people the way they are, and learn how to use these differences for the common good of the organization.

Different sets of values. People also hold different beliefs and adhere to different value systems. This can be due to diverse culture, tradition, and philosophies. Again, respect and acceptance is very necessary among workers.

Threats to status. A person who feels threatened is always defensive and can create conflicts within the organization.

Contrasting perceptions. People perceive things differently as a result of their prior experiences and expectations.

Lack of trust. When someone has a real or perceived reason not to trust another, the potential for conflict arises.

Miscommunication. This is due to language and environmental factors such as space, noise, location, facilities, etc.

Being aware of these different sources of conflicts, leaders will be able to help solve them and consequently will be able to lead effectively.

Conflict Resolution

Cooper (1984, pp. 318, 319) suggested five ways of dealing with a given conflict.

1. Avoiding--physical or mental withdrawal from the conflict. The outcome of this resolution is the lose/lose situation.

2. Smoothing--accommodating the party's interests. It places greater emphasis on concern for others. The outcome is the lose/win situation.

3. Forcing--power tactics to achieve a win. It relies on aggressiveness and dominance to achieve personal gains at the expense of others. The outcome is the win/lose situation.

4. Compromising-willing to give up something in exchange for gaining another. The outcome is not clear.

5. Confronting-facing the conflict directly and working it through to a mutually satisfactory resolution. The outcome is a win/win situation. For this resolution, it is better to attack the problem, not the person. It is better to verbalize feelings but not acting them out. It is forgiving in place of judging. Lastly, it is committed to giving than taking.

General Task of Team Leader

For the task of the team leader, two points will be considered, that of Blancard, Zigarni, and Zigormi (1987) and of R. E. White (1995).

- Blancard's viewpoint

According to Blancard et al. (1987, p. 56), a leadership style is developed in one of the different ways showed in the chart below (see Table 5).

Table 5

Development Level of Leadership

Looking at the different levels mentioned above, it is better if all the leaders should reach level four, that is, they should have high competence and high commitment to their responsibility.

- R. White's View

R. White (1995, pp. 18, 19) mentioned seven things that a team leader has to do for team effectiveness. The team leader:

1. Ensures quality decision making, proper balance between planning and action, flow of good ideas, clear role of each individual, involvement, and participation of all team members.

2. Avoids hidden agendas and hidden conflicts, excessive focus on details.

3. Allows mistakes sometimes, creates supportive environment and being flexible.

4. Develops review and feedback, good listening skills, focus on reaching the goals.

5. Shares information.

6. Generates commitment and support.

7. Encourages humor and cooperation.

As analyzed in the above section, it can be concluded that the organizational structure needs to put a special emphasis on the domain of communication and collaboration. These two elements are very important for all the organizations of the 21^st century. All the leaders who really want to be effective should be acquainted to the knowledge about communication and collaboration, this is needed in all organizations.

CHAPTER V

SUPERVISION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF COOPERATIVE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SUPERVISOR AND THE SUPERVISEE

The word "supervision" has had a negative connotation in the minds of many teachers. For them, it involves thoughts of authority, power, dominion, control, hierarchy, and inspection. This way of thinking should be banished from the minds of teachers, because supervision is now one of the important part of the school effectiveness. Supervision is an important program that helps teachers to know how they are doing activities in their classes, in order for them to improve the weak side of their teaching. Supervision and evaluation of teaching look for answers to questions about the activities happening in the classroom, the learning outcomes, what is expected to come from such a class, and the meaning of the learning process to teachers, students, and others.

Sergiovanni (1991) said that the objectives of supervision should be to control quality, professional development, and teacher motivation. Standards of supervision and evaluation change when there are different purposes. The areas that can be improved by supervision are: the teacher's sense of purpose, the teacher's perception of students, the teacher's knowledge of subject matter, and the teacher's mastery of technique.

The clinical supervision as opposed to the traditional supervision has the cooperativeness as the main characteristic. It is not always easy to develop cooperativeness between two different people, but it is important to develop it.

In order to enhance this relationship, both the supervisor and the supervisee should know

- the problems that complicate the supervisory role

- the cycle of clinical supervision

- the characteristics of modern school supervision (Sergiovanni, 1991).

Each one of these aspects will be discussed further in the development of this project.

Problems That Complicate the Supervisory Role Today there is a great number of different factors that create tensions between supervisors (or administrators) and supervisees (or teachers). Among the multitude of factors, the following four factors seem very significant in most of the schools (Oliva & Pawlas, 1997, pp. 12-14).

Diversity of Conceptions of Supervision

The term "supervision" has been the source of many interpretations and misinterpretations. This diversity of interpretation is the result of the traditional supervision and other different kinds of supervision taking place nowadays.

In order to avoid this misunderstanding, which sometimes leads to complicated problems in the supervisory role, modern literature uses new terminologies for supervision.

Administrative supervision. It is the supervision that covers the domain of managerial responsibilities outside the fields of curriculum and instruction.

General supervision. It is the one taking place outside the classroom. Differentiated supervision. It is the one allowing teachers to choose the types of developmental activities in which they are involved.

Educational supervision. It involves many aspects of schooling: administration, curriculum, and instruction.

Instructional supervision. This one focuses on a more limited set of responsibility. It is the supervision for the improvement of instruction.

"Clinical, consultative, developmental, and peer supervision are subsumed under instructional supervision" (Oliva & Pawlas, 1997, p. 12).

Sergiovanni (1991) identified two different kinds of supervision: the clinical and the self-direct supervision.

The clinical supervision. It is a new style of supervision which aims on productive evaluation and improving the weaknesses of the teacher. It has five main steps: the preobservational conference (planning), the observation of teaching, the analysis and strategy, the postobservation conference, and the postconference analysis. This supervision style takes time, so if the principal wants to deal with many teachers, he will have to work with collegial or peer clinical supervision. The collegial supervision is the one in which the teachers agree to work together for their own professional development, this is also called the cooperative professional development.

The self-directed supervision is what is called in other words the self-directed development. Here, the teachers supervise themselves with a yearly plan that comprises targets and goals to be reached. The informal supervision is the one which is not scheduled, and generally it is frequent but short. Considering the differentiated supervision and the contingency view, we find that teachers have a great cognitive complexity levels of teaching. There are different supervisory and cognitive complexity, different teaching and learning styles, a diversity of supervisory options, great accounting for motives of teachers, flexibility in practice, and different ways of helping teachers to achieve goals. Therefore, there should not be only one supervisory style for all the teachers and for all the subjects.

There are two main approaches used by supervisors in the supervisory process (Oliva & Pawlas, 1997, p. 12):

- Scientific approach: that is, the belief that the generic teaching skills can be identified, therefore, teachers should be able to demonstrate them.

- Artistic approach: belief that teaching is a highly individualized activity which is imitable.

Differing Conceptions of Effective Teaching

Effective teaching is opposed to lack of understanding of teaching process, impreciseness of teacher performance, and lack of agreement on what is to be taught.

Some supervisors focus on process, that is, the demonstration of teaching skills, some others focus on the product, that is, test scores of students. Some others even include teacher's personal and professional attributes in effective teaching supervision.

Tensions Between Teachers and Supervisors

The fact of having an individual evaluate another individual is in itself a source of stress. Speaking about performance evaluation creates stress in the teacher's mind.

Teachers want and have the right to know competencies on which they will be judged, who will do the evaluation, how will the evaluation be conducted, and for what will the result be useful. Teachers doubt about the reliability of data collection made by the supervisor. They want to be involved in the creation of evaluation process.

One more source of tensions is the inability to separate the supervisory service from evaluation, that is, the summative supervision and the formative supervision.

"Many teachers simply ignore supervisors, choose not to ask for help, and avoid opportunities to work with them" (Oliva & Pawlas, 1997, p. 14). This is because those teachers think they are more capable than the supervisor or that the supervisor has no value.

Barriers to Communication

Cooperative relationship between the supervisor and the supervisee means, in other words, the positive communication between these two people. Both people should have an idea about the barriers to communication in order to overcome them. Wiles (1967, pp. 58-61) gave some clues that should be considered in dealing with communication.

1. People use symbols or words that have different meanings.

2. Members of the group have different values.

3. They have different perceptions of the problem.

4. Some have the emphasis on status.

5. Some have conflict of interest.

6. Some make decisions by the majority vote rather than compromising.

7. Attempts to keep feelings out of the decision.

8. Use of words to present thinking.

9. Lack of desire to understand the other's point of view or his feelings or his values or his purposes.

10. Lack of acceptance of diversity.

11. A one-way concept of cooperation.

12. Feelings of superiority.

13. Feelings of personal insecurity and fear of disdain.

14. An obvious attempt to belittle and dictate.

15. Lack of cooperative spirit, opposition mind.

Clinical Supervision

There are some other problems which occur in the supervisory process because either the supervisor or the supervisee do not know the different phases of the supervision process. According to Sergiovanni and Starratt (1988) and Morris (1973), there are three main sections in the supervision activity: the preobservation, the observation and the postobservation.

Morris (1973, pp. 58-76) identified eight phases in the cycle of supervision.

Phase 1: Establishing the Teacher-Supervisor Relationship

The success of the clinical supervision, as conceived by Morris (1973), requires that teachers share responsibility with supervisors for all steps and activities. Therefore, the supervisor has to build a relationship based on mutual trust and support, and to induct the teacher into the role of cosupervisor.

Phase 2: Intensive Planning of Lessons and Units With Teachers

Teacher and supervisor plan together a lesson, a series of lessons. Planning includes estimation of objectives or outcomes, subject concepts, teaching strategies, material to be used, learning context, anticipated problems, and elements for feedback and evaluation.

Phase 3: Planning of the Classroom Observation Strategy by Teacher and Supervisor

Together teacher and supervisor think about the kind of information to be gathered during the observation period.

Phase 4: Supervisor Observes In-Class Instruction

The observation should not take place unless there has been a careful establishmentof supervisory relationship and an adequate planning of both the lesson and the observation strategy.

Phase 5: Careful Analysis of the Teaching-Learning Process

In the feedback conference the supervisor should take the evidence of the reality that happened during the observation period. It should be something that really affected the classroom activities.

Phase 6: Planning the Strategy

Supervisors prepare tentative objectives and process to be used in the conference. They also plan the setting: materials, tapes, time, and other aids.

Phase 7: The Conference

This is the opportunity and setting for the teacher and supervisor to exchange information about what was intended in a lesson. Understanding and improving professional practice characterize the success of the conference.

Phase 8: The Resumption of Planning

After discovering things to be changed, the agreement is materialized. Teacher and supervisor plan the next lessons and the new targets, approaches, and techniques to be attempted.

Therefore, the role of the supervisor is summarized in two aspects: help teachers understand and improve their professional practice, and helping them to learn more about the skills of classroom analysis needed in supervision.

Characteristics of Modern School Supervision

Here are the characteristics of the modern school supervision (Neagley & Evans, 1965, pp. 1-19).

Developing Characters of Good Supervision

The following characteristics of modern schools can help supervisors and teachers maintain a good relationship in the supervisory activity.

1. The establishment and maintenance of satisfactory human relations among all staff members is primary.

2. Modern supervision is democratic, in the most enlightened sense. "Democracy does not mean 'laissez-faire,' with each staff member proceeding as he pleases" (Neagley & Evans, 1965, p. 5). Rather, it involves a dynamic, understanding, sensitive, leadership role. Democracy in supervision means cooperative involvement of all staff members in the instructional activity.

3. Modern supervision is comprehensive in scope. Before, supervision was focusing only on negative criticism of the teacher, today supervision has the objective of improving all the factors involved in pupil's learning.

4. Cooperative curriculum study and development is essential to the maintenance of modern and worthwhile classroom experiences for students.

5. A carefully planned staff in-service program can contribute much to intellectual growth.

6. The proper orientation of teachers to the schools and community is a vital supervisory function.

7. Specialists should be hired for special services and subjects such as art, music, physical education, speech correction, and developmental reading.

8. Classroom visitation should be the basis of the feedback conference. This conference is about what really happened during presentations.

9. In any comprehensive supervisory plan, individual teacher conferences are prominent.

What is the Role of the Supervisee and the Supervisor

in the Cooperative Developmental Process?

Here are the expected roles from each of the two parties (Sergiovanni & Starratt, 1988, p. 378):

Assumptions to be avoided in the supervision. (a) There is a clear set of criteria of standards understood and accepted by all with which a teacher's performance can be evaluated; (b) sporadic, unannounced classroom visits, with no prior conversation and no subsequent discussion, a legitimate and acceptable way to assess teacher performance; (c) student achievement of course objectives is the only way to evaluate teacher's

performance; (d) evaluation of teacher performance should only deal with observable behaviors; and (e) one or two class visits are required to make judgements about the quality of a teacher's performance to make decisions on retention, tenure, and promotion.

Identification of supervisory proficiency. The identification of the effective supervision is realized through the following factors (Edward, 1989, pp. 4-5)

1. Community relations--establishing and maintaining an open and productive relation between the school and its community.

2. Staff development--developing and facilitating meaningful opportunities for professional growth.

3. Planning for change--initiating and implementing cooperatively developed strategies for continuous improvement.

4. Communication--ensuring open and clear communication among individuals and groups through the organization.

5. Curriculum--coordinating and integrating the process of curriculum development and implementation.

6. Service to teachers--providing materials, resources, and assistance to support teaching and learning.

7. Instructional program--supporting and coordinating the instruction.

8. Observation and conferring--providing feedback to teachers based on classroom observations.

9. Problem solving and decision making--using a variety of strategies to clarify

and analyze problems and make decisions.

10. Research and program evaluation--encouraging experimentation and assessing outcomes.

11. Motivating and organizing--helping people to develop a shared vision and achieve collective aims.

12. Personal development--recognizing and reflecting upon one's personal and professional beliefs, abilities, and action.

Qualities of modern supervisor. The modern supervisor should (Edward, 1989, pp. 24-25):

1. Have varying roles, depending on the different places of supervision. The supervisor's role may change according to the superintendent or principal to whom the supervisor is responsible.

2. Be a coordinator: the supervisor coordinates programs, groups, materials, reports. He/She is the linker between programs and people.

3. Be a consultant: in a consulting capacity, the supervisor serves as a specialist in curriculum, instructional methodology, and staff development.

4. Be a group leader: to perform this role the supervisor should be knowledgeable about group dynamics and demonstrate leadership skills. The supervisor assists group development with perfection of democratic process.

5. Be an evaluator: the supervisor evaluates both instruction and curriculum. He/she helps teachers find answers to curricular and instructional topics, conduct some limited research project. He/she helps teachers evaluate their classroom performance, identify their own strengths and weakness, and select means of overcoming their deficiencies.

6. Have foundations of supervision: the supervisor should have a broad training in preparation for the work of supervisor. That is the engine of supervision in supervisory expertise.

7. Have good personal traits: these are the traits demonstrating a high degree of skill in human or interpersonal relationship, empathy, warmth, sincerity, cooperativeness, collegiality, trust, loyalty, helpfulness, friendliness, desire to give of oneself in order to be of assistance to others, etc.

8. Have knowledge and skills: the supervisor should have a deep general education program, preservice educational program, major field of study, solid graduate program in supervision, 3 or 5 years of successful teaching.

In conclusion, it is better to consider what Sergiovanni and Starratt (1988, p. 432) said, "we salute those exercising supervisory responsibility in schools. Theirs is a difficult profession, demanding skills, sensitivity, intelligence, and leadership. Upon their shoulders, and the shoulders of their teacher colleagues, rest the brightest hopes of our romance with wisdom through education."

Finally, Ray and Bronstein (1995) elaborated eleven rules in order to give a positive feedback: Be behavior-oriented, Use examples, Helpful, Be receiver-oriented, Be timely, Give feedback on items within receiver control, Impact, Check for clarity, Communicate feeling, Group sharing, Ask the person 'May I coach you?'

CHAPTER VI

DECISION MAKING IN EDUCATIONAL SETTING

Decision making has most of the times been a very complex and difficult issue for leaders in all the domains. Coming out with a decision which is accurate and accepted by many people is not an easy task. Some leaders make inaccurate decisions, merely because they either do not know the process of making a good decision, or just because they are autocratic. In this chapter there will be a learning about the different ways and steps that can be useful in decision making.

According to Sharman (1984, p. 7), "Decision making is an activity in which all humans expend a considerable amount of their time and energy. It is probably fair to say that the degree of success an individual, group, or organization experiences over a given period of time is directly proportional to the quality of decision they make during that period of time." Decision making is not a matter of "Let's make it fast and do!" instead it is a matter of "Let's sit and think about it!" There are decisions that fail, not because there were no steps followed, but just because they were done in a hurry.

Traditional ways of making decisions seem a prerogative of the school administration. Unfortunately, there are many African administrators who are still making decisions alone. Today, there is a considerable evidence that in effective organizations, all members of an organization, not only formal leaders, contribute somehow to the quality of the decisions made in an organization. On this point of view only will the one that involves other organization members in the decision-making process be called a modern organization. In other words, it would be inappropriate to say that an organization is modern while there is not a participatory activity of the organization members in the decision making.

A decision making is usually catalyst for another decision making. Sharman (1984, p. 12) cited, "There is one thing that all of us can be sure of concerning decision making: making a decision will be followed immediately by the need to make another decision." In fact, life is full of decision-making activities, one after another. Decisions are dealt with in all the daily activities. Though it is a fact in the daily life, it is still complex, especially when it involves an organization, a group, a company, etc.

Decision-Making Process

Sharman (1984, p. 13) declared that "most authorities consider decision to be essence of the administrative process. The quality of the decision-making processes determines the ultimate success of the organization." If it is so, there should be a careful set of attention in a decision-making process.

Therefore, Sharman (1984) suggested some processes to be followed.

The Rational Decision-Making Process

This process exist on a certain systematic level in the decision-making process. It

has a major assumption that all the people solving the same problem and using the same data will arrive at the same solution.

Identify or recognize the problem. This is the very first step in decision making or in the problem solving. Actually, to make a decision is also to find a solution to a problem. Therefore, the fact of knowing that there is a problem is already one step towards the solution, the decision.

There are leaders who fail in making a decision just at this first step. When they are told about a problem or any other situation, they just reject the request with the explanation that "unnecessary points like those should not always bother the committee; just ignore them!" Here, communication between the leader and the subordinates is important. It is only a leader who has good cooperation with their subordinates who can have facility to identify problems.

Collect information pertinent to the problem. On this step the committee may work with most of the people who are somehow involved in the matter. For instance, if there is a problem of students who do not like their teacher, there may be an interview with the students, teachers, and parents in order to collect a valid sample of the truth. This cannot be a task of only one individual.

Describe, analyze, and evaluate the problem. Again, only one person cannot make an accurate description, analysis, and evaluation of a problem. On this step the committee tries to discover the first motives of the problem, how it started, how it grew, how it crashed, and how to provide solutions for it. It is clear that if this step is done by only one person, there will be much subjectivity, a certain relativeness will accompany the evaluation of the problem.

This step can be split into three according to the terminology given and the activity done with each term: description, analysis, and evaluation. In the description, the committee may clarify the problem by giving all the points that help in identifying the problem. In the analysis, the committee will think deeper, looking for the mediate and the immediate causes and effects of the problem. In the evaluation process the committee may need to set the limits where they will be dealing with that matter.

