International Journal of Higher Education Management

The quality of postgraduate education largely depends on effective supervision of postgraduate students. Nowadays, the supervisory role has become more challenging due to different ethnic, cultural, political, economic, linguistic, and educational backgrounds of postgraduate students where their attraction and retention are paramount for educational institutions. Students’ satisfaction balancing studies and other interest is also important during their postgraduate learning experience and supervision is challenged to assist towards this direction as well. Literature about postgraduate supervision has focused on describing the ever-lengthening lists of functions that must be carried out.

The present study, through a critical literature review methodology and reflection upon personal practice, explores how postgraduate supervisors can support & engage students with their studies balancing other demands and interests, what are the challenges supervising international students, and how, the supervisory team can manage internal conflicts, function better and more efficiently. The key conclusions show that facilitating development of skills important for students’ ’studies and lives, bridging studies and other demands /interests together, rewarding students’ success, responding to cultural and educational differences & personal interests, and finding ways all members of the supervisory team to work more effectively can lead to more efficient and effective postgraduate supervision.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the literature on the professional development of educational administrators in the world, based on empirical and theoretical evidence with special reference to educational administrators and school principals in several countries.

Design/Methodology: An interpretative analysis on literature covering professional development, pre-service training, in-service training programmes, mentoring, models of education leaders, coaching and the history of education in Sri Lanka and also the background information of the Education Administrative Service in Sri Lanka is carried out.

Findings:  Training and professional development date back to several centuries and it was found that the influence of imperialists, mainly the British was dominant in the Sri Lankan modern education system and professional development programmes. Sri Lanka continues to implement training and development with the least changes in contents and scopes compared to the past.  It was further found that authorities paid little attention to the effectiveness of the training and development but rather were concerned about the compliance requirements. At present, education leaders undergo training programmes, and improvements in leaders are also seen at varying degrees. The study finds that educational leaders who are good at leadership skills and competencies produce better results in terms of both students’ performances and school management.

However, though the use of technology in training was trivial, the need for more sophisticated, comprehensive, and sustainable training for educational leaders for better performance is highlighted.

Practical implications: Provision of training and development is perceived by authorities as a practice and not as a key driver of improving school performance and effective management. The outcome of the study can be used to further enhance and implement professional development and training programmes for educational leaders with an outcome-oriented approach. Therefore, the findings will help lay a foundation for policymaking and their implementation can be broadened to enhance the quality of education in Sri Lanka.

Internationalized curriculum development is critical to all institutions aiming to approach internationalisation coherently. Research on the internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC) focuses on the curriculum concept encompassing all aspects of learning and teaching (Kemmis & Fitzclarence, 1991). It works at formal, hidden and informal levels. The present work is a critical review of a research piece opinion by Sue Robson (2015) ‘Internationalisation of the Curriculum: Challenges and opportunities’ emphasising the contribution to this matter of the Higher Education Academy (HEA internationalisation framework  but also showing what is missing and needs to take place concluding that a more comprehensive framework would have better-added value for internationalising higher education.

This paper sought to find out the reasons why in the view of faculty members and officers, some academic Deans in public universities are ineffective leaders. Faculty members and officers of some faculties and schools in University of Cape Coast were requested to first say why in their view; some Deans in University of Cape Coast turn out to be ineffective leaders. Second, they were also requested to give their views on the consequences of leadership failure. Using a qualitative design, the investigators sampled eight (8) faculty members and four (4) faculty officers purposively from four Faculties in University of Cape Coast. Interviewees were asked to consider their own Deans first. A thematic narrative analysis was used to analyse data from the interviews and reported. The results showed that Deans fail due to poor posture, poor interpersonal skill, unclear vision and direction and communication failure. The paper has shown that the consequences of a Dean’s failure affect individual members within the faculty, and create disaffection thus, affecting organisational output. It was therefore recommended that the University Council and Management should consider reviewing the current policy of voting deans into office if it even calls for amendments in the 2016 Statute of the University