Introduction
The aim of this literature review is to find out the main issues regarding role of administration of high schools in furthering effective education in school particularly creative education. Creative education is of great importance because it actually develops the minds of the students to think for themselves. So many of the researches focus on the need of creative thinking procedure incorporated in the curriculum, the problems associated with it and how administration can help to change the situation (Dole, Bloom, & Kowalske, 2015, and Allamnakhrah, 2013). Others have tried find out the importance role of administration in furthering the team work (Kind,2014) and job satisfaction level among teachers (Crossman, 2006).Some others have considered the issue concerning co teaching for groups of students where special attention is needed (Nierengarten & Hughes, 2010). Role of department heads is also reached (DeAngelis, 2013). Kamalpreet Koor Toor examines the relationship between creativity age, gender intelligence of teachers and type of schools (Kaur Toor, 2014). The methodology used in most of the researches is interviews and statistical analysis of the data. The reason for reviewing the literature is to find out the most crucial field where administrative roles of school education can bring betterment. We find that creativity in education needs far more attention and encouragement from the school administrators.
Body
The first paper (Kind, 2014) we discuss provides both qualitative and quantitative studies on how team work can improve efficacy in teaching. She gives the experience of Robbinsdale Cooper High School in Minnesota to establish her views. The school decided that to improve the performance of the teachers and student success rate they needed a learning and leadership team who would make it a goal to achieve learning targets. They followed the principle of WICOR, that is, writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading (Kind, 2014). They examined the state of implementation at present, which teachers needed support for the implementations and they studied what could be done for further implementations of goals. Small groups were created who identified the problems; skills required etc and sorted them. This knowledge as shared with a larger group who again sorted and combined various aspects to arrive at solutions to deal with the problems. These works included facilitating data dialogue with different groups, working with professional learning communities, coaching teachers and learning walks teachers gathered data and focussed on learning target. All this enhanced the success rate of the students. Percent of student failing the course decreased by 3%, success rate of 11th and 10th graders increased by 11% and 7% respectively (Kind, 2014).
The paper by Allamnakrah (Allamnakhrah, 2013) studies the importance of creative thinking in teaching. He stresses that creative thinking is important in all aspects of learning and basis for decision making, improving professionalism and quality of life in general. Creative thinking is the foundation for “ability to learn and make sense of new information” (Allamnakhrah, 2013). Advancement of critical thinking will decide how future generation will face the different problems that will be posed to them in due course. His findings through interviews, however, are that the education system in Saudi Arabia (from where he comes from) and other places in general lacks the needful stress in creative thinking of the students. He finds that rote learning and memorization is still by far the most prevalent method of teaching and urgent reform of Saudi system of education is needed.
Crossman examines another angle in promoting efficacy of creative teachers in UK particularly. However this can be taken as a general condition