Identify alternatives for action. It should be after the previous three steps that any identification alternative for action should be done. Committee members jot down their suggestions for the problem-solving process. The committee generates a number of alternatives to alleviate the problem.

Evaluate alternatives. After the step of generating alternatives comes this step of weighing them. All the alternatives will not be necessarily included in the decision making. There may be some alternatives that can be included in others; also, there can be those which are out of topic. This is the time to work on them. This is the time when there should be a clear explanation of any alternative given in the former step.

Select the preferred alternatives and implement. After all the alternatives have been presented, discussed, and evaluated, comes the time of selecting the best ones, or those that fit the analyzed situation better. All the committee members make a free vote on the alternatives. This vote should be done in a democratic way and not with a kind of frustration, as the case may be in many of our schools. On this step, we know some leaders try to put a certain subjective emphasis on certain alternatives before people vote. This is not favorable for the success of the decision making.

The Modified Rational Decision-Making Process

This rational decision making takes time and demands a lot of effort, but the modified decision making is done with little time and effort spent in identifying and analyzing a problem. The problem is quickly or superficially defined and after that comes directly the solution phase. By doing this, people usually select solutions based on previous experiences and perceptions. In this process, if the decision is considerably successful, the committee has the tendency to stop at this stage; but if the decision fails, the committee members go back to the data-collecting stage. This is a problem of leaders who don't have no experience, they want everything to be done according to what previous leaders have been doing. As leaders are getting more and more experienced, they tend to move more and more from this short-cut process toward the rational decision-making modes.

The Routine Decision Making

In a way, this process is similar to the previous one. There are situations that occur frequently. In this case, it becomes easy and obvious to use procedures that have been set forth in the school board policy, student conduct codes, or school handbooks.

For instance, in most Christian schools, it is well known that illegal marriage leads to exclusion.

Initially, developing a school handbook is very hard, but once done, it serves as a guide in solving routine problems. However, Sharman (1984, p. 19) suggested that "even well-functioning procedures that are developed for routine decisions must be reviewed on a regular basis, because the longer a particular procedure is in use, the more likely situations might change, thereby requiring the modification or deletion of the existing procedure." This means that procedures may be flexible according to place and time.

The Nonroutine Decision Making

This process works better than those already mentioned previously. For this process, the principal will not just do what they always do for other situations like this, or they will not just rely on the school handbook to make a decision. The principal has to go further, beyond the routine. Nonroutine processes are too complex; to work on these by using a policy statement from a handbook would not be effective, rather they require time and careful deliberation.

In other words, a nonroutine decision making is the concluding part of a rational process. The rational and the nonroutine processes seem to be more ideal, because even if there are some situations that look the same, they always have many diversities in different points of view.

Brainstorming

This is a decision-making technique invented in the 1950s but still being used by many educational organizations. In this technique, committee members are assigned the

task of generating many alternatives in a given amount of time.

In the first step of this process, discussion of the alternatives in order to reach a consensus is not allowed. Ideas are given without any order, and some committee members can give more alternatives than others. The emphasis is put on generating as many alternatives as possible. Only after all the alternatives have been presented can a discussion be opened.

There are two major criticisms that can be pointed out for this process. The first is peer pressure. Unless the leader is skillful enough, some committee members begin to dominate the group and hinder others to produce their own ideas. The second criticism is that during the discussion, they discover that only few alternatives are the best, and these alternatives look similar.

The Nominal Group Technique

This is a process that fights against the brainstorming weaknesses. In this process the leader explains the problem, gives instructions to each member to write as many alternatives as possible. Group members are given 10 to 20 minutes to think and write down their personal alternative solutions. Discussion is not allowed for this step.

After this step, a well-structured presentation of alternatives follows. Here is the strong side of this technique: each group member gives one alternative at a time to the group leader, and the alternatives are written on the board. No discussion is open until all the alternatives are recorded.

With this technique, a larger number of ideas is generated, and these are ideas of high quality because:

- individuals are not frustrated by the domination of others;

- this process encourages divergent and incompatible ideas;

- a creative tension is produced among individuals, for the individuals are aware that others are working and know their own work will be displayed.

Outcomes of the Decision Making

Depending on the process used in the decision making, Sharman (1984) suggested two outcomes: forced choice and free choice.

Forced Choices

There is still a large number of leaders who either do not want to consider the suggestions of the committee members or find that consensus is not possible. They usually end up with forced choices.

Compromise

In this process, the leader must form a committee which sets its purposes. This might involve general purposes of the school, defining particular types of curriculum, and determining the different resources available to the school. It becomes easy for the committee to set the purposes having the idea of the resources of the school in mind. The committee generate some decisions which are acceptable to all concerned. Students and their parents can be asked what they think about the decisions made so that they will be applying something that they agreed on.

Reaching Consensus

Reaching consensus is one of the steps of decision making, and it is difficult to do. It requires less time, but it is usually a higher quality decision than that made through voting or compromising.

To reach a consensus, some factors have to be considered:

1. Ensure that the group has adequate time and material resources available.

2. Gather as many pertinent facts as possible before reaching any type of closure.

3. Avoid early attempts to compromise.

4. Committee members should resist changing their positions as long as their positions are valid and rational.

5. Listen to what others say and try to understand their position.

6. Some compromise probably will have to be made, but avoid compromise until it is absolutely necessary.

CHAPTER VII

THE PRINCIPAL'S CRUCIAL UNDERSTANDING AND SKILLS

There is a large number of principals who do not know how to do their job because they are not equipped with any strategy at all. For some, there are so many existing theories that it becomes hard for them to select which strategy to use. This chapter will try give suggestions about how a principal can manage their work. This part of the paper will mainly be founded on the theories suggested by Sergiovanni (1991) in order to provide a clear idea about dealing with principal's understandings and skills.

This chapter of the work is provided because many educational leaders are principals of schools. They should be equipped with the tools that a principal can use in their leadership.

The Nature of Reflective Practice in the Principalship

Some principals think that for every problem there is always predetermined solutions in the form of research-based theories, while others think that problems differ. Therefore, the principal has to be creative in order to find solutions. To start with, Sergiovanni (1991) gave certain theories.

Reflective Practice: The Paradigm of the Scruffies

This world is already messy, so the principal needs to give a lot of care in their work. Theory and research are good for the teacher, the principal, and other professionals, but that is not all what they need. In fact, it is completed by the professional knowledge, which is created in use as principal and teachers think, decide, do, and acquire experience. They make this creation by criticizing, restructuring, and testing the intuitive understandings of experimented phenomenon.

The Importance of Craft Knowledge

There is a great craft in the administrative domain by the fact that there is a refreshing and compelling view of the nature of administrative work. Principals are the artisans of the administrative work, that means they have to enhance dedication, experience, personal knowledge of the material, mastery of detail, sense of harmony, integration, intimate understanding, and wisdom. Thus, they bring together deep knowledge of relevant techniques by creating something of practical utility.

The Importance of Theoretical Knowledge

By creating their own theories, principals and teachers need to be well-informed about and use the best available theory and research and accumulated wisdom. All these sources put together contribute to a better understanding and better practice.

Informing Practice

The major thing to do in a practice is to decide what to do, elaborate purposes, set strategies to be used, decide time to do that and indicate the most important points, and know how the check will be done after a certain portion of the work. The administrators' known and unknown theories of practice determine their interactive cycles of intentions, actions, and realities. Theories of practice include certain important antecedents: one's theoretical knowledge, self-knowledge, and one's values. Therefore, four levels are found in a reflective practice: technical (cognitive-rational, theoretical knowledge), interpretative (craft knowledge, tacit knowledge, feeling for practice), personal (self-understanding and self-management), and critical (moral consciousness, moral agency, moral development).

Actual and Ideal Functions of the Principal

The principal is an administrator, a manager, a leader, etc.

Administration

On the educational ground, administration may be defined as "a process of working with and through others to accomplish school goals efficiently. The essentials of this definition are action, goals, limited resources, and working with other people" (Sergiovanni, 1991, p. 15).

Management and Leadership

Principals become good managers and leaders by coordinating, directing, and

supporting the work of others; that means by defining objectives, evaluating performance, providing the necessary resources, building a supportive climate, enhancing a good cooperation with parents, handling teachers and students' problems, dealing with the administrative hierarchy, and generally helping the school to run day after day.

Ideal Concepts of Principalship

The administrators, in most organizations, have four main roles: planning, that is the setting of goals and strategies for the organization; organizing, that is the bringing together of the necessary human, financial, and physical resources to accomplish the goals efficiently; leading, which deals mainly with guiding and supervising the subordinates; and controlling, which refers to the principal's evaluation responsibilities, and includes reviewing and performance regulation, providing feedback, etc.

The Complex Nature of Managerial Work

The principal is responsible for his personnel, he must make sure that all his subordinates are present physically, working for the best of the progress. The principal is in charge of program-making, accountable to parents, and he is expected to protect the physical safety of the children. The principal has to have priorities to stick to. In general, the principal has to know the daily rhythm of the job of his school. The principal's job seems to be different from other managerial positions by the fact that it is essentially an oral occupation. The principal leads his subjects mostly by talking, something different from other managers.

The principal's managerial jobs are, therefore, composed of some demands, constraints, and in-between area of choices. Principals have to be resource provider, instructional resource, communicator, and have a visible presence.

Strong principals are mostly those who are forceful and dynamic leaders who have high energy, initiative, tolerance for ambiguity, sense of humor, analytical ability, and a stance towards life.

Towards a New Theory of Management for the Principalship"Principals have different practical theories about the nature of human rationality, how schools work, and what really matters to people" (Sergiovanni, 1991, p. 41).

For the traditional management, principals enjoy official sanction. By inventing one's own theory, sometimes it will be realized that the world cannot be changed to fit one's theory. In this case, one has to change one's theory to fit the world. That is how successful principals become both effective managers and effective leaders.

Traditional management theory is good when it is used without causing unanticipated harmful effects. It suits also to situations in which there is a need to bring a routine. Its usefulness ends when the goal is to bring about extraordinary commitment and performance.

There must be a tight connection between stated goals and the policies, decisions, and actions taken in the organization. The two main reasons why the traditional theories do not reach the maximum are the theory is based on authority, and it has bureaucratic roots, so it is biased toward standardization and routinization.

In order to overcome these limits or the traditional theories, a new theory for principalship must be developed. This new theory does not replace the traditional one, it subsumes it. This can be learned under certain practical issues.

Issue 1: How schools are structured. According to the traditional rule, schools are managerially tight but culturally loose. They can provide purpose and build a shared covenant, practice tight and loose management, and/or evaluate process outcomes.

Issue 2: Where to fit people into the improvement planning process. When it comes to fitting people, emphasize ends, ways, and means. For the school improvement, emphasize the means, then the ways, and then the ends.

Issue 3: Getting and maintaining compliance. To manage compliance, the principal has to identify and announce his goals. Use goals to develop work requirements, use requirements to develop his compliance strategy, and observe involvement and commitment consequences. Thus, three categories of power are possible: coercive, remunerative, and normative.

Issue 4: Monitoring and controlling people. The principal has to emphasize developing self-management in others and building commitment to ideas.

Issue 5: Developing a motivational strategy. This is done by developing moral commitments.

In conclusion, it can be said that a good organization is the one that provides administrative structures, arrangements, and coordinating everything needed to facilitate teaching and learning. This process implies cooperation, empowerment, responsibility, accountability, an organizational intelligence (ability), a language of theory (language used to implement a theory), right words, and a practical theory of educational organization.

Characteristics of Successful SchoolsEffective and successful seem to mean the same thing. It is the ability to produce a desired effect. The only difference is that successful communicate a new and broader definition of effectiveness. In schools, effectiveness is determined by the student performance on standardized tests of reading and math skills, according to researchers. Researchers gave six general criteria in identifying the successful schools (Sergiovanni, 1991, p. 79):

1. Those schools contain safe and orderly environments that can allow student achievement greater than what was expected.

2. They respond effectively to the development levels of students.

3. Learning is the center of the educational system.

4. The community accepts them and their expectations.

5. They have a reputation for excellence in the community.

6. These schools function well for a better ethics of the students.

In general, the following are the characteristics of successful schools:

1. They are student-centered.

2. They offer academically rich programs.

3. They provide instruction that promotes student learning.

4. They have positive school climate.

5. They foster collegial interaction.

6. They have extensive staff development.

7. They practice shared leadership.

8. They foster creative problem solving.

9. They involve parents and community.

Applying the above characteristics of a school effectiveness may actually help in improving our schools. These elements may be used in order for the principal or the teacher to create their own theories, according to what was said in the previous chapters.

The Forces and Stages of LeadershipPrincipals are very important in a sense that there is no other position in the schools responsible in maintaining and improving the schools' quality. The different forces of leadership are given by Sergiovanni, (1991).

1. The technical force: it is the one that the principal uses to plan, organize, coordinate, and to schedule and manipulate strategies and situations to ensure maximal effectiveness.

2. The human force: it is the one that the principal uses to provide to the human needs; providing support, encouragement, and growth opportunities for teachers and others.

3. The educational force: it is the one used to discover educational problems, counsel teachers, provide supervision, and to evaluate and develop the staff and the curriculum for the betterment of the educational system.

4. The symbolic force: it is the one used for unity and for time-out. Here the principal assumes the role of chief, emphasizes selective attention on important goals and behaviors, showing what is important and valuable in the school. Thus, the principal has to tour the school, visit classrooms, spend time out with students, and preside over ceremonies, rituals, and other important occasions.

5. The cultural force: it is used by the principal in order to assume the role of seeking to define, strengthen, and articulate values, beliefs, and cultural strands that gives the school its unique identity.

In order to motivate great success in schools, there is a great need: (a) for the teachers, students, and other school workers to find their work and personal lives meaningful, purposeful, sensible, and significant; (b) for them to have some reasonable control over their work activities and to be able to exert reasonable influence over work events and circumstances; and (c) for them to experience success, to think themselves as winners, and to receive recognition for their success (Sergiovanni, 1991, p. 111).

There are four stages identified in leadership (Sergiovanni, 1991, p. 123):

1. The bartering, which is the stage when there is a bargaining between the leader and the follower. They get started, there is initiation, exchange of ideas. This helps in achieving competence.

2. The building: in this stage, the leader provides a climate and support good to foster subordinates' opportunities for fulfilment of needs for achievement, responsibility, competence, and esteem. This is the stage of uncertainty for the leader. He has to build support, motivation, increase readiness for excellence, and fulfill needs.

3. The bonding: the leader and the subordinates develop a set of values and commitments that unites them together in a common cause. This is the stage of commitment and awareness for the assumed responsibility. The leader helps his subordinates achieve excellence.

4. The banking: this is the remote control of the routinization. There is saving and investment of values which are institutionalized.

Among these four, the bonding leadership seems to work better because it has realistic and practical views. It is based on human rationality that enhances individual and organizational intelligence and performance; and it responds to high psychological and spiritual needs that lead to positive commitment, performance, and satisfaction.

The new leadership values for the principalship involve purposing and shared values, building followership, enabling others to function autonomously on behalf of shared purposes, viewing leadership as power to accomplish, putting collegiality first, emphasizing intrinsic motivation, understanding quality control, and valuing simplicity.

Building Shared Values

Apart from the psychological and the bureaucratic authorities, there is one other which is equally powerful or maybe even more powerful moral authority: the legacy of economics. Probably, parents, teachers and students respond to the bureaucratic and psychological authority, just to avoid certain penalties, or to obtain rewards.

Leaders should be aware that what the subordinates like now is a system where they can maximize their self-interest, calculating the costs and benefits of their actions, recognizing if they are winners or losers. That is why some elements are very important such as love, loyalty, outrage repair, kind obligation, sense of duty, belief in the goodness of something, etc.

When action's purposes are considered, it is realized that

1. Teachers, parents, students, and everyone else involved in the school works are able, valuable, and responsible and should be treated accordingly.

2. They possess untapped potential in all areas of human endeavor.

3. Education should be a collaborative and cooperative activity.

4. Human potential is realized by places, policies, and processes that make development.

Therefore, schools should focus on helping adolescents learn to use their minds well, with simple school goals that each student can master, applicable to all students. Teaching and learning should be personalized to the possible maximum, and the student should be considered as worker, not only a receiver who only ingurgitate what comes from the teacher. Students entering secondary school should be only those who have competency in language and elementary math. The principal and the teachers should be generalists first and then specialists second, demonstrating a sense of commitment to the entire school.

Taken together, the purposes of a school should foster cooperation and not competition among the subordinates. Cooperative goals encourage people to work together.

Program Development and Evaluation

The curriculum includes the setting for learning, patterns characterizing student-teacher interaction, achieved objectives, and meanings derived from the learning. On the practical viewpoint, mastery learning, individualized instruction, behavioral objectives, tutorials, and prescriptive teaching are all important.

Evaluation involves making judgement about the worth of things, events, options, activities, and achievement. Evaluation should not be a measurement, as it is seen in many schools. A measurement involves that goodness be determined according to the fixed standards.

The objectives of an evaluation are, therefore, substituting precision for accuracy, honoring ends over means, erosion of professional confidence, etc.

There are four kinds of objectives that are identified and which should be used in planning and evaluating teaching and learning process (Sergiovani, 1991):

1. Instructional objectives: outcomes and solutions provided and specified before teaching.

2. Expressive objectives: outcomes of an educational activity.

3. Middle-range objectives: problems which the students will deal with.

4. Informal objectives: objectives focusing less on the content and concepts.

The Importance of School Climate and Culture

The school climate is determined by the degree of conformity, responsibility, standards, rewards, organizational clarity, warmth and support, and leadership. The climate is important because it is obviously an important factor for improving the quality of work life of those who work in schools. In this case, principals play the key roles in directing energy into productive channels.

The school culture is determined by observable behavioral regularities defined by the rules of the game for getting along. Those rules are norms that define what is right and correct to do, what is acceptable and expected.

The external adoption and survival is a factor which deals with mission and strategy, goals, means, standards, and correction in the school climate and culture. According to Sergiovanni (1991), the problems of the internal integration are aimed on: (a) developing a common set of understanding that will facilitate communication;

(b) developing criteria who is in or out the membership in the group; (c) working out the criteria and rules to determine who gets, maintains, and loses power; (d) working out rules for peer relationships and the manner in which openness should be; (e) inducing in mind the heroic and sinful behaviors; and (f) dealing with issues of ideology and sacredness.

A well-developed organizational culture and climate direct and coordinate activities.

Teacher Motivation and Commitment

The motivation of the teacher can be lowered by other factors, even though people

are informed about how to motivate the teacher. This can come from problems and contradictions in policy and practice. Sergiovanni (1991) gave some factors that lower motivation:

1. Bureaucracy in the classroom: work conditions sometimes do not allow the teacher to feel responsible or free in his class. This happens when the principal uses bureaucratic power on his followers, so this can lower the teacher's motivation.

2. Teachers as origins and pawns: in certain schools, teachers are controlled to such a level that they cannot even control their classes. Teachers should have the freedom of feeling their lives meaningful, reasonable control over their work activities, and experience personal responsibility.

Meaningfulness, control, and personal responsibility are the characteristics of teachers who are functioning as "origins" and "pawns." The elements that provide direction, define meaning, and promote significance in someone's work contribute to build the motivation and the commitment.

3. Isolation in teaching: teaching seems to be a lonely profession. Typically, teachers work alone. This isolation creates tendencies to encourage the value of privatization, and the consequences of this value are to look inward, discourage sharing, encourage competition, and promote feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.

Work should have the potential of source of motivation. A special emphasis should, therefore, be put on opportunity for action, merging of action and awareness, focused attention, narrowing of consciousness, loss of self-consciousness as one works, clarity of goals and norms, direct and immediate feedback, and feelings of competence and of being in control of what one does.

In the job-enrichment theory, there are three main factors determining a person's motivation and job satisfaction: experience meaningfulness, experience responsibility, and knowledge of results.

Administering as a Moral CraftLeadership can be considered a personal thing; it may comprise three important dimensions, just like a person: the heart, the head, and the hand.

The heart of leadership has to do with what a person believes, values, dreams about, and is committed to. It is that person's vision. The head of leadership deals with the theories of practice each one of us has developed. The head and the heart of leadership, put together, become the basis of our strategies and actions. The hand of leadership deals with the actions we take, the decisions we make, the leadership and management behaviors that we use as our strategies become institutionalized in the form of school programs, policies, and procedures.

Therefore, the role of the principal is to transform the school from organization of technical functions in pursuit of objective outcomes into an institution. The role of the school is to transform its students mostly by building character and instilling virtue. The virtue of efficiency has to adopt some standards.

The moral dimension is understood by the difference between the normative rationality (rationality based on what we believe to be good), and the technical rationality (rationality based on what is effective and efficient). So, a good principal will be the one who knows how to combine them by selecting what is good and effective for his school. This will be possible only if there is there is fellowship between the leader and his subordinates. Moreover, the principal should be committed to democratic values.

CHAPTER VIII

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

According to F. H. Jones (1987) positive classroom discipline refers to fundamental skills of classroom management. These are the skills of the teacher to see how the whole classroom functions as a social process, and to see how to manage it as a whole. One of the main objectives of a positive classroom discipline is to deal with the classroom disruptions. It is by giving remediation to classroom disruptions that a teacher will provide a positive atmosphere for a good learning. To achieve such a positive classroom discipline, the teacher will need to interrelate three major things in the classroom: techniques of classroom discipline, instruction, and motivation.

Here are the strategies suggested by F. H. Jones (1987).

Keep It Positive

In general, classroom discipline is the deal of enforcing classroom standards and enhancing student-teacher cooperation in order to maximize learning and minimize classroom disruptions. Discipline starts before students sit in the classroom and ends after class when the room is empty.

The legacy of the past. Parents and teachers list discipline as the number one concern in most classrooms. In the past conception, the terms "discipline," "disciplinarian," and "rule enforcement" have a very negative connotation. It meant something like "authoritarian personality on one hand and overwhelmed personality on the other hand."

-Discipline meant punishment. In the past "to discipline a student" had the same meaning with "to punish a student."

-You will learn it on the job. It has been realized that in the past, there was no proper class for discipline in the teacher education. Most of the teachers on their training were told that they would learn that when they get their job.

-Love is not enough. Young teachers and parents have an undying hope that if they love the students very much, it will be enough for making a positive discipline in the class. That is only a part of it, not the complete thing; because it is not always easy to totally love students with unacceptable, persistent, severe, provocative, and nasty behavior.

Natural defenses. There are many reasons that teachers try to give to justify themselves when they fail in discipline problems. They say that:

1. If your curriculum is good enough, you will not have discipline problems.

2. It is a gift that some teachers are just born with.

3. Some kids are really unmanageable.

4. Discipline hinders creativity and spontaneity.

5. The longer you teach, the better at discipline you become.

6. I've known some teachers who really need help. (Wrong! Everybody needs help.).

7. It is only this year which is hard for me, but next year, I know I will make it!

In spite of all the fears and rationalizations, we should know that discipline management is inescapable.

Building methods of positive classroom discipline slowly. Developing positive methods for dealing with disruptive students is not a process of only one day or one month. It comes slowly and progressively. What can be done, then?

1. Go on, jump in, you can swim. As a teacher, even if you have been frustrated by others, you should have the willingness to start.

2. Look at what other teachers are doing in the matter of discipline. Get the positive from them and neglect their negative points.

3. Decode the limit-setting, that is the teacher's physical presence and emotional tone that conveys to every student that your rules are for real.

4. Set time to meet with other teachers so that you can learn from what is happening in other classes.

During the 1970s the classroom discipline management consisted of four main points: clear classroom rules, limit-setting, negative sanctions or "back-up responses," and individualized incentive systems (behavior modification programs) for extremely oppositional or unmotivated students. These programs were so tough that they almost did not make improvement in the students' behavior. After that comes the "responsibility training." This is a new program that provided high-power, low-cost, broad-spectrum management system. It attempts to set everybody free to enjoy the process of teaching and learning. In this system, we are allowed to use back-up systems only when all other attempts have failed. The enforcement of classroom rules should be based on a clear understanding of students (F. H. Jones, 1987).

Positive classroom instruction. A positive classroom instruction involves learning how to teach positively, that is giving a corrective feedback, lesson design, lesson presentation, incentives for excellence, and creating change in education.

Keep It Cheap

Choosing between one technique and another in a management situation is simple: always use the cheapest remedy, that is, using discipline management technique that takes the least planning, the least effort, the least time and paper work. A discipline management is not an end in itself.

The primary focus of discipline management. There is a great misconception that discipline management is the biggest problem in the educational system. Certainly there are others. Because of this misconception, everybody fears the task of disciplining the students: the parents want that to be the task of the teacher, the teacher expects it to be that of the administrator, the administrator thinks that it is the parents' task, etc. Each of these individuals should know that they have a role in the discipline management.

The cost of small disruptions. Everyday teachers are exposed to many disruptions, however small they may be, but they have cast on teachers. It has been discovered that most teachers' medical problems are related to the stress they get in the classroom. The same small disruptions influence students' learning. When students are disrupted, they have a low level of learning than expected. Therefore, these small disruptions affect the whole society by the fact that in the process of sending a student to school, there are many people involved: parents, student, teacher, administrator, builder, bus driver, etc.

The imperative action. According to this discipline ineffectiveness, something must be done. The whole society should be involved and informed. The folklore of discipline suggests that in the matter of discipline management, teachers should be fair, firm, consistent, and follow through. There are four stages in the teacher's task: ignoring students' disruptions; asking students to stop; asking students to stop again; and laying down the law (F. H. Jones, 1987).

Classroom Structure Structure is organization. In this section the teacher deals with setting the stage for a positive instruction and a smooth classroom management. The teacher has to know how to arrange furniture in the classroom.

The Nature of Classroom Rules

The rules of a classroom are more than just a list of obligations of what has to be done and what has not to be done. There are two basic types of classroom rules:

General rules. These are the teacher's goals, hopes, and aspirations for classroom management during the coming school year. However, they do not generate behavior. These rules deal mainly with two topics: good behavior and work habits. There is no best and exhaustive list of general rules, every teacher must develop his/her own approach. In establishing their own general rules: (a) teachers should not make any rule that they do not want to enforce every time it is broken; (b) there should be relatively few general behavior and work rules in the classroom; and (c) rules should be simple, clear, and shared with all students.

Specific rules. These are the forms of procedures, routines, and standards for carrying out everyday tasks. Here, the teacher tells the students what, when, and how to do something.

Teaching Classroom Rules

Beginning the year with clarity. The teaching of classroom rules starts one way or another from the opening minute of the school year. The first day the teacher is already required to teach a structured lesson. Thus, as it is done in parenting, teaching, or managing an organization, effective leaders plan, anticipate, structure, and prepare both for themselves and the people for whom they are responsible for the upcoming task.

Methods of developing classroom rules (F. H. Jones, 1987). The only way for teachers to express their individuality is to build, explain, and teach their rules, routines, standards, and expectations. The teacher can do it by these ways:

1. Describing and demonstrating rules.

2. Building a consensus with students.

3. Teaching the management system.

4. Giving the students classroom chores, such as individual responsibilities, group responsibilities, helping the teacher teach, etc.

Classroom Structure: Arranging the Learning Environment

A physical and social context that is structured by the teacher is an important factor to achieve specific management objectives. Therefore, teachers should know the different kinds of arranging a room. The custodian room arrangement is the general way of arranging that is often used. However, teachers should be aware that they are free to set their room according to their objectives, for instance arrangement in U, or V, or ( ), etc.

Beginning to Build Relationship

Relationship can be made in different ways: giving names and demographics, ice-breaking activities for students, ice-breaking activities for the teacher, having fun together, helping students to do their work, etc. Parents should also be connected. This connection is made by needing parents, sharing classroom rules with them, making early personal contact with them, sending work home regularly, inviting them to preventive conferences, and encouraging them to take care of home programs as needed.

Building Patterns of CooperationCooperation, Relationship, and Incentives

It is time to break with the traditional remedies, the sanctions which do not have

other objectives than the punitive ones. It is time to deal with disruptions with a certain kindness, cooperation, relationship, and incentives.

In the management of classroom, the more pressing issue is not the classroom discipline only; it is also and mainly the ability of the teacher to produce cooperation. While control deals with the issue of stopping unwanted behavior, cooperation deals with starting appropriate behavior. Students are responsible. They should be led by the teacher to understand that, because if the teacher does not do so, he/she will be responsible for any disruptions. So, the important thing for the teacher to do is to get young people cooperate and take responsibility for their own. Cooperation is always voluntary, and it is always under a complete control of another person. Voluntary behavior is under the control of incentives: volition and incentives go together.

Teachers should use limit-setting; and as it was said previously, beyond limit-settings there will be the punitive options to be used. The type of discipline required to be instilled in students is self-discipline, which is inseparable from cooperation, volition to follow appropriate rules, and to work for appropriate goals. We have informal incentives such as love, caring, and respect; the formal incentives such as the salary and material rewards. Many teachers never use the formal incentives because they rely mainly on the informal incentives. Informal incentives are good, formal ones are better. Group incentives are much better than individual ones, because they cost least and it is easy to use. A group reward can be a tangible reward both expensive and difficult to share. Complex time incentives are also used. These are rewards measured in time, such as preferred activity time. To generate consistently good behavior from all class members we need to use a complex, formal incentive system that utilizes bonus and penalty.

Responsibility Training

Training young people to be responsible for their own actions is the ultimate goal of discipline. To be responsible, there are three main conditions to be met: have something for which to be responsible (a resource of finite quantity), have control over the consumption of that resource, and live with the consequences of their decisions concerning the consumption of that resource.

Responsibility training is a management system oriented toward giving by the teacher and toward enjoyment by students within the bounds of responsible behavior. In this training, the teacher is both the giver and timekeeper or accountant. Responsibility training has both bonus and penalty. Students control penalty by their decisions to cooperate or not to cooperate. There are two main kinds of bonuses: hurry-up bonuses, that is, bonus which will motivate students to do their task very fast; and the automatic bonuses, that is, when students save time by their own without being even promised to be given a bonus.

Penalties alone do not work for a responsibility training. If penalties are used alone, they will produce many counterproductive attitudes in the students' minds such as resentment, undermining of relationship, rebellion, and negative peer pressure.

Field Applications of Responsibilities Training

Responsibility training has two primary uses in a classroom: elimination of nagging and discipline from a distance.

Elimination of nagging. Students should be trained to be at the right place at the right time with the right materials doing the right thing with the teacher not having to nag in order to get them there. Therefore, students should be trained to have quick lesson transitions, be in their seats ready to work when the bell rings, show up with proper books, pencils, and other materials, eliminate hall passes, eliminate pencil sharpening, facilitate room cleanup, rearrange furniture quickly, line up quickly, etc.

Discipline from a distance. This is generally used in a situation where limit-setting is totally impracticable or too slow. Therefore, students may be led in reading circle and small group instruction, open-field situations such as gym, shop, home economics, and science lab; enforcing a noise level rule for the entire group during a lesson in which movement and talking are permitted; dealing with a disruption of short duration for which limit-setting is too slow; dealing with the student who becomes upset with physical proximity but who cares about his/her status in the peer group.

How to Make Responsibility Training Fail

Teacher characteristics (F. H. Jones, 1987). Poor relationship versus positive relationship. Poor limit-setting versus good limit-setting. Angry, upset versus relaxed, calm. Poor structure versus clear structure. Few bonuses and many penalties versus many bonuses. Waiting too long versus time frame. Boring versus attractive.

Student characteristics. Not caring about peer pressure and yet willing to make confrontation with the teacher, forming a peer group of opposition to the rules, no peer cohesion, no preferred activities, etc.

F. H. Jones (1987) explained the different incentives.

1. Basic design of individualized incentives--The classic behavior modification is the individualized incentive program for a behaviorally and/or educationally handicapped student. Its main objective is to replace problem behavior with proper behavior. Here are some steps in implementing such a program: pinpointing the problem, pinpointing behavioral assets, recording target behavior, pinpointing critical reinforcers, intervention (setting of the problem, events preceding the problem, events following the occurrence of the problem), going back to the drawing board. This requires expert judgement, and therefore, such programs often require special consultation from program design specialists.

2. Group incentives--Group management program seems to be easier than individualized behavioral management programs. The teacher may use point economies, that means a management system that uses "points" as a universal medium of exchange, activity rewards versus tangible rewards, group incentive systems versus aggregate systems, punishment-prone systems, raffles, etc.

3. Status and affirmation incentives--Rewards can be given in the form of special commendations that arise peer status, affirm the student personally, or inform parents of special achievement. We can mention the award assemblies, commendations sent home, within-classroom honors and awards.

4. Extinction - If you perform a behavior in order to get something, but that something never comes, you may one day become discouraged, lose interest, and give up. Your optimism begins to fade. In this case we say that you are "on extinction." Extinction is generally produced by the repetition of a behavior in the absence of an ultimate reinforcement. Teachers should do their best not to drive their students in such situations.

Back-Up Systems

The Nature of Back-Up Systems

Here we now deal with systematic use of negative sanctions in discipline management. To understand thoroughly the nature of back-up systems is one of the only available antidotes to their abuse. A back-up system is an organization to suppress severe disruptions. It is designed to keep the size of the negative sanctions minimal and to self-eliminate. It is a systematic, hierarchic organization rendering the escalation of unacceptable behavior futile.

Anatomy of typical back-up. Here are the different layers of a back-up system: Level 1: classroom policy, that is the teacher's first line of defense; Level 2: school policy, that is the due process for dealing with discipline problems that must be handled by teachers and administrators. Here is its hierarchy: warning, conference with the student, time-out (being sent to the office, detention), in-school suspension, suspension (1 to 3 days), expulsion and/or a special program as "continuation school." Level 3: law enforcement and the juvenile justice system.

Why do back-up fail. No reinforcement schedules, no consistency in the system, reinforcement errors in the office, etc.

Back-Up Responses Within the Classroom

Sudden problems sometimes develop very fast. Students may provoke each other to produce fight. For recurrent problems, the teacher may need to try the limit-setting once more, and if it does not work, he/she drop limit-setting immediately and go to another technique. A well-behaved student who misbehaves the first time will be given the second chance of limit-setting, but for a repeat disrupter, only one time may be enough to turn to back-up response. Medium back-up responses include techniques such as time out in the classroom, time out in a colleague's classroom, public warning, threat, being sent to the hall, detention after school, parent conference, or at worst lowering a student's grade, extra homework.

Back-Up Responses: Beyond the Classroom

This consists of large and extra-large back-up responses. Large back-up responses are largely equivalent to sending a student to the office, whereas the extra-large back-up responses include follow-up responses sanctions such as in-school suspension, suspension, and exclusion.

Large back-up responses. They require that the administration directly help a teacher in dealing with a management problem. The office is in deep trouble when students are sent there for moderate-size offenses. Teachers say that they do not get any support from administrators in order to deal with discipline problems. It seems that most principals fear to face discipline problems, and later they blame teachers for not having dealt well

with discipline problems. Parents say that until they sent their children to school, they were fine. They say that problems are developed in school.

Extra-large back-up responses. This happens beyond the confines of the classroom and beyond the applications of positive classroom discipline. It involves the management of delinquent populations and the involvement of education, both regular and special, with the juvenile justice system and the families court-referred youths. Common procedures: in-school suspension, Saturday school, suspension, and some more extreme procedures such as delivering a student to a parent at work, accompanying the student to school, call the police, expulsion, administrative commitment to hang tough, etc.

School-Site Discipline Management Procedures

Discipline management at a school site can be divided into two: classroom discipline, that is, the management of discipline problems happening in the classroom and school-site discipline management, which is the management of discipline problems outside the classroom where the teacher is highly dependent on the collaboration and support of other colleagues for success (F. H. Jones, 1987).

In this domain,

1. Faculty consensus and commitment are required to deal with most problems.

2. See how many faculty meetings you can waste just discussing the simple issue of who is responsible for the noise in the halls.

3. Successful management of behavior outside the classroom does not increase time on task as dramatically as does classroom management.

4. Success with classroom management reduces teacher's stress more than does success with management of school-site discipline.

5. Many problems outside the classroom can be managed through the extension of classroom management programs such as responsibility training.

6. School-site discipline consumes administrators' time, time which is needed for effective school-site leadership.

At-Risk Students This part of the chapter describes the youth at risk in general and how to deal with them, but since a focus is in the educational setting, that is the reason why this is entitled "At-Risk Students." Today there is a life of uncertainty, an atmosphere of troubles, frustration, and many problems. This is one of the reasons why youth find it worthless what they call "aimless existence." This feeling of aimless existence is influencing very much the society in "a revolution in its folkways, norms, and values, that youth (quite possibly all of them to some degree) are at risk" (Morris, 1973, p. 3).

The transition between youth to adulthood creates many changes or even troubles for many young people. While some young people go through developing positive values and building strong relationships, for some, they are experiencing pain, anger, uncertainty-aimless existence. These kinds of feelings determine the at-risk behavior because they can disorient psychological and social functions of the youth. These manifestations of at-risk behavior may be seen when some young people feel low self-esteem, isolation and depression, life-taking and self-harming behaviors (ideas of suicide, going to an undetermined place, alcoholism, premarital sex, smoking, etc), or harming others (violence, weapon bearing, excessive opposition, fighting, and all the kinds of disruptive behaviors that we encounter in class).

Moreover, Ogden and Vito (1988, p. 50) suggested some other ways of discovering high-risk students: they do poorly in school, they are unable to get along with others, the child's peers or older children they play with use drugs, someone in the child's home has a drug problem, the child doesn't like school and feels as if he/she doesn't belong there, rules and discipline at home and at school seem unclear and inconsistent to them, and the child continually resists authority.

Odgen and Vito (1988, p. 25) have also their ways to detect students at risk: they have low-esteem, an inability to make rational decisions, an inability to cope with the pressures of home, school. They also exceed in high absenteeism, complain of illness and request to go to the nurse, develop unwillingness to work on group tasks in the classroom, avoid other students during the play period, change behavior, come to low achievement.

Students who are involved in such behavioral activities are at risk, and if teachers, parents, and administrators do not work efficiently to get them back, they will soon become problem-students.

Causes of At-Risk Students

According to the American Medical Association (1992), adolescence is full of

turbulent transformation from childhood to adulthood. During this period youth undergo many physical, emotional, cognitive, and physiological changes. Besides, Odgen and Vito (1988, p. 25) cited, "students undergoing traumas such as the death of a family member, divorce or separation, abuse, neglect, students who are new to the school or who have moved frequently, students who have lags in academic skill development, students who have been retained . . ." are at high risk.

There is a multitude of factors which are at the origin of the at-risk behavior (Charlton & Kenneth, 1993).

Biological factors. It has been certified by many biologists that it is during the transitional period, that is the adolescence, that there is a great change in the biological body constitution. There is a great transformation happening with endocrine glands, chromosomes, genes, epilepsy (over 100,000 children and young people in the UK have some form of epilepsy), asthma, etc. (Charlton & Kenneth, 1993). To these factors, we can add the heredity. Indeed, there is a certain of heredity in the biological factors which even affects the behavioral attitudes, for instance, the cells of an alcoholic, or a smoking parent will affect on the cells of the children.

Psychological factors. According to Charlton and Kenneth (1993), there is also a big transformation in the nervous system of the adolescents. According to them, behavior is determined by "the integrity, or quality, of both the central (nerves in the brain and spinal cord) and peripheral (nerves from the brain and spinal cord to other parts of the body) nervous systems" (p. 23). This means that if there is a serious damage of either system, there must be also the manifestation of certain physical, or performance, or behavioral abnormalities.

To this factor, we can add the emotional factors which also vary during this period.

Hyperactivity. There are kids who are born hyperactive. They sleep few hours only in the 24 hours of a day. They cry incessantly. "They will not feed properly and may also suffer from asthma and eczema" (Charlton & Kenneth 1993, p. 27). These children can later "destroy furniture and toys, have poor communication, and may resort to self-injurious behavior. Parents are often exhausted by stress and continual crisis of coping with the excessive demands of such a child, as are teachers when these children enter schools" (Charlton & Kenneth, 1993, p. 27).

Family factors. In this section there are many categories of factors influencing at-risk behavior. According to Ogden and Vito (1988, p. 30), "today with the number of families undergoing divorces and remarriages, students have personal crises to deal with in addition to more traditional traumas such as death and dying." Teachers can discover the manifestations of such students through changes in the students' ways of dressing, outburst of crying and/or anger, lateness to school, complaints of various illnesses.

There are some statistics that show really how worse families are getting these last years. "During the past twenty years or so there has been a rapid increase in divorce rates. In 1961, 25,000 divorces were granted; a figure which rose to 74,000 in 1972 and 180,000 in 1986 . . . for every two marriages in 1990 there was almost one divorce; and that 55 percent of divorced couples had at least one child under the age of 16" (Charlton & Kenneth, 1993, p. 33).

In addition one-parent home, divorced families, orphans, poverty, fighting-parents families, alcoholic families, pagan families, family separation, etc., are other causes of kids' misbehavior. It is hard to find a coconut tree bearing an apple.

The family is a very important setting for the kid's behavior development because it's there where they have the foundations of their lives and their behavior as well.

Social and financial factors. Children who grew up in families which had a single parent, or large family, and/or poorly housed, and/or had low family income are disadvantaged, and therefore, exposed to misbehavior (Charlton & Kenneth, 1993, p. 37).

Students who feel rejected by their peers, neglected by people, having any fellow at all in their life, or with fellow of negative behavior, kids threatened by the authority and/or the teacher and/or the parents, all these are kinds of situations that can lead a kid to an at-risk behavior.

Mass media. Today, the introduction of television programs and videos, unsafe literature, inappropriate web sites, etc., are at the basis of many problems that were not known before.

In conclusion, it can be said that divorce, single-parent households, parents' separation, stepfamily, stepfamily breakouts, out-of-wedlock birthrate, poverty, no source of health care, employed single mothers, low birthweights, high-risk substance abuse, alcoholic beverages, etc., are major sources of misbehavior. This is an indirect abuse of children. Children have no more rights considered by their parents.

Consequences of At-Risk Student

There are many consequences associated to the at-risk behavior development. Dropouts from school. Today there is a significant increase in dropouts. This is the main consequences of an at-risk behavior which has not been dealt with by any of the society members who are expected to. These dropouts are influencing many other factors harmful for both the society and the agent themselves. Dropouts are the first stage of a very dangerous step of life of many young people. Therefore, we acknowledge the importance of schools in this case.

Early pregnancy and STD. It has been reported that "more than 1 million adolescents become pregnant every year; the majority of pregnancies (78%) among 15- to 17-year-olds are unwanted" (Henderson, 1987, p. 3). The outcome of this young maternal age and lower socioeconomic status is very dangerous for today's society. Furthermore, the same author cited, "adolescents account for more than 80% of the cases of STDs in the United States . . . estimated 12 million cases of STDs occurring annually among 15- to 29-year-olds and from the 20% of AIDS cases diagnosed among 20- to 29-year-olds"

(p. 2).

In all the modern societies of the world, sex disorder has become a la mode, a kind of prestige for young people, and even for adults. Therefore, there is a tremendous increase in AIDS, unwanted pregnancies, and all other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). This is the result of unprotected sex and/or sex disorder.

Violence. Violence mortality among adolescents has reached an all-time high. Homicide rates increased 82% between 1968 and 1992 (Miller, 1996, p. 473). Adolescents are both victims and perpetrators of violence. Gans and Shook (1994, p. 2) said that about 24% of all crimes that lead to arrests involve adolescents. Adolescents commit more than 40% of sexual offenses against children. About 67% of adolescent victims of violent crimes reported that the offender was between 12 to 20 years old. About 18% of high school seniors claim that they have involved in serious fighting at school or at work or on the street. This violence is leading a certain number of people to death.

Use of tobacco. The use of tobacco has greatly increased, and it is becoming one more thing added to the youth's way of showing that they are a la mode. Tobacco has many bad effects on the human body, therefore, on the youth's health. It creates cancer of larynx, mouth, esophagus, kidneys, uterus, pancreas, and stomach; cerebrovascular disease, cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, etc. (Marcus, 1993, p. 20).

It has been found out by the American Medical Association (1992) that 90 percent of those who smoke start using tobacco when they were less than 18 years old. Additionally, they reported that 35% of adolescents currently smoke. Those adolescents who smoke while pregnant have an increased risk of intrauterine growth retardation, lower infant birth weight, and high infant mortality. In 1988, maternal smoking accounted to about 2,500 infant deaths.

Tobacco threatens the current and future health of today's adolescents, and it is our task to let them understand the seriousness of the consequences of smoking, both short- and long-term.

Alcoholism and other drug abuse. Like smoking, alcoholism and all other drugs

may have also devastating effects on the human health. It can involve domestic violence, abuse, and homicide. This leads to other high-risk behavior such as mental, emotional, psychological, physical, social, and religious disorders. Gans and Shook (1994) added that adolescents who abuse alcohol and other drugs have a high rate of suicide, mental health problems, school dropouts, and delinquency (p. 3).

Drugs and alcohol abuse lead many young people to death, to car accidents, STDs, etc.

Injuries and death. It is during the young age that young people become more careless with their life. They engage in risky activities that cause unintentional injuries. These activities are for instance, driving fast, driving without seat belts, getting engaged in very difficult gymnastics, intentional poisonings or self-poisonings, medication misuse, etc.

Dealing with At-Risk Behavior

The big question now is "How can all these possible situations be dealt with in Adventist schools?"After reading the above section of this chapter, maybe one can be more fearful of the educator's role. That is why, it is important to know that the role of an educator is one of the noblest responsibilities in this world. Before doing anything to solve the problems of at-risk students, their needs should be known.

Know their needs. There is a multitude of authors who have tried to classify the needs of young people.

Some authors and their theories on young people's needs are reflected in the next table (see Table 6).

Resolving the at-risk behavior problem. The general thing to be done in the process of resolution can involve this procedure:

- Identifying the misbehavior

- Identifying the complete data about the misbehavior

- Identifying the background

- Identifying the needs of the students and the expectations of the parents of that student.

Jones and Jones (2001, p. 47) classified the needs according to the different authors in the following table:

Table 6

Different Need Classifications

Note: From Comprehensive Classroom Management (p. 47), by Vernon Jones and Louise Jones, 2001, Nedham Heights: Allyn & Bacon.

- Set a friendly atmosphere to start with the resolution processes with the student

- Dealing with the present situation, but relating to the former case similar to this, and reminding the student about the promises he/she made to change this disruptive behavior

- Letting students make values and judgement by allowing them self-expression

-Let them develop their own plan in order to change that misbehavior

- Let them make a commitment to the plan they have established

- Do not punish when it is still at the beginning, do not criticize either

All the above processes should be done with kindness, feelings of understanding and care, etc. These processes can be applied by teachers as well as by principals, parents, etc. This is very efficient when the behavior has not yet reached a very high risk. And of course, that is what has to be done, no need to wait until the behavior is at high risk before dealing with it. As soon the manifestations mentioned above for at-risk behavior are realized, there should be provided a special care.

Most of the cases, the control of the at-risk students goes beyond the ability of the teacher. In this case, we have to include other agencies in dealing with the matter.

Agencies working with schools. Charlton and Kenneth (1993) suggested some agencies to work with in order to solve the problems of at-risk students: pastoral teams, church services, families, educational psychology service, educational welfare service, school health service, social services, youth counseling services, and many other services that can help to correct youth's misbehavior.

Children need settings where rights of others are clearly respected, where people express feelings and solve problems together nonviolently. Teachers have to help these students by developing their lifetime skills, reduce their violent attitude, provide a supportive student-teacher relationships, discussing human rights and classroom behavioral standards, treating students with dignity, and using problem-solving approach to student violations.

Creation of supportive relationships, creating personally positive and supportive environments, meeting students' need for meaningful academic tasks, and using discipline methods that incorporate the "3Rs" (recognition of wrongdoing, regret or emphatic understanding of why the act was inappropriate, and reconciliation of relationship). There must be a strong emphasis on academic mission in the school, clear disciplinary standards that are firmly, fairly, and consistently enforced, and an ethic of caring that guides interpersonal relationships.

Students who are involved in behavior problems at school are more likely to have difficulty establishing positive relationships with peers and staff, to be less skilled in social situations, and have lower self-esteem. These students should be trained to interact in class in order to help them in this risky situation.

Prevention

It is always better to prevent than to cure. Since the causes of youth's at-risk behavior are already known, there should be a careful work with these causes. As seen above, the main causes are from the family setting. This is to say that there should be a very strong bridge between parents and schools. Moreover, programs of parental guidance should be enhanced everywhere so that most people may know what is parenthood.

Youth programs of shaping their behavior, or programs of preparing them to their future life should be multiplied in the different centers of the different places. People who are in charge of video making and television programs should be aware of what influence each program has on the youth, the future citizens of this society. Government, church, schools, health services, families should work cooperatively in order to build the society of tomorrow. Dealing or preventing youth misbehavior is not only a task of the teacher, all the above agencies are involved. And of course, all the above agencies have expectations from the schools, it is from schools that they will get employers and employees of those different agencies.

In conclusion, it becomes important to consider what E. G. White (1995) said about the educators in their daily educational task. She said that an educator has the same worth as a pastor. A pastor or priest is a minister of the Lord. Educational leaders should live as ministers of the Lord. She also pointed out some characteristics that are required for effective ministers of Christ (pp. 35-40).

- Consecration--leaders should be fully converted and consecrated to the work of the Lord. That means they should seek for the endowment of the Holy Spirit all the time.

- Self-sacrifice--leaders should apply servant leadership. This is the kind of leadership that was applied by Jesus when He came to serve humanity.

- Compassion--leaders should be loving shepherds. They should take care of their flock tenderly and not the flock taking care of the shepherd.

- Positive Attitudes--leaders are advised to be cheerful, happy, with sense of humor and pleasant personality.

- Dependability--leaders should be depended on by their followers and they should be reliable people and trustworthy.

- Humility--leaders should learn to humble themselves. Humble leaders is not the synonym of neglected leaders as some people think. The humility of a leader is an important factor in managing the affairs of the organization. Jesus' humility is the model. Jesus washing the feet of His disciples (John 13:5) is the best example of humility, which leaders should follow.

- Responsibility-leaders should be responsible people to lead the organization. If a leader is careless and irresponsible, the subordinates will have the tendency to do the same.

Involving Parents in Building Quality Adventist Academies

This section discusses the importance of involving parents in the school organization in order to build Adventist academies of high quality. Indeed, this section of the school organization has created many conflicts in many academies. Some teachers and some principals still think that they do not need parents for the school progress. Especially in the remote areas where most of the parents did not even finish their high school, educators have the tendency to neglect them. Those educators just rely on the multiple theories they acquired in schools. They forget that without the parents who brought these students into the world, there would be no students to teach. Additionally, they forget that parents know their children better than teachers do.

On the other side of this domain, there are parents who do not have confidence in what the educators are doing to prepare the future of the youth. Among these are the parents who disdain teachers, support the misbehavior of their children, i.e., they are ready to defend their children in whatever case-positive or negative behavior. Here are also included the parents who do not want to support the educational activity and the learning process of their children.

Finally, it should be known that there are parents who want to cooperate with the school for the education of their children. Some of them have roadblocks from the educational system-either the educators do not allow her/him to partake in this task, or she/he does not have any strategy or idea to get involved in this noble task of education. There are, however, educators who want to cooperate with parents, but maybe they do not have cooperative parents, or they do not have any procedures how to involve parents in the learning process of the students.

Therefore, this section is about learning the importance of involving parents in the school program, how to involve them and what to do with them as soon as they are involved, and to know what will be the task of parents when they are involved in the school system.

The Need of Parents in the School Organization

Most educators find that in many ways they need the help from the parents, but they do not know how to approach them. They find that many of the situations presented by students in schools have their background in their respective homes. Especially in the matter of behavior, most factors originate from home. Educators face the fruit of the good or bad education that the parents have put in the students' mind.

Indeed, the family background is the shaping agent for most emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual, and mental manifestations of students. Divorce, single-parents households, parents' separation, stepfamily, stepfamily breakouts, out-of-wedlock birthrate, poverty, no source of health care, employed single mothers, low birth weights, high-risk substance abuse, alcoholic beverages, etc., are the different kinds of family backgrounds of students educators are dealing with everyday.

Canter and Canter (1991, p. 3) cited, "parents are the most important people in a child's life. Their love, affection, support and approval are a fundamental need of all children." In 1986, the United States Department of Education concluded that the family is a very important factor for the success in school, and that the curriculum of the home is twice productive of academic learning. Three years before, Joyce Epstein (1983) found that there were positive changes in student achievement, attitude, and behavior when parents were involved in the regular teaching processes. Students also certified having developed a more positive attitude towards school and homework habits. Moreover E. G. White (1903, p. 283) added that "In the formation of character, no other influences count so much as the influence of the home. The teacher's work should supplement that of the parents, but is not to take its place. In all that concerns the well-being of the child, it should be the effort of parents and teachers to co-operate."

In1989 there was a survey about how to raise the student achievement. There was a highly significant percentage of teachers who said that the only one thing that may be done in order to increase students' achievement was to increase the parental involvement in the learning process.

Parents of the 1990s are both a homogeneous and heterogeneous group. They are heterogenous by the fact that they have different family situations: single mothers, single fathers, stepmothers, stepfathers, newly-arrived immigrants, middle class, and ever-increasing number of poverty-level parents. This heterogeneity has most of the time a negative impact on the educational system in general and on the learning process in particular. They are also homogenous by the fact that "these parents and their situations may differ in many ways. But in spite of their differences, they share something significant in common" (Canter & Canter, 1991, p. 5).

In other words, each parent can be a shaping agent of the kid's success in the academic activity. Each parent is able to provide a significant motivation that students need to do their best in school.

Therefore, a parent who does not want to get involved in the student's learning process says indirectly that the child is not very important to deserve a close attention. On the other hand, a parent who gets involved in the student's learning process is a good motivator of his/her child's self-esteem and progress. This self-esteem and this progress are the factors to lead the student to greater success in school and to a prosperous preparation for adulthood.

Getting parents involved in the educational system is not only nice and good to facilitate the work of educators, but more for the sake of children, it is very essential. So both educators and parents should learn how to walk side by side to accomplish this responsibility. Of course, we cannot solve all the problems of the society, but we can learn how to communicate efficiently with parents for a better educational process.

In a certain way parents are ready to work with educators if they are asked to do so. We can see that by the fact that parents give their children-private property-to educators in order to take care of them. That shows already that there is a certain level confidence and openness from the side of the parents. So, it is the turn of educators to get parents on their side. Today, most of the teachers who have cooperated with parents say that they have achieved higher in the students' learning. Parents want to support educators, but they do not know how to get involved in the educational system. It is quite normal for a manager to make a follow-up of his/her property. Parents care about their children to such a level that they want to provide any needed support for the success of their children.

So if that is the attitude of parents toward getting involved in the learning process of their children, what is the attitude of educators about getting parents involved? What do educators have to do in this case?

Therefore, educators should know how to be effective in involving parents in the learning process. There are four ways suggested by Canter and Canter (1991, pp. 9-16) in order for the educators to be effective in this matter.

First, effective teachers know they must have parent support. As we have mentioned above, parents are the most important, influential people in the children's life. No one else can have as important a role of dealing with child development as can parents. Parents have the most time to work with their children. Educators deal with students for only determined hours a day, and they deal with many students at a time, but the parents deal with their children until death. Parents are well-situated in giving disciplinary remarks.

Second, in every interaction with parents, most effective teachers show concern for students. From the very beginning of the school year, the effective teachers show concern for students. They show that to parents by creating positive communication with parents. And for the rest of the year, they go on showing that they care.

Third, effective teachers treat parents the way they would want to be treated. Effective teachers do not expect from parents more than what they do for parents.

And finally, we should say that effective teachers demonstrate professionalism and confidence in their daily responsibility. They show expertise and mastery of their career. They develop a parent-involvement plan.

Roadblocks for the Educator-Parent Cooperation

It has been demonstrated above that families have a great variety of situations, and that those situations have an impact on children's development in general. Principals and teachers should know that those family situations have a significant impact on educator-parent relationship, too. Therefore, the educator should think about how to involve all the parents from all the different family situations in the learning process. In the process of doing it, educators should be aware of the two kinds of roadblocks and how to overcome them: the educator's roadblocks and the parents' roadblock (Canter & Canter, 1991).

Educators' roadblocks. Educators' roadblocks involve two levels: roadblocks that keep teachers from initiating communication and the roadblocks that keep parents from giving support.

Roadblock #1: The myth of "Good Teacher"

It is a pity to realize that even today there are still some schools where administrators and teachers think that involving parents in handling problems is a lack of knowledge in what the educator is doing. There are still some administrators who force their teachers to deal with every problem on their own without calling upon the parents. They consider depending on parents is a weakness of the educators. This is a very dangerous roadblock that teachers are creating and facing in educator-parent relationship. Sometimes the educator belittles his/her own professional abilities, and feel ashamed to ask for help from the parents. Such educators prefer the ruin of students rather than asking a parent to intervene.

Roadblock #2: Negative philosophy about working with parents.

There is a certain number of educators who think that parents know nothing about the learning/educational system. They do not acknowledge whatever help can come from parents. Even if there are other colleagues who want to call upon parents for a certain help, they discourage them. These educators do this because they have negative, unverified expectations about working with parents. If there was an experience when an educator contacted a parent and the latter did not reply back, it becomes a generalization to all the parents of the world. Those kinds of educators constitute a very dangerous tool for the development of the educational system of any school. Worse is that, these feelings do not come only from non-Christian educators, but also from those who call themselves Christian and even among Adventist educators. Their repetitive sentence for self-support is "parents don't back us up and don't even care for their children. No need to call upon them."

Roadblock #3: Lack of training in working with parents

Some educators say that they do not feel comfortable in dealing with parents, they say they are comfortable in dealing with students only. Some others say that they have been trained in only one thing-teaching students. They go further by saying that parents had never been even mentioned in their education classes.

As been noticed, some teachers recognize that they have no experience/training in dealing with parents. For this kind of educators, a special training should be provided, they should be equipped with this very important tool: creating and maintaining the educator-parent relationship. On the other hand, there are those educators who do not want people to know that they do not know any strategy in dealing with parents. For those, it is even difficult to implement remedy for their problems.

Parents' roadblock. There are also other roadblocks which can be created by parents.

Roadblock 1: Parents feel overwhelmed

It is hard for some parents to accept the responsibility of cooperating with educators for the progress of their children's learning process. This is manifested generally by parents who have special unfortunate family situation; for instance, the single mother, single father, stepmother, stepfather, widow or widower, poor family, parents who did not go to school in their life, parents with conflict at home, parents overwhelmed by their work, etc.

In this case, the educator is asked to listen carefully to what the parent is saying in order to know what kind of help can be given to both the parent and his/her child.

Roadblock 2: Some parents want to help but they do not know how

It is surprising that most of the parents who do not know how to do are those who are eager to help their children in their learning process. It is amazing that parents who did not even finish their high school are forcing their children to do their homework. But these parents do not have much contribution for their children's learning responsibilities. That is why, when educators set a positive cooperative relationship with those parents, they can provide them strategies to help their children, for instance by suggesting tutorials and other programs that can help students to achieve higher and higher.

Roadblock3: Parents' negative feelings about education and educators

This is a case which can arise from both the parents who did not finish their studies and those who finished. Those who did not finish their studies may have had problems with schools where they were studying to such a level that they decided to drop out from school. So as soon as a little problem arises from the school where their child is studying, these parents just refer that to the situation that went through when they quit their studies. These parents have already developed a negative attitude towards schools in general. Today, there are many materialistic, rich people discouraging their children to study, saying, "Studies is not the only one means of living. See, I am rich and I have never gone to school. I don't even know how to write my name."

Others are those parents who are highly educated. They disdain those educators who do not have their degrees. They are proud of their diplomas, they think that somebody without that degree cannot contribute efficiently to their children's learning process. They criticize educators in the presence of their children to such an extent that the children who were respectful to their educators do not do so anymore. Such parents should know what the servant of the Lord said, "If criticism or suggestion in regard to the teacher's work becomes necessary, it should be made to him in private. If this proves ineffective, let the matter be referred to those who are responsible for the management of the school. Nothing should be said or done to weaken the children's respect for the one upon whom their well-being in so great degree depends" (E. G. White, 1903, p. 284).

Those parents are mistaken, because they cannot even come to meet the educators and tell them their expectations. That is why educators should not consider only the needs of students, they should also know and consider the expectations of the students' parents. An educator who will meet both the needs of students and the expectations of their parents will have been effective.

Why listen for parents' roadblocks? This is a matter of sensitivity to be considered by educators. Parents who are angry, confused, not listened to, not understood cannot easily get in a good educator-parent relationship.

Since it has been realized that the importance of parents is very crucial in the children's education, parents should not abuse this power they have on their children. They should instead consider what E. G. White (1903) said about them, "Upon fathers as well as mothers rests a responsibility for the child's earlier as well as its later training, and for both parents the demand for careful and thorough preparation is most urgent. Before taking upon themselves the possibilities of fatherhood and motherhood, men and women should become acquainted with the laws of physical development--with physiology and hygiene, with the bearing of prenatal influences, with the laws of heredity, sanitation, dress, exercise, and the treatment of disease; they should also understand the laws of mental development and moral training" (p. 275).

Therefore, educators should really be sensitive to the parents' roadblocks.

Positive Communication With Parents

Very often, it has been very hard to make positive communication with parents. On the other hand, parents can say that it is very hard to get understood by the educators.

According to Canter and Canter (1991), the following are the factors that can contribute to a positive communication with parents:

Time to start communication. In many schools, educators oftentimes call upon parents only when there is a conflict. Before there is a conflict, they do not do so. This is already the beginning of a certain weakness in the communication system. The major objective of communicating with students' parents is not to tell them problems. They are not only problem-solvers. They are rather more than that. For them, what is important is the holistic progress of their children's learning process. They do not give their children to the educator in order to identify their children's mistakes or misbehavior. In their mind, when they bring their children to the educators, parents want their sons and daughters to get successfully in the learning process offered at school. Therefore, educators should not go away from what parents expect from them when they think about the learning process and the communication with parents.

Thus, it sounds very necessary to start to communicate with parents just at the beginning of the school year. That is the time when the educator can get the information about the students he/she will be dealing with during the whole school year. From the beginning of the school year on, teachers should contact parents in order to know parents' expectations about their children, and get some pieces of information about the students' background. Moreover, the educator may ask parents how they think they will collaborate in order to help the students to learn for the best of their benefit, and for the benefit of the community.

It is wise to start creating a positive communication with parents just at the beginning of the school year because at that time there is not yet any problem between educators, parents, and students. It is easier to create good relationship where there is no problem rather than creating that when there is already a conflict. Canter and Canter (1991) said, "everyday, all year long, using positive communication is imperative for showing that you care and for getting past the roadblocks that keep parents from giving support" (p. 85).

After creating positive communication with parents, educators have to nurture it for the rest of the year by keeping it always positive so that parents will be supportive to the learning process. The more parents feel that the educator is concerned, the more they will listen and support the educator.

Many educators will find it difficult to keep in touch with many parents at a time. They are right in a certain way, especially in some countries that are still developing. In general there are four means of contacting parents that can be useful for educators to facilitate communication (Canter & Canter, 1991, p. 86): phone calls, notes, cards and letters, home visits, and parent communication activities.

Positive phone calls. Phone call is the most effective and fastest means of communication that educators can use to contact parents. It does not have to be long. It is just a brief conversation to tell parents about the progress and the success of the students. It can be also some friendly words in order to enhance communication.

Generally, there are some points that you can talk about in a positive phone call. You can describe the student's positive behavior, say what you feel about that, and ask parents to share the content of the conversation with the student. All the calls should be scheduled so that you will not be calling the same parent without calling others, too.

Notes, cards and letters. There are many occasions during a school year for what you can have positive communication-good opportunities. You can use an appreciation note to the parent in order to inform them about the success that the student had on a special day. You can create some kinds of certificates to be given to students for good behavior after a certain period, this certificate will be presented to the parents so that they may also enjoy the exploit of their child.

On the birthdays of the student's parents, you can sometimes do that as a surprise in order to show the parents that you really care. When parents or students are sick, send a get-well note or make a phone call in order to know how the student is doing.

Do not let well-done actions go unrealized and/or noncomplemented. Thank parents for their support that they have given to support your job.

Another means that can be used, and this is required very much in developing countries: home visits. The educator schedules to visit students' parents on an afternoon or on a weekend. The educator takes his time to visit sick students or sick students' parents. Even if the educator does not have anything to give them, just his presence is enough to show that there is a positive communication between him and the parents.

In the end, it should be indicated that some of the above means can be costly to many of the educators, because they require money. Here is a package of free gifts that can be given to parents when you meet them somewhere: listening carefully to them, being affectionate to them, laughing with them without laughing at them, giving them a favor, complementing them, showing them cheerful disposition, praying for them, singing for them. The last two elements are very important in the Adventist academies. It is nice to whisper a prayer with parents, to comfort them and pray for their difficulties when they tell you about them. Adventist educators should pray with parents for their children that they are taking care of, that is a very powerful tool to enhance communication with parents. Educators can also sing for parents before or after praying. All these are free gifts that do not cost anything but have a great positive influence on communication impact.

If there is misunderstanding between educators and parents, that is the work of Satan. Satan knows that if there is disunion there will be automatically disorder in the educational task, and that will lead to failure. That is what he always wants to create between educators and parents. E. G. White (1903, p. 283) said, "The work of co-operation should begin with the father and mother themselves, in the home life. In the training of their children they have a joint responsibility, and it should be their constant endeavor to act together. Let them yield themselves to God, seeking help from Him to sustain each other. Let them teach their children to be true to God, true to principle, and thus true to themselves and to all with whom they are connected. With such training, children when sent to school will not be a cause of disturbance or anxiety. They will be a support to their teachers, and an example and encouragement to their fellow pupils."

Involving Parents in Students' Homework and Informing

Them About Behavior Problems

In classroom management there are two elements that the educators deal with: learning process and discipline matter (Jones & Jones, 2001). In every educational system, educators are working in order to foster these two elements. In this section we would like to know how to involve parents in these two major activities of education.

Parents and homework. Canter and Canter (1991, p. 99) cited that "Homework is a great opportunity for getting parents involved in their child's educational experiences." Even though most parents complain that homework is oftentimes the source of conflicts between them and their children, still homework is the greatest way of keeping parents involved in the learning process of their children. On the other hand, if parents do not help in encouraging their children to do their homework, teachers will be the ones to complain and that will even create conflicts between educators and students. So the best way to solve this problem in the students' learning progress would be to have parents getting involved in the learning process of their children.

Many parents will not get involved in their children's homework matter, not just because they do not want, but because that creates conflicts between them and their children. Moreover, parents think that their children are big enough to think for themselves. Some other parents have problems to lead their children with the homework because either they did not study, or they do not know how to lead their children even if they studied. For these cases, Canter and Canter (1991) suggested four ways of involving parents.

1. Help parents help their children do a better job on homework.

As it was mentioned previously, there are some parents who are willing to help their children, but they do not know how. In order for parents to create a positive communication with their children in the matter of homework, educators should help them. Educators should tell parents to motivate their children with praise, then to encourage them to work, and to help them plan most daily activities. Educators should also provide students with good study habits. These skills should be taught in school and then be reinforced at home.

Canter and Canter (1991) suggested that for written reports, teachers should help parents use long-range planner, written report checklist, and/or proofreading checklist. In order for children to prepare for tests, teachers should provide techniques for both students and parents so that they may cooperate when preparing for a test.

2. Keep lines of communication open.

By involving parents fully in the learning process of their children, the educator keeps them in communication. By doing so, teachers are asked to institute parent-teacher homework memo-line, send home positive homework notes to parents. These notes should be planned, specific, and the teacher should have a record of notes sent home. This is one of the organizational work of the teacher. Moreover, teachers are requested to also give positive homework notes to students as an appreciation and a motivator. Sometimes, educators do this on the homework/test sheet or exercise books. Teachers should encourage both students and their parents to use homework assignment books, then they should ask parents to sign completed homework. At least, this is what every parent should be led to do, because when a parent signs on their child's test sheet, they agree on the result of their child. If they are not satisfied with the grades, then they will try to communicate with the teacher, even if before they did not want to cooperate with him/her. However, it is recommended that educators should not wait up to a time like this one in order to create communication because in this case it will not be a strong positive communication.

3. Assign family weekend learning activities.

It is on weekends that even the most busy parents are at home relaxing. It is also

on weekends that students have more freedom than the rest of the days of the week. The teacher should profit from that opportunity to give something to be done at home with the help of parents: assignments, test preparation. Those assignments may involve the everyday's life, for instance how to plan for a lunch, how to make a plan for things you are going to buy in the market, or how to help needy people, interviews, creative writing, written reports, etc. Those may have been lessons that you taught during the week, now it will be time to enhance them by parents' participation on the field.

In the Adventist schools, it has been found very tempting for the students' faith to tell them to prepare for the test on weekend. A test which comes just at the beginning of the week is a spiritual problem to students because they are tempted to prepare for the tests on Sabbath. It will be preferable not to have test on the first day of the school week for Adventist schools.

In order to help parents solve their children's homework problems, Canter and Canter (1991, p. 113) suggested four ways, "here's what to do when your child fails to bring assignments home:" (a) state clearly that you expect all homework assignments to be brought home, (b) work with the teacher(s) to make sure you know what homework has been assigned, (c) provide praise and support when all homework assignments are brought home, and (d) institute obligatory/essential homework time.

4. Recommendations to teachers.

Canter and Canter (1991, p. 115) gave some recommendations to teachers in the matter of homework that should be considered. According to him, teachers should let parents and students know exactly how he will deal with homework, give parents tips for helping their children do homework, let parents know about upcoming tests, give homework appropriate to the specific age, make sure all the students understand what to do in the homework, collect and comment on all homework, praise students who deserve that if possible. Besides, Canter and Canter (1991) suggested that teachers should not give last-minute/thrown-together homework, homework without any objective, homework having no connection to lessons, overload students with homework. These are factors that can lead students to hate homework, and students can even hate their teacher because of that.

Dealing with discipline problems. This is the second element among the responsibilities of the teacher. Canter and Canter (1991) suggested four main steps in dealing with discipline problems: documenting problems, first contact of parents, problem-solving conference, and disciplinary efforts from parents.

1. Documenting problems

When the student problem goes up to the step where the educator has to call upon the parents about a certain conference, the educator should have a recorded detail about the problem. This is important because many parents resist accusations made against their children. No parent likes to hear bad news about their child. This is something parents have no control over, it is somehow a part of them to stand on the side of their children. So with all the situations recorded with dates, preferably with specific information, will sustain the teacher when presenting the problem to the parent. In such a record, there may be the student's name, date and time and place of incident, description of the problem, action taken, and the student's signature. Some other teachers even use tapes for such a documentation.

With this, parents do not have opportunities to argue so much because everything is recorded and signed by the concerned student in the student's personal file held by the teacher. In severe cases, teachers and parents may not be able to find a solution to the problem, them the problem can go up either to the principal, or to the removal of the child from class to another class, or to a counselor/therapist, or to suspension, or to removal to another school, or to the special education placement.

2. First contact of parents

As indicated earlier, involving parents from the very start of the school year will be of great importance in solving many problems before they get out of hand. This has been a complaint from many parents, and it is valuable that educators inform them about a student's problem when it is already grave. As soon as a misbehavior that parents should know about appear from a certain student, the educator should inform his/her parents about it so that they are aware when the problem starts. Parents cannot be involved in the problem-solving of their children if they are not informed. Educators can make a phone call or send a written note.

Sometimes there is misunderstanding in the problem-solving process just because there was no procedure followed. We can adopt the procedure suggested by Canter and Canter (1991, pp. 127-132): the educator should start with a statement of concern, then describe the specific behavior that necessitated the call/note, describe steps taken to solve the problem, get parental input (opinion), present solutions given to the problem by the educator, then the educator express confidence in his/her ability to solve the problem, and inform parents about the follow-up.

The educator is required to be sensitive and alert to the opinions of parents, contact even hard-to-reach parents, contact either the father or the mother, when necessary, call parent at work, send a registered mail or e-mail, make a follow-up on the initial contact, file notes and records, etc.

3. Problem-solving conference

In order to conduct a problem-solving conference, Canter and Canter (1991) suggested some steps to follow in order to be successful.

- Planning the conference: decide who will be involved in the conference, plan and write down what you will say to parents, gather documentation about the problem that will be under discussion.

- Problem-solving conference: beginning with a statement of concern, updating the situation, describe the specific problem and present pertinent documentation, describe what has been done so far, get parental input on the problem, get parental input on how to solve the problem, tell the parents what you will do to help solve the problem, explain what you need parents to do to solve the problem, let parents know that you are confident that the problems can be worked out, tell parents that there will be follow-up contact from you, write down all the agreed-on actions. While closing the conference, thank parents for coming to meet you. During the conference period, the educator should use effective listening skills, use eye contact, use reflective listening, face the parent when using a translator. 4. Disciplinary efforts from parents

Canter and Canter (1991) said, "If misbehavior at school also meant loss of privileges at home, we'd see fewer behavior problems in the classroom" (p. 179).

Again, the authors used this sentence to show the importance of the parent in the behavioral attitude of their children. Indeed, it seems sometimes easier for parents to deal with behavior problem than for educators. That is why parents should be told about contribution expected from them in the discipline of their children. Educators want parents to tell their children exactly how the parents expect them to behave at school, avoid arguments, back up words with disciplinary action, know what to do when your children begin testing you, train your children to be good.

Leading a Parents' Conference

There should be regular parent conference periodically scheduled in order to set new strategies to be used to help students learn better.

In the planning process, the educator will send a conference invitation to the parents (explaining the purpose of having a parent conference, offering parents flexible time choices, asking parents to let you know what they would like to discuss, writing a personal comment on the invitation), then plan the physical environment, put together samples of student's classwork, fill out parent conference form for each student before meeting the parent(s).

While conducting the conference, the educator should set a profession and caring tone of voice, greet parents warmly and enthusiastically, refer to the parent conference as the conference process goes on, use effective listening and communication skills.

In the end, the educator is asked to close the conference on a positive, optimistic statement. In Adventist academies, it is strongly recommended to open and close the conference with a prayer so that the Holy Spirit may lead the conference.

Some Particular Situations

There are some difficult situations that need a lot of carefulness. Here are some most serious suggested by Canter and Canter (1991, pp. 205-230) with some procedures to handle them.

Dealing with criticism coming from parents. In the process of disarming criticism Canter and Canter (1991) suggested that the educator should (a) prepare the tool (approach to use with the parent); (b) accept mistake if the parent's concern and criticism is correct; (c) listen to parent's complaint without defending or justifying themselves;

(d) show their empathy and concern by asking the parent for more specific information about the complaint; (e) refocus the conversation, restate the student's behavior problem; (f) point out that conflict between the two of them is harmful to the student; and

(g) suggest that the parent should talk to the principal if he/she continues arguing.

Getting commitment from noncooperative parents. In order to get the commitment from such parents, the educator should (a) emphasize that he cannot solve their child's problem on his own; (b) point out that the parent is the most influential person in a child's life; and (c) present the negative outcomes that will appear if the parent does not support you.

Dealing with a parent who makes an unscheduled visit to school. For this kind of parents the educators should (a) first, be sensitive to the parents' concern; (b) let the parent know that his/her concerns are very important to discuss at that very moment;

(c) set a time with the parent to talk about the problem; and (d) get administrative help.

Dealing with phone calls coming from parents. In order to deal effectively with calls coming from parents, the educator should (a) listen to what the parent has to say;

(b) be sensitive to the parent's concern; (c) use nonviolent tone of voice while responding; (d) apologize if he/she did something wrong; (e) clarify the facts if the parent was misinformed about a certain situation; (f) not make quick decisions; (g) ask the parent to come in for a conference, if appropriate; (h) admit that he/she does not have all the answers; and (i) thank the parent for calling.

For the most difficult parents, educators can only approach them by: taking the child home or to the parent's place of work, having the parent monitor student behavior at school, detaining students after school and having parents sign them out, having parents escort students to school, and visiting their home.

Conclusion

Through this section of the work, it is a very important and noble task to cooperate with parents in the learning process of the students. If some schools still have low achievement and low discipline, it is because probably the relationship between parent and educator is not enhanced. The study of the importance of involving parents in the educational system has demonstrated how much success can be brought to the student by involving his/her parents in his/her learning activity.

Moreover, we feel that there is a great need of prayer for the parents to get involved in the educational task of educators. It is only God who can help to unite parents and educators in order to cooperate for the students' success.

Therefore, it is recommended that the communication which is in Adventist schools should be revised. A communication that will contribute to the success of the students should be created. Besides, parents, educators, and students should be united

in Christ as He is united with His Father (John 17:11), because "United we stand firm, divided, we fall!"

CHAPTER IX

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

According to Andres (1991, p. ix) "human resource management focuses on personnel administration as regards management: developing and administering policies and programs leading to effective organization, qualified employees, equitable treatment, advancement opportunities, and job security." This definition described the role that the principal has vis-a-vis to his subordinates. Again, this is one of the major problems many of the African principals, and maybe other principals all over the world, are facing. Therefore, for this new millennium, principals should try to get a clear understanding of what is going on in the section of the human resource management. It is useless to complain everyday without thinking of what should be done in order to manage effectively the human resources.

Moreover, Andres (1991, pp. ix, x) said that the principal should get a thorough knowledge and understanding, attitudes and values, and skills. For instance, he mentioned that the principal should have a clear idea of the following:

- the nature of the activity area

- the functions into which the activity area is subdivided

- contributions of the activity area to the success of the overall enterprise

- problems involved in directing the activity area

- relation of the personnel administration activity area to other activity areas of management

- what each function is

- the purpose of each function

- relation to other functions in the personnel administration area

- other activity area functions to which the function may be related

- conditions which make the function important

- conditions which make the function unimportant

- knowledge and understanding, attitudes and values, and skills in the

most-used methods of carrying out each function and subfunction of the

personnel administration activity area.

- knowledge of how to proceed effectively.

Organization and Management of Jobs

In the matter of human resource management it is important to understand the different jobs in an organization. "The job is the smallest unit into which the activities of an enterprise are divided. Jobs that are similar in terms of the work performed and the qualifications that they require of employees may be grouped into families known as occupations. The portion of a job that is performed by an individual employee is called position" (Andres, 1991, p. 71).

The job of an employee is composed of different activities.

Job Design

In the realm of human resource management, job design is the "specification of jobs according to content, methods, and relationship with other jobs in order to satisfy technological requirements as well as the social and personal requirements of the job holder" (Andres, 1991, pp. 71-72).

Andres (1991) divided jobs into two: those with physical environment and physiological requirements, and those with organizational, social, and personal requirements. Therefore, the organization is likely to be highly productive if it promotes desirable individual, organizational, and technological relationships.

Here comes the requirement that the employee should have: the responsible behavior. Andres (1991, p. 72) gave three main characteristics of a responsible behavior: (a) acceptance of responsibility by the individual or group for the activities required to complete the product or service; (b) acceptance of responsibility for rate, quantity, and quality of output; and (c) recognition of interdependence of individual or group on other for effective progress of a cycle of activities.

There are also other behaviors that Andres (1991) called autonomous behavior that encompasses: (a) self regulation of the work where the job is an assignment having inputs, facilities, and outputs; (b) self-evaluation of work content and performance;

(c) self-adjustment to changes required by technological variability; and (d) participation in setting up goals or objectives for job outputs.

Job Analysis

Every job should be specific, well-determined, and well-described. This is the first problem that some African schools and other organizations have at the start of an employee's job. Leaders hire people only because they (leaders) feel they need more workers, but it becomes hard for them to decide what the different activities of certain job are. In this case, the employee is confused because he does not know his limits, his responsibilities, and even his rights.

Therefore, Andres (1991, p. 73) suggested that three essential parts should be considered in the job analysis: (a) the job must be completely and accurately identified;

(b) the tasks, duties and responsibilities, and work performance standard of the job must be completely and accurately described; and (c) the requirements that the job makes upon the worker for successful performance must be indicated.

Here are some steps that Andres (1991, pp. 73-76) suggested in doing job analysis:

Step 1: Organization's Policy. There must be a certain cooperation among other organization departments. If it is possible, it is even recommended to hire a job analyst to complete job data and prepare the job descriptions, specifications and work performance standards. Here is the section where some of the African principals have some weaknesses. It is rarely that they will hire such an analyst. This relates sometimes either to their pride, or to their schools' financial problems, or to their lack of information.

Step 2: Questionnaire. This is a method that even the principal himself can apply with his subordinates. It requires staff, faculty members, and supervisors to fill up a questionnaire about their jobs. They may even provide their suggestions about how the improvement should be done in their jobs. This is quite normal because they are familiar with the minute details of their jobs. Here, it is the job of the analyst to design the questionnaires and distribute them to the employees.

Step 3: Interviewing. Through interviews, well-trained job analysts may obtain more complete and accurate job information. Not only one employee should be interviewed for reasons of accuracy. That is why it is required for job analysts to discuss the gathered data with the supervisor (if there is any) or other employees in order to insert modifications where they are needed. This is how the general approval can be obtained.

Step 4: Observing Employees at Work. If there was some details of job performance that were hidden in the two previous methods, it will show up through observation. On this step the analyst can check the items to be included in the job analysis, and record working conditions, tools, equipment, and materials used.

Step 5: Writing the First Draft of the Job Description, Job Specifications, and the Job Work Performance Standards. This is the time the specialist tries to make a draft of the job description (written statement covering the duties performed, the responsibilities involved, and the relation of the job being studied to the other jobs in the company (Andres, 1991, p. 74), the specification determined by the personal qualifications a worker must have for such and such a job, and the performance standard (criteria by which the worker's performance will be evaluated (Andres, 1991, p. 75).

Andres (1991, p. 75) indicated that the job specification consists of job requirements (educational requirements, license requirements, experience and training requirements, knowledge requirements, skills requirements, and attitude/habit requirements), and the physical requirements such as the physical exertion, working conditions, and hazards. Besides, he says that the work performance standard consists of the outputs or results a job position must deliver, and the quality and the average period required per work.

Step 6: Have Division/Department/Section Head Review and Approve the First Draft. The analyst, together with the supervisors (or the principal), reviews and edit the original draft, and revises draft on the basis of comments, changes, and criticisms suggested by the reviewers.

Step 7: Panel Discussions on the Revised Semi-Final Draft. If there are human resource managers, this is the time they are involved in the process.

Step 8: Finalization. On this step, the review of the semi-final draft is done on the basis of the comments, changes, and criticisms suggested by members of the panel. Then a written approval of contents from top management is obtained. Manual report is now submitted to each unit concerned.

Uses of Job Analysis

According to the information provided above about the job analysis, it is very important to have a job analysis. In African schools, there is a need for the job analysis because it is the job analysis that guides the recruitments, selection, placement, and counseling of employees. It provides the job description and the job specifications which are very important points in solving some of the school problems.

In addition, the job analysis is one of the highly useful tools used to promote or transfer along the departments determined by duties, responsibilities, job requirements, and working conditions.

Finally, it is clear that the job analysis has the possibility of improving hazardous, unpleasant, and unhealthy working conditions.

The following table (see Table 7) is a job description sheet that Andres (1991, p. 77) suggested:

Table 7

Job Analysis

Human Resource Planning

Definition

"Effective human resource planning is a process of analyzing an organization's human resources needs under changing conditions and developing the activities necessary to satisfy these needs" (Andres, 1991, p. 80). He also said that human resource planning "is the process by which a company ensures it has the right number and kind of people, in the right places at the right time, doing the things for which they are economically most useful" (p. 82). This means that the human resource management provides in advance the general human input by the organization.

Basic Approaches to Human Resource Planning

Andres (1991, pp. 82-83) mentioned some basic approaches to human resource planning. He says that this planning should be concerned with: (a) the human resource needed to assist the company and each operating unit its production targets; (b) an inventory of available human resources within the firm and outside the firm; (c) the identification of gaps in matching the human resource supply with demand, the preparation of programs for increasing productivity, growth, and development of people; (d) systems and procedures that will enhance the utilization of human time and potential; and

(e) furnishing the environment necessary to attract and retain productive people.

Stages of Human Resource Planning

Here are six stages suggested by Andres (1991, pp. 84-90).

Stage 1: Analysis of the Current Human Resource Situation. On this stage, the most important question is "where are we now?" The company looks at its objective, those that are fulfilled so far, those that are not yet fulfilled and why they are not. Here comes what Andres called "Skills Inventory" and the "Human Resource Audit."

By "Skills Inventory" he meant the information on each employee on the following points: (a) education and formal qualifications, (b) foreign language proficiency, (c) work experiences, (d) skills that can be practiced completely, and (d) additional skills.

By "Human Resource Audit" he meant all the information answering questions such as the following: (a) What is the picture of starts and terminations this year? Last year? Over the past two years? Five years? (b) What is the picture of absences? (c) Which types of labor is difficult/easy to recruit? (d) What is the picture of salary and age distribution? (e) What are the trends in the labor market for the skills we need? (f) Why do people leave us to work elsewhere? (g) What are our performance standards? and

(h) What does training cost us in terms of time, effort, and money?

With the Human Resource Skills Inventory and the Human Resource Audit, the company can easily do the following (Andres, 1991, p. 87): (a) recruitment from outside the company, (b) lateral transfers (not the ones involving promotion) into different skill category within the company, and (c) vertical transfers (involving promotion and upgrading).

Stage 2: Forecasting the Human Resource Requirement. This is the step on which two main questions should be answered: "What is the manpower demand for specific types of manpower at given periods of time to perform various roles?" and "What is the best employment profile to be used for future trends?" This is the stage on which it becomes important to read in the future, the trends that will be followed in the course of the new year or any new specified part of time. On this stage, Andres (1991, p. 88) specified there should be skill categorization as follows: (a) managerial, (b) technical,

(c) professional and administrative, (d) manual of operatives, (e) manual/operative supervisory, (f) clerical and office, and (g) clerical and office supervisory.

Stage 3: Forecasting Human Resource Supply. The population count is the total stock of human resources at any time. This is the stage when the skills and performance of the employees should be looked into and decision should be made as to who may leave or be promoted or transferred. This is the assessment of the employees.

As it was already mentioned previously, based on the job analysis, there should be vertical or lateral transfers or promotion. This is a productive change in a school.

Stage 4: Reconciling Human Resource Requirements and Supply Forecasts. There seems to be certain gaps between human resource requirements and supply forecasts. This is revealed, for instance, with the gap between occupations of educated and/or trained employees and uneducated and/or untrained ones. These gaps are likely to contribute to the negative productivity of the school. Therefore, these gaps should be identified, their nature should be described, and their causes and effects should be determined so that there may be an appropriate solution.

Stage 5: Operationalization or Action Process. Since the previous stages helped to identify all the possible problems, now comes the time to assess the resources, consider priorities, and set a certain target for the future. Specific action plans are made in order to move from the theories to operationalization. Andres (1991, p. 89) considered that this includes: (a) the identification of alternatives to solve the identified problems;

(b) pinpointing specific problem areas such as work environment, management policies, etc, or manpower shortage, etc.; (c) the identification of programs to carry out alternatives; (d) designing these specific programs; and (e) the implementation of the programs.

Stage 6: Evaluation and Replanning. According to Andres (1991, p. 90) this involves three dimensions: (a) the planning loop, that is planning and classifying objectives; (b) the programming loop, that is objectives in operational terms; and (c) the general feedback or evaluation loop.

Besides, Cherrington (1987, pp. 119-120) classified in ten steps the job descriptions and job specifications.

Step 1: Personnel planning. To develop the job categories.

Step 2: Recruitment. To describe job openings and advertise new positions.

Step 3: Selection. To identify the skills and activities that serve as the criteria for deciding which candidates to select.

Step 4: Orientation. To tell employees what they must perform.

Step 5: Evaluation. To identify the standards and performance objectives against which employees are evaluated.

Step 6: Compensation. To evaluate job worth to aid in developing a wage structure.

Step 7: Training. To conduct a training needs assessment.

Step 8: Discipline. To identify standards of acceptable performance that employees are expected to achieve.

Step 9: Safety. To identify safe working procedures so that unsafe activities can be discontinued.

Step 10: Job redesign. To analyze the characteristics of the job that needs to be redesigned.

Cherrington (1987, p. 122) suggested four methods in dealing with job analysis: observations, interviews, questionnaires, and employee recordings. The employee profiles can also be taken as another method. It is the information about each employee. According to Cherrington (1987, p. 125) the profile may include: (a) present job category or current position; (b) age; (c) skills including areas of knowledge and experience;

(d) educational level, including degrees and certificates; (e) geographical location; (f) race; (g) religion; (h) sex; (i) length of service; (j) retirement status; (k) time in present position; (l) potential in development and interest in promotion; (m) wage and salary history; and (n) performance rating and supervisory evaluations.

Recruitment, Selection, and Employment

Andres (1991, p. 93) stated that "no organization should underestimate the importance of proper human resource procurement. To be adequate, a Human Resource Management program must be designed to attract the best applicants for the job, develop them into efficient workers and make them loyal employees."

The previous statement shows the importance of making an appropriate recruitment or selection of employees. Employees well-selected will contribute to a higher productivity of the school.

The following are the procedures in human resource procurement as conceived by Andres (1991, pp. 96-112).

Step 1: Identify the different jobs in the Company and write down the job description, job specification and job work performance standard for each job position.

Step 2: Prepare the Human Resource Budget. This budget specifies the existing and filled positions, existing and vacant positions, previously approved new positions to be filled, and proposed new positions.

Step 3: Make requisition for employees. Requisitions for personnel on regular payroll, whether replacements or additions, have to be submitted through the respective group head in order to be submitted to the Human Resource Management Department (or the executive committee) for implementation.

Step 4: Recruit qualified applicants. Hiring right applicants is not an easy and fast task. It takes time when it comes to fill up applications, interviews, psychological examinations, etc.

Step 5: Issue application forms. Applicants who clearly do not meet the job specifications are eliminated from the list on this step.

Step 6: Receive the applicants. This is a rapid screening in order to eliminate the undesirable applicants.

Step 7: Administer the employment tests. These tests help in determining some important factors of the applicants such as interests, intelligence, emotional make-up, and adaptability.

Step 8: Investigate the applicant's background and personal references. This is the time to read through the resumé of the applicant. The applicant's record for his previous employment(s) is one of the important tools in the hiring process.

Step 9: Interview the applicant. There must be a certain kind of interview before hiring a new employee. This is normal in almost all the organizations. According to Andres (1991, p. 105) the questions of the interview may be stated about the applicant's personal qualities, academic achievement, occupational experience, interpersonal competence, career orientation, etc.

Step 10: Match the applicant with the job. This is the time to decide the applicants who gain and those who lose the job. This step should be based on certain important criteria such as appearance, manner, availability, education, intelligence, experience in the field, knowledge of the product, physical conditions (health), character traits, stability in the work, sincerity in his willingness to work, perseverance, ability, loyalty, self-reliance, etc. If the applicant is to be a leader, some other aspects should be looked at such as job motivations, need for income or desire for money, need for security, need for power, need to investigate, need to excel, need for perfection, need to serve, etc. The basic energy criteria will be about the applicant's vigor, initiative, drive, and enthusiasm. In addition, the applicant should show a certain degree of maturity such as: freedom from dependence, regard for consequences, capacity for self-discipline, freedom from selfishness, freedom from show-off tendencies, freedom from destructive tendencies, willingness to accept responsibility (Andres, 1991, pp. 107-108).

Step 11: Let the requisitioning superior or unit head make the final election. In order to make the final selection, Andres (1991, p. 109) declared that three factors be considered: set high standards of performance, hire employees with potentials, offer appropriate economic incentives and other rewards.

Step 12: Let the applicant undergo physical and medical examination.

Step 13: Hire the selected applicant.

Step 14: Give the new employee and orientation and induction about the company. This is done on the first day of the new employee in his new school. On the point of view of Andres (1991, p. 110), this step includes: a briefing on company history; introduction of the new employee to his colleagues and subordinates, a lead man is assigned whom the new employee may consult in case of problems; an introduction to the school facilities, services and regulations; and briefing about sickness, accident, complaint or grievance. Besides, the new employee is made to try his job.

Step 15: Make a follow-up on placement. There should be a periodical evaluation of the workers. Andres (1991, p. 111) classified four different categories of workers in all the organizations: the probationary (if the worker has to be observed and tried to determine his fitness for the job), the regular or the permanent, the temporary, and the contractual workers.

In addition, Cherrington (1987, p. 155) suggested some essential elements to have in mind while recruiting: (a) while selecting, a large applicant pool allows the employer to be more selective, and the percent of applicants considered acceptable influences how many will be needed; (b) for the performance evaluation, highly skilled applicants generally perform better, and persistent problems may indicate the need to attract a higher caliber of applicants; (c) in compensation, the supply of applicants will influence wage rates and highly skilled employees will expect higher levels of compensation, and high wages make it easier to attract more applicants of a higher caliber; (d) dealing with training and development, skilled recruits will need less training than unskilled recruits, and recruiting is simplified if new employees can be adequately trained with little time or expense; and

(e) with the employee relations, employees who are placed in appropriate positions have lower turnover and greater satisfaction, and the organizational image influences the decision to apply for position.

Cherrington (1987, p. 156) summarized the recruiting process in the following table:

Table 8

Recruitment Strategies

(table continues)

Table 8 (continued)

Recruitment Strategies

By not following the above steps or strategies, there is a high probability of selecting a person who is not right for a certain position. Therefore, the new employees have the right to know the descriptions and the specifications of the responsibilities given them. The principals should know the recruitment strategy such as how, where, and when to select the new employees. Moreover, they should know how to select the right person for the right position, without discrimination or favoritism.

In order to maintain or gain the motivation of the workers, Andres (1988, p. 6) suggested that the principal should consider three major factors: the social acceptance, the economic security, and the social mobility. In fact, these three basic factors are the very basic factors that influence the workers to flee away from a certain school if they are not taken care of. These three basic factors summarize Maslow's hierarchy of needs that Andres (1988, p. 7) quoted: (a) basic physiological needs; (b) safety from external danger; (c) love, affection, and social activity; (d) esteem and self-respect; and (e) self-actualization and accomplishment.

The GC Working Policy (1998-1999, p. 575) stated, "the employment of honest, sincere Christian men and women is the best security that can be obtained in the safeguarding of funds. Only those shall be chosen for positions of trusts and responsibility involving the handling of moneys and investments, who give evidence of genuine Christian experience, and whose training or qualification fit them for responsibilities of this kind." This is applicable, not only for the principals and the business managers of the Adventist schools, but also to teachers and any other Adventist employee.

Human Resource Maintenance and Conservation

Human Resource Motivation and Compensation

In schools, as well as in most of the organizations of the world, increasing pay, providing better working conditions, and offering greater fringe benefits significantly increase the worker productivity. Therefore, the above factors are the most important in motivating the employees. Problems in the school mostly start with one of the above factors. Therefore, the principal should be very careful in dealing with the employees, having in mind all of those factors. Here comes again Maslow's hierarchy of needs that was previously mentioned.

Therefore, Andres (1991, pp. 189-192) said that there are five factors to consider: financial benefits and services; professional services (such as legal accountancy advice, employee counseling services, medical and dental benefits, library and reading room, employee suggestion system, religious services); recreational services (such as athletic programs, social programs, outing, special awards); housing and transportation services (faculty housing and transportation allowances, for instance); and legally required benefits and services (such as government service insurance system and social security system, medicare, workmen's compensation, thirteen-month pay, retirement).

Dealing with the subordinates, the principal should consider their human dignity. The following are some very basic and simple strategies that can help the principal in order to deal positively with his subordinates (Andres, 1988, p.18): speak graciously to people; smile at people; call people by their name (this is the Filipino context, but in the African context it is better to call people by the positions they occupy in the school); be friendly and helpful; be cordial; be genuinely interested in people; be generous with praise but cautious with criticism; be thoughtful of the opinion of others; be considerate of the feelings of others; and be alert to give service.

Manpower Productivity

Andres (1991, p. 218) stated, "when employees are highly productive, highly trained and in turn, highly paid, there may be no need to hire more people. The following principles on manpower productivity may achieve this objective:"

1. Analyze job contents and procedures and other variables so as to firm up a minimum work force.

2. Establish definite standards for performance evaluation to really justify additional staff.

3. Attract and retain competent employees regardless of the source of their recruitment.

4. Involve the employees' mind and hearts for high peak performance.

5. Set high standards of performance.

6. Hire potential officers.

7. Make opportunity for advancement company-wide.

8. Find a way of promoting employees who deserve to be promoted.

9. Manpower is the responsibility of everyone in the organization.

10. Develop freedom of discussion between the principal and his followers.

11. Set appropriate economic incentives and rewards.

12. Create human competence.

Training and Development

It is important to have in-service training in order to keep the school faculty developing. Cascio (1998, p. 261) enumerated four characteristics of effective training:

1. Top management is committed to training and development; training is a part of the corporate culture.

2. Training is tied to business strategy and objectives and is linked to bottom- line results.

3. A comprehensive and systematic approach to training exists; training and retraining are done at all levels on a continuous, ongoing basis.

4. There is commitment to invest the necessary resources, to provide sufficient time and money for training.

In the organizational process of the training, there are some factors to be taken in account, according to Cascio (1998, p. 261):

1. Analyze the training and development subsystem and its interaction with other systems.

2. Determine training needs.

3. Specify training objectives.

4. Decompose the learning task into its structural components.

5. Determine an optimal sequencing of the components.

6. Consider alternative ways of learning.

All the above information should be gathered during the planning process of the training. A training may lose its target if the previous factors are not thoroughly thought of.

CHAPTER X

INTEGRATION OF FAITH AND LEARNING

In order to call a school, and academy or a university a Christian one there is what is called integration of faith and learning. That is the only thing making a difference between a Christian and a non-Christian institution. Today, if a school is branded as Adventist, it is because they are supposed to be Christian. Therefore, this chapter is intended to give the definitions of the integration of faith and learning and the role of the principal in that domain. This chapter also provides some strategies about how Christian schools, especially Adventist schools, can witness for the Lord.

Definition and Overview

The words "integration of faith and learning" are now very popular, not only in the Adventist schools but also in many other Christian schools. However, there is a great diversification about the understanding of the appropriate definition of these concepts.

Holmes (1987, pp. 46, 47) said that the integration of faith and learning is the process of weaving threads of faith and spiritual truths through all of the learning experiences of the student. This strengthens his spiritual commitment and facilitates value assimilation.

Holmes (1987) spoke of considering the integration as an intellectual activity where the learning be affected significantly by the integration of faith into the life of the student's character and life. If it is so, then the students from Christian schools should be Christianly different from those studying in secular schools.

Foundational Concepts in the Integration of Faith and Learning

Taylor (2001) classified four different kinds of approaches to integration of faith and learning: (1) the total separation, (2) des-integration, (3) interaction (fiery exchange), (4) interaction (overlap exploration), and (5) integration proper.

Total separation. Chapel periods, Bible classes, extracurricular activities, weekend functions, History, Science, Psychology, Literature, Research, etc., are radically separated from each other. There is disjunction and isolation between faith and learning. This was what was happening in Adventist schools before they knew about the integration of faith and learning. This is the time when some teachers say, "the integration of faith and learning is not for me, that is the task of the Bible-class teacher."

Des-integration. With little reasonable evidence to consider, faith erodes into blind belief; without a holistic faith perspective relating knowledge to the Source of Truth, learning begins to fragment. In this case, there is not at all any idea of teaching students the Word of God.

Interaction: fiery exchange. Faith shouts across the chasm, launching a vitriolic attack on the heresies of evolution, the New Age, rock music, homosexuality, hypnotism,

Interaction: overlap exploration. Presenting the creation perspective when dealing with the origins of life, including an analysis of theocracy when examining forms of government, noting pertinent Bible prophecies when discussing various world empires, interposing the Biblical position on human sexuality when studying STIs.

Integration. This is the approach where there is unified Christian perspective. This last approach is the one that describes better the integration of faith and learning. Indeed, when we speak of the word "integration" we mean "the act of integrating," and Flexner (1987) defined the verb integrate as "to bring together or incorporate parts into a whole," that means "to combine, or complete to produce a whole or larger unit, as parts do." The word "incorporate" seems to give a better definition of the word "integrate." He defined the verb "incorporate" as "to unite or to combine so as to form one body."

Having the above definitions in mind, there should be a clear understanding that there should not be a certain separation between faith and learning, if there is, then there is no integration of faith and learning.

Seventh-day Adventist schools should work like "the schools of prophets fulfilling their mission as training centers for the youth as well as bastions of church standards." (John, 1993, p.135).

Seventh-day Adventist principals should bear in mind that students are the children of God, and the teachers are the servants of God. Therefore the Seventh-day Adventist schools should conform to the mind and the will of God. John (1993, p. 135) added by quoting Ellen G. White, that "education in an Adventist school was to prepare students (a) to face the challenge of this world and (b) for citizenship of His coming kingdom." The task of the Adventist/Christian education is not only filling students with the scientific knowledge, but also and mostly developing in students a Christ-like character, the Christian values, and an empathetic concern for the fellow human beings.

Christian Approach to Education

Taylor (2001) gave four main characteristics of a Christian approach to education: Christ-centered, Bible-integrated, student-related, and socially-applied.

Christ-Controlled Education

1. The Triune God is at the center of the curriculum; the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

2. Creation and revelation provide the foundations of curriculum construction and development.

3. Christ, as Redeemer and Mediator, is the Person of the Godhead who meets the pupil, through His Spirit, in the educational process.

4. Christ is the center of the life and message of Christian education; He is the Head of the Church, the body of Christ.

5. The presence and power of the Holy Spirit must be depended upon in the whole process of Christian education; He brings conviction, regeneration, and instruction as the Spirit of Truth.

6. Christlikeness, through the regenerating and sanctifying power of the Spirit, is the goal for both the individual and society.

7. Worship is foundational in Christian education, for it is here that direct contact, both individually and collectively, is made with God through Christ; this provides both inspiration and instruction.

8. All content for Christian education must be in harmony with the life and teachings of Jesus Christ; the great doctrines of the faith will center in Him; this provides the basis for integration and correlation of subject matter.

9. All materials should be evaluated by His standards of life and ministry and should be used to achieve the objectives of Christian education.

Bible-Integrated Education

1. The curriculum recognizes the Bible as the inspired Word of God, the primary source of truth about God, man, and the world.

2. The curriculum will recognize that redemption is the main theme of the Bible.

3. The total Christian heritage of history and doctrine will be Bible-related and utilized in the curriculum.

4. The Bible will be recognized as the record of man's highest ethical values; it is the rule for both faith and practice.

5. The ethical principles contained in the Scriptures should be applied to all areas of man's experience in everyday life (home, school, work, play, social relations, etc.).

6. The total Bible truth should be directed at the various problems of curriculum content.

7. The curriculum should stress the origin and development of the Bible record.

8. The learner should be guided in the use of the Bible as the Divine Revelation; as such, its values for both personal and group worship will be recognized.

9. The mechanics of Bible construction and organization should not be neglected.

10. Extra-biblical materials will supplement Bible materials; as far as possible, the entire cultural and religious heritage will enrich the curriculum.

11. The principle of gradation will be recognized in the application of Bible truth to the various grade and age levels in the school system.

Pupil-Related Education

1. In the curriculum, the pupil will be viewed from the standpoint of creation, the fall, and redemption.

2. The purpose of the curriculum, therefore, is to contribute toward the goal of Christlike character in the pupil.

3. The curriculum will attempt to build the structure of love, faith, and obedience into the life of the pupil.

4. Pupils will be motivated and urged to commit themselves to the will of God and to a life of communion with Him.

5. The total nature of the pupil depends on the total environment.

6. As a part of the Church, the body of Christ, pupils will be urged to participate in the program of the church that is engaged in building the Kingdom of Christ.

7. The curriculum will recognize the needs and experiences of pupils in the following areas of personal and social relationships:

7.1. The individual's relation to God through Christ

7.2. The individual's relation to human society

7.3. The individual's relation to his life vocation

7.4. The individual's relation to the ministry of witnessing

7.5. The individual's relation to the church

7.6. The individual's relation to the universe

8. The curriculum will provide guidance in the use of home experiences in the program of Christian education.

8.1. The home is the first and greatest teacher; these teaching values will be recognized.

8.2. The curriculum will also provide guidance for the home.

8.3. The curriculum will recognize the perils to the home.

9. The vocational problem of each individual will be cared for in the curriculum.

10. Curriculum construction and development will be directed by the best-known psychological and educational principles.

10.1. The laws of learning will be faithfully observed.

10.2. Materials, methods, and experiences will be adapted to the various levels of maturity.

10.3. Learning must be related to the needs, interests, and capacities of the learner.

10.4. Individual differences will be recognized.

10.5. The principle of building upon prior learning will be observed and practiced in production and in the teaching-learning process.

10.6. Pupil motivation will be necessary, particularly that of an intrinsic nature.

10.7. The curriculum will possess the qualities of comprehensiveness, balance, sequence, and integration.

10.8. Man's relation to God will control the choice of subject matter.

10.9. Learning takes place when truth is accepted in the heart.

10.10. Flexibility and variety are necessary.

11. Materials that are attractive, practical, and of high quality should be provided.

11.1. Suggestions for teacher and pupil planning will be present.

11.2. Guidance on teaching methods will be included.

11.3. The literary style will be simple, clear, and interesting.

Socially-Applied Education

1. The needs held in common by mankind will be stressed in the curriculum:

• A sense of security

1.2. A sense of belonging

1.3. Clear, moral guidance

1.4. Christian motivation

1.5. Knowledge of the truth

1.6. Redemption

1.7. A place of service in God's Kingdom

2. A comprehensive program of evangelism and outreach will be provided by the curriculum.

3. The missionary outreach and imperative as the dynamic motivation for the individual and the church will be stressed.

4. The curriculum will orient the learner in a world of rapid social change, of science and technology, and give him a sense of God as absolute and consequent security in His fellowship.

5. The curriculum will be related to the problems of the present day; it will interpret the facts of present-day society.

6. The Christian ideal for society--the Kingdom of God--will be exalted in the curriculum along with its implications for social relations, politics, economics, etc.

7. The curriculum will offer Christian suggestions for the solution of social issues.

8. The curriculum will be realistic in placing stress on the fact that the present day social setting is characterized by sin and apostasy.

9. The curriculum will stress the fact that redeemed men and women are coworkers with Christ; participation, therefore, in community improvement will be urged.

10. Christian education is accomplished through the Christian institutions of society--home, school, and church.

John (1993, p. 136), quotes from the book GC Department of Education,

Seventh-Day Adventist young people who have spent their entire lives in Christian schools sometimes feel that they are out of touch with the 'real world.' While many of the students eventually express appreciation for the protection Christian schools offer from the full onslaught of corrupting influence, there are times when they feel too far removed from the world ever to make an effective encounter with non-believers. If Adventist youth spend sixteen years of denominational seclusion in elementary school, academy, and college, how shall they have the necessary world? . . . Does a person with a responsible faith huddle quietly in the corners of Sabbath school, church, worship services, MV meetings, and prayer groups and long for the ultimate isolation of heaven?

Young people who feel that they are out of reach of the "real world" because of studying in Christian schools should consider the words of James (James 4:4), "know ye not that the friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God" (KJV). It is a positive thing if young students feel that they are different from the rest of the worldly people. There should be a very obvious difference between the Christian schools and the secular schools. Students should be led to live in the world, but not for the world. They are children of God, therefore, they should be dedicated to their Father who created them, that should be the objective of the Christian school.

The Role of the Principal

A Christian principal must be different from a secular principal. Today, it is inappropriate to call certain principals Christians only because they lead the so-called Christian schools. Being a Christian principal does not mean only being the principal of a Christian school. On the other side, being a school under the control of a certain denomination does not imply necessarily a Christian school.

R. H. Jones (1989) classified into two categories the main factors that should be taken in account in the matter of Christian principal: the integrated beliefs revealed in attitudes, and Christ's methods in dealing with people.

Integrated beliefs revealed in attitudes

The principal's beliefs and attitudes have significant influences in the school. The principal can be considered as the person who greatly influences his school. Therefore, the principal should control his attitudes. R. H. Jones (1989, p. 4) quoted Holmes that the "attitude of the teacher or the student is the initial and perhaps the most salient point of contact with the Christian faith." In turn, the teacher's attitude is influenced by the principal's. R. H. Jones added that "what we say and do are outgrowths of our philosophy of life and reveal the real person" (p. 4). The Christian principal's attitude should reveal that he is indeed a Christian.

The principal's perception of his job is another point to be considered to know whether the principal is Christian or not. Being a principal is a position of authority. Being a good authority is a talent. Christ's model of authority is characterized with service, to be a servant. Unfortunately there are many "Christian" principals who accept to become authorities, not because they want to serve, but because they want to be served only. This is why Jesus said that if one wants to be chief, he should first be a servant (Matthew 20:27, Mark 10:44).

On this, E. G. White (1948, p. 249) said,

At this time God's cause is in need of men and women who possess rare qualifications and good administrative powers; men and women who will make patient, thorough investigation of the needs of the work in various fields; those who have a large capacity for work; those who possess warm kind hearts, cool heads, sound senses, and unbiased judgement; those who are sanctified by the Spirit of God and can fearlessly say, No, or Yea and amen to propositions; those who have strong convictions, clear understanding, and pure sympathetic hearts, those who practice the words, "All ye are brethren."

The above quotation describes well the qualities a Christian principal should have. In other words, a principal who does not have the above qualities should not be called a Christian principal, even though he may be leading a Christian school.

The administrative style can serve also in the identification of a Christian principal. In his ways of making the decisions, communicating with his subordinates, and dealing with his daily responsibilities, the principal should show his Christianity. As for now, these three leadership styles exist: authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire. Even though principals know that the best among these three is the democratic one, some principals are still resisting in one or another extreme-the authoritarian or the laissez-faire. It would be better for the Christian principal to apply the situational leadership style, which is the one selected according to the real situation that occurs. There is no leadership style which can work the same for all employees all over the world.

The principal does also have the responsibility of conflict resolution. When the principal deals Christianly with a problem, he should have in mind that all the workers are parts of only one body, the school. Therefore, each part of the body should receive a fair treatment with no underestimation or favoritism. It is impossible to avoid problems, or trials.

In the following part there will be the strategies that Jesus used in His teachings, that can be used for problem-solving.

The Christian principal is also a guardian of standards. As it was recently mentioned, the principal should not use favoritism just because of his personal feelings. He should keep the standards because standards are made for the whole school, and they are not instituted by the principal only. Therefore the principal should make the standards be kept.

-- Christ's methods in dealing with people. R. H. Jones (1989) suggested that a Christian leader should:

- practice what he preaches; that means the principal must be the model in what he is trying to make other people do.

- know that personal work works, sometimes the leader needs to talk confidentially with employees about their problems instead of bringing the matter to all the committee members.

- avoid an attitude of condemnations.

- avoid arguments as much as possible.

- talk on the level of the listener, because the principal talk to many people of different social rank or those with different levels of education.

- have concern for all, (no discrimination).

- not be afraid to condemn sin.

- refuse to retaliate.

- use the scripture as guide.

Since the integration of faith and learning is a holistic process, the principal should bear in mind that the integration of faith and learning should be planned in all the school activities.

- The environment should reflect a Christian climate. John (1993, p. 138) cited, "since humans interact with their environment and are influenced by it, the physical aspects of the school have much to do in the creation of a climate conductive to the growth of faith. The surroundings should be clean, orderly, and beautiful." Care should be taken in Christian schools to ensure that God likes order, beauty, and harmony in all what we undertake.

This is the reason why E. G. White (1948, p. 258) said, "He who created for man a beautiful world, and planted a lovely garden in Eden with every variety of trees for fruit and beauty, and who decorated the earth with most lovely flowers of every description and hue, has given tangible proofs that He is pleased with the beautiful." The pictures on the wall, the postings with spiritual quotations, the soft music sung before and after the class activities, etc. may help in maintaining the Christian mood in the school.

- The school program should reflect the Christian education. The integration of faith and learning is God's will for the school. The curricular and the cocurricular activities should all incorporate faith. It is erroneous to say that the integration of faith and learning is the task of the Bible-class teacher. All the teachers are responsible of integrating faith and learning.

The following are the suggestions of John (1993, pp. 149-140) on how to keep the school program, environment, and social as Christian as possible:

1. All social programs should represent the work and the character of the Christian school.

2. Programs should not be offensive to the standards of the church, but in keeping with the Adventist understanding of recreative activities.

3. School should avoid the types of entertainment which encourages selfishness, vanity, or theatrical display.

4. Programs in which students participate in scenes portraying worldly conduct, drinking, smoking, lewdness, and violence should not be presented.

5. Profanity, vulgarity, blasphemy, swearing and impure suggestions should be avoided.

- Religious life. There are some religious activities known almost all over the Adventist schools, that can enhance the spiritual life of the students and the teachers. The principal should think of a way to implement them. For instance, the chapel programs, the dormitory worship hours, the midweek prayer meetings, the weeks of prayer, the prayer bands, the Sabbath services, the Adventist Youth programs, the religious singing programs. When time comes to plan these activities, students should be preferably involved so that they may help implement those activities.

- Discipline. It is one of the factors that characterize greatly a Christian school. Gaebelein (1986, p. 91) cited, "the acid test of a Christian school or college is its handling of discipline. The manner in which an erring student is dealt with speaks volumes about the one who deals with him. Here the center of integration shifts to fundamentals such as love, justice, and responsibility . . . and the greatest of these is love."

The way discipline is dealt with in Christian schools should be different from the ways used in the non-Christian schools. While discipline is more punitive in non-Christian schools, it should be more redemptive in the Christian ones.

Redemptive discipline helps to create an educational environment in which students have the freedom of adhering to the school principles, and assume responsibility in order to develop a Christ-like character, knowing that they will be treated with dignity as valued human beings. Therefore, the approach of Christian teachers and administrators should be redemptive.

The students are not animals, like what the secular psychologists think. Students are human beings who need a certain level of freedom and responsibility. Whenever they feel that they are deprived from the minimum of freedom, they try to make themselves free. This is the time they are reported to have become delinquent, impolite, disobedient, etc., just because they wanted to be given a minimum of freedom.

According to Denison (1989), student misconduct can lead to more positive character development, if it is dealt with in a Christian way. Here are the steps that he suggested in dealing with student discipline problems:

- the student understand the school's code of behavior,

- occasional transgression,

- the teacher and/or the Discipline Committee decides on the case,

- the student acknowledges the fault,

- if appropriate, those responsible for the student are informed,

- reasonable punishment is administered with loving concern,

- forgiveness is assured,

- the student learns, grows and matures.

In the Adventist schools in Africa, there are different kinds of teachers as far as the integration of faith and learning is concerned. There are some teachers in some remote places where they do not know anything about it. If the principal is in such a school, he needs to organize in-service training in the domain of integration of faith and learning.

There is another kind of teacher who knows all about the integration of faith and learning, but they still support their traditional beliefs that it is the task of the Bible-class teacher. The principal should try to explain to them what integration is in fact. The principal can even invite another teacher or any other school authority to help these teachers.

There is another kind of teacher who desires to do the integration of faith and learning, and have heard about it, but do not know how to do it. For these, it is less complicated than the previous group, because at least they have the desire to integrate faith and learning. And in-service training should be provided to them, too.

Another kind of teacher is formed of those who know very much about the integration of faith and learning but willingly decide not to integrate faith and learning because they say they will never finish their curricular program if ever they will integrate faith and learning. For these ones, there should be an explanation to them that the teacher is not the slave of his class program. The teacher must select the most important things of his class. By putting less emphasis on the less important things, he will get time for the integration of faith and learning.

The last category that can be mentioned, and this is where there is the smallest number of teachers, is that of the teachers who know and apply well the strategies in the integration of faith and learning. The principal should find a way to identify those teachers and encourage them to help those who do not yet know or those who do not want to integrate faith and learning.

Unfortunately, there are also some principals who do not know how to do the integration of faith and learning because they do not teach, they only stay in their offices. These should be careful because they are the leaders, and if they do not know how to do the integration of faith and learning, they will have less thinking about it. It could be better to ask any applicant who wants the position of principal, how he thinks he will implement the integration of faith and learning in his school. A principal who cannot implement the integration of faith and learning is a principal who is leading the school away from its objective.

Witnessing for Christ

Students and teachers should not be Christian only in their schools. They should be witnesses everywhere they go and in whatever they do. This is one of the points where some Christian teachers, principals, and students fail. They behave Christianly in their schools, but once they are outside the Christian schools, they become worldly; some even reflect worse character than the secular people.

Because Christ enters in every phase of our life, witnessing should be a whole-life experience. John (1993, p. 142) quoted the GC Department of Education that, "When witnessing becomes a separate compartment, it loses its true meaning. . . . Witnessing is primarily what one is, not what one does. It is showing one's concern for others. . . . It is giving one's self to others. . . . It is life with Christ."

Christian schools should be able to train students effectively to be always Christian witnesses. In order for the training to be effective, and for their young people to experience the joy of engaging in soul-saving work, these schools need to provide opportunity for translating their faith into action. The teachers and the principals should be models in witnessing for Christ. This is the reason why it not preferable to hire non-Christian teachers and principals in Christian schools, because the model that they provide to students will be likely to take the students' mind away from the schools' goals.

The principal should plan outreach programs for the students to train in the witnessing activities. He can plan an evangelistic effort where both the students and the teachers will participate and cooperate. He may also prepare Christian-song programs to be performed outside the school. He may help students organize some groups with humanitarian purposes: for instance, ministering for the prisoners, for the sick people in the hospitals, for the old people, for the orphans, etc. Witnessing is not only in schools, it should shine outside the school.

CHAPTER XI

SCHOOL FINANCE

Today, most of the problems that exist in the African educational system are financial in nature. It is not only because the African countries are undergoing big financial problems, but also because the managers or the leaders do not know how to manage the little that they have in their organization. This is happening in the educational organizations, as well as in many other organizations.

Principals are wondering why communication with the teachers seem unsatisfactory, why the productivity is going lower and lower. For instance, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, during the 1990s a great number of teachers and many other educational authorities received their salaries from the tuition fees only, because the financial problems of the country did not allow the government to pay teachers. In remote places where the parents' income is very low, teachers became very pitiful receiving salaries that could not be even enough to survive one week. Instead of concentrating in teaching, a lot of teachers were involved in extra-activities that could help them survive.

Even with the previously stated problem, there should still be a good communication and cooperation between the teachers and the principal. But, why is there a great misunderstanding between the principal and the teachers in the matter of finance?

Financial Resources

Principals should know that they should expect money only from students. It is a very risky thing to rely only on the tuition fees for all the expenses of the school. For Adventist schools there are subsidies that are supposed to come from the division or the union or the conference or the mission.

This is what is said in the Adventist financial policies (GC Work Policy 1998-1999, p. 633), "Each division shall develop a policy providing annual operating subsidies to the colleges . . . for the academies/high schools within its territory. . . . Each school shall prepare operating and capital budgets for each school year and these budgets shall be reviewed and adopted in the annual board meeting."

For the elementary schools the GC Work Policy cites, "In the interests of promoting and stabilizing the work of primary schools and of providing adequate support of primary school teachers, each division shall develop policies governing subsidies from the division/union/conference/mission and the sources of these funds, as may be necessary."

It is a pity that there are even some schools that are not benefitted by the financial policies. In those schools, the principal just relies on the school fees for the operation of the school.

Another way that could be suggested to the principals is that of getting donations from other organizations. There are some organizations, and even some people, who are willing to donate money for schools. However, that should be done according to what the GC Work Policy said (1998-1999, p. 591), "No conference/ mission, church, institution, or self-supporting enterprise is to solicit funds from outside its own territory without written authorization from its conference/mission administration of the area in which the solicitation is to take place. . . . No individual representing special interests in one part of the field is to solicit help for the work in any other part of the field or in any other conference/mission officers of the individual's own territory and of the area in which the solicitation is to take place.. "

It would be wise for African principals to make a follow-up about getting those subsidies.

Something else they can do is to create what Listro (1983) called "plant funds." This is the money that comes from the small projects that the school undertakes. These are also called school industries. The principal can initiate some small projects like agriculture, beddable plants, raising turkeys, bees care, raising chickens, Christmas tree farm, fruit gardening (melons, strawberries, pineapple, avocado, etc.), gathering wild herbs, house plants, mushrooms, lawn care, flowers, seedlings, small animals, growing box plants, yard work, bakery, book bindery, bookstore, carpentry shop, cafeteria, dairy, dormitories, food factory, poultry, printing press, tile industry, transportation, tailoring, broom shops, etc. All these activities would contribute to the fund raising in Adventist schools in Africa.

E. G. White (1901, p. 179) stated, "Study in agricultural lines should be the A, B, and C of the education given in our schools. This is the very first work that should be entered upon. Our schools should not depend upon imported produce for grain and vegetables, and the fruits so essential to health. Our youth need an education in felling trees and tilling the soil as well as in literary lines. Different teachers should be appointed to oversee a number of students in their work, and should work with them." She added that "The cultivation of the soil is good work for children and youth. It brings them into contact with nature and nature's God. And that they may have this advantage, there should be, as far as possible, in connection with our schools, large flower gardens and extensive lands for cultivation" (E. G. White, 1901, pp. 186-187).

Principals should be very creative in order to find other ways to raise the fund, even if there is no donation coming from outside.

Budget

Another problem that school principals have is that of the budget. Some principals do not make any budget in their schools, and there are some who make the budget but never stick on it.

In the GC Work Policy 1998-1999 (p. 633) it said, "Each school shall follow a system of budget control based on regular monthly operating reports." The policy further stated that "Monthly financial reports showing the actual operating expenses and budgetary provision to date shall be prepared and studied by the organization's administrative officers" (p. 563).

A basic budget will allow the principal to always have the course of his school's income and expenses intelligible.

The budget can be defined as the short-term (one year) forecasting of revenues and expenses of an institution. Here are some concepts given by Listro (1983, p. 23) that will be involved in the budgeting process.

Broadly, resources are divided into two major sections: unrestricted and restricted. The restricted group includes all funds that have legal or donor restrictions attached to them. For these funds, it is almost a hundred percent sure of getting them in the course of the year. Donations are classified in this group. The unrestricted funds are subjected to the full discretion of the governing board. These include, for example, the tuition fees and funds from the school woodwork.

Below is a sample of a school budget (see Table 9). It is not exhaustive, there may be some other elements that can be added depending on the school financial situation.

Table 9

Sample of a School Budget

Funds Operating Funds Total Plant Funds Total of all Funds

Unrestricted Restricted

Support and revenue

Tuition and fees

Contributions

Net loss (realized & unrealized)

Auxiliary activities

Summer school and other programs

Total support & revenue

Expenses:

Program services:

Instruction and student activities

Auxiliary activities

Summer school and other programs

Financial aid

Total program services

Supporting services:

General administration

(table continues)

Table 9 (continued)

Sample of a School Budget

Fund raising

Total supporting services

Total expenses

Excess (or deficiency) of support

and revenue over expenses before

capital additions

Capital additions:

Contributions and bequests

Investment income

Net gain on investments

Total capital additions

Below is a sample of a simple operating budget format for principals who do not have school managers and who did not have in-depth learning of financial transactions.

Semester1 Semester 2

INCOME (Sources)

1. Tuition fees

2. Miscellaneous

- Registration fee

- Graduation fee

- Internet fee

- Late registration fee

- Rental fee

- Admissions fee

- industries (copy center, canteen, etc)

3. Appropriations

- Higher organizations (church)

- Government subsidies

EXPENDITURES

1. Salaries & allowances of workers. This is one of the major source of expenditures if there is overstaffing.

2. Administrative expenses (ink, seminary travel, paper, etc)

3. Miscellaneous expenses

Management Process in Budgeting

The process of managerial budgeting consists of five general elements: planning, organizing, motivating, leading, and controlling (Needles, Anderson, & Caldwell, 1993, pp. 250-300).

1. Planning

Types of budget

-- Operating budget: regular sources; for instance, tuition fees, appropriation.

-- Capital budget: expenditures for projects of capital nature, for instance buying a land, computers, building.

-- Cash flow budget: organizational cash transaction

Parties involved

Finance Committee. It prepares possible assumptions, traffic budget, full and part-time employees' salaries, capital budgeting, departmental budgets, etc.

Strategic Planning. It prepares the policy statements: vision, mission, objectives and work plan, strategies, coordination with the Budget Committee.

School Board. It is the overall process of strategic planning and budgeting.

Budget process

- Basic organizational mission of the institution. Vision and mission determined by the school board, or higher hierarchy.

- Coordination with departments in order to set goals, objectives, work plan. Other points taken into consideration are, for example, students, curriculum and instruction, research, faculty, library resources, administration, etc.

- Budget Committee.

Budget calender

It is provided by the three types of budgets and the three parties.

Budget assumptions

- Traffic budget, for instance projected income, enrollments

- Revenues and expenses budget, for instance summary of projected revenues.

- Analytical budgets, for instance projected working capital and liquidity.

Other pointers: Suggestions of making a positive progress

- Cash management, for instance discouraging salary advances

- Receivables and inventory management, i.e., having minimum loans.

- Debt control

- Allocated funds management

- Operating budget preparation and implementation

- Capital budgeting

- Reporting

2. Organizing

Organizing for strategic planning objectives

Allocating resources, for instance cash flow program

Decision making

Staff and line relationship, that is, appointing people in-charge

Delegation and decentralization

Funds investments, that is the safeguard made by the treasurer and his/her committee. It may be short-term (up to 6 months), medium-term (6 months to 1 year), or long-term (more than 1 year).

3. Motivating

Motivation is what causes people to act. There are mainly two kinds of motivators: the financial and the nonfinancial ones. Nonfinancial are, for instance, achievement, recognition, advancement, interest, responsibility, dedication, while financial ones can deal with giving appropriate salary or some bonus for the extra work done.

Here are some other motivators: appropriation from higher organizations, percentage of self-support, independency, changing technology, wage administration (remuneration, allowances, retirement plan), managing problems occurring in the work place, and negotiation.

4. Leading

Keeping in mind to be effective leader, and leader of people

Taking control

Communicating

Direct verbal communication

Indirect verbal communication

Telephone

5. Controlling

The controlling function ensures the feedback with regard to the organization's success/progress in meeting the present goals and objectives: budgetary control.

A financial problem that may arise in many elementary and high schools is that some principals are themselves the cashier or the treasurer. When the school faces the financial crisis, teachers think that the principal is misusing money. Even if there is not enough money to hire a specialist in business (a cashier or a treasurer), the principal should appoint one teacher to be the cashier. This has worked positively in some schools in Africa.

With some schools depending on the school fees only, priorities should be set in accord with the teachers. For instance, some teachers feel sad to see the principal dealing with building nice classrooms, buying books and furniture before giving them the total amount of their salary. It is not because the teachers do not want the school to progress in that way, but it is because they did not contribute in setting priorities.

"The budget is to serve as the primary instrument of financial authorization and control for every organization. The treasurer is to provide timely financial information to his/her fellow officers and to the Executive Committee, comparing actual operating results with budgeted projections. The administration is accountable to the constituency for budget implementation, taking appropriate actions to best ensure the financial stability of the organization, using the budget as a guide" (GC Work Policy, 1998-1999, p. 566).

The Financial Statements

The financial statements will help the manager to understand how the budget is used. There are two main financial statements: the Balance Sheet (shows all that belongs to the school and all that the school owes to others), and the Income Statement (shows the operation of the school). With these financial statements, managers become capable of drawing conclusions about the progress of the school.

Below is a sample of a format of a balance sheet:

ASSETS Year 1 Year 2

Current Assets

Accounts Receivable

Inventories

Loan Receivable

Prepaid Expense

Total Current Assets

Property & Equipment

Building & Equipment- Net

Total Property & Equipment

Other Assets

Investment/Loan

Total other Assets

TOTAL ASSETS

LIABILITIES

Current Liabilities

Accounts Payable

Deferred Income

Trust Funds

Total Current Liabilities

Long-term debt

TOTAL LIABILITIES

EQUITY

TOTAL LIABILITIES AND EQUITY

Below is a sample of a format of an income statement:

INCOME Year 1 Year 2

Educational & General

Service Departments

Auxiliary Departments

Other Income

Foreign Exchange Gain

Total Income

EXPENSE

Salaries & Allowances

Student Labor & Contract Pay

Supplies & General Expense

Depreciation- Building

Depreciation- Equipment

Other Expense

Foreign Exchange Loss

Total Expense

Net Deficit Before Appropriations

APPROPRIATIONS

Net Deficit After Appropriations

There are some tips that can indicate the financial crisis. For instance,

1. If the income is superior to the expenditures, that is positive; but if it is the opposite that shows up, then it's a deficit and the school manager should be able to tell why, and how to find a solution.

2. If it happens that the reason for the deficit is the increase of the salaries, the manager should be able to detect whether the increase of the salaries should lead to reject some employees, or whether it will contribute to the increase of the school income. Some principals overstaff the school, not because there is a big need for that indeed, but only because they want to find job for their friends or relatives. In this case the treasurer should use the ABC (accurately, briefly, and clearly) to explain the source of the financial crisis and try to find a solution.

3. Sometimes, only for display, some managers start building even if there is no fund allocated for that. They start their building projects assuming that the church or the government will help them.

4. The manager should have a creative mind in investing in some industries in order to generate extra money for their income. For instance, school managers can run a copy center, or a school farm, a boundary, a canteen, a wood work, etc. As soon as these industries are run, they should be self-sufficient and generate extra money for the school income.

When dealing with the financial statement analysis, the managers or the principals will make the horizontal and the vertical analysis. In the horizontal analysis, the increase/decrease will be analyzed from a certain point of time to another one for the same asset or the same liability. In the vertical analysis, a comparison may be made between assets, liabilities, and income. With this, the principals will have a clear and brief understanding of what is going on in their schools.

The Journal and the Balance Sheet

These are documents that show also the different financial transactions. The journal is done everyday, whereas the balance sheet is the summary of the journal at the end of a specific time. The balance sheet reflects the wealth position at a specific point of time. The balance sheet has the following format:

Table 10

Balance Sheet

For the balance sheet to be balanced, the total assets must equal the total liabilities and equity. It can be possible to have an unbalanced balance sheet. This does not necessarily mean that the school manager has stolen money, rather, they should work and find the origin of the error.

Recommendations

Since the financial section is the main source of problems in African schools as well as anywhere else, principals should work more carefully when dealing with financial transactions. Therefore, the following suggestions should be put into practice.

Principals should know that the management resources consists of 7 M:

- Minutes: time management

- Man: human management

- Money: financial management

- Market: marketing management (to find ways how the school can get a lot of students)

- Machineries: engineering management (workers should be acquainted to the new tool usage, for instance the use of transparencies for the first time)

- Methodology: operation and production management

- Material: logistic

Brow (1980) said:

- Christian business men are needed as administrators;

- debt is to be avoided at all cost;

- investment and plans must be made for growth;

- plans for one institution should not harm others;

- schools should help students to help themselves and the schools;

- all should join in supporting the schools;

- schools have to operate an annual budget.

The GC Work Policy 1998-1999 suggested that:

When the controlling committee or board of an organization desires to enlarge or improve its properties and increase the facilities for carrying on its work, this shall be done without incurring indebtedness except as provided by policy and when properly authorized. (p. 566)

GENERAL CONCLUSION

Though there are so many theories about leadership or principalship, what has been presented in this project is believed to be helpful for Adventist principals in this new millennium.

Indeed, through this work it has been realized that the principal's task is broad and noble. Even though this job seems scary for many people, it should not be feared as long as the strategies provided in this work are applied.

Dr. Zvandasara, an African author (1997, p. 11), cited that "leadership is more about people than theories. The effective leader is one who seeks to understand people not as static entities but as human beings possessing complex internal and external dynamics."

It would be useless to pile strategic theories about the effective change in leadership if one cannot make the first step toward the change. One should be more practical than theoretical in the matter of change and one should also consider that there are no identical people in this world. Human beings have great complexity in their behavior, perceptions, and feelings.

Moreover, Covey (1990) said, "Further, I believe God is the true name and source of collective unconscious and is therefore the ultimate moral authority in the universe. The daily prayerful study of His revealed word is the single most important and powerful discipline in life because it points our lives, like a compass, to the 'true north'-our divine destiny" (p. 324).

It is amazing today that many educational and political authorities in this world are already recognizing the power of God in their lives and in this world. Indeed, to lead effectively, leaders need the guidance of God while they direct their organizations.

For further studies, a questionnaire should be made in order

1. To make a survey in African SDA schools to value effectiveness based on the theories found in this written work.

2. To make a survey in other continents in order to be able to know if the theories pointed out in this book are already being used or not and what impact do they have in schools where they are used.

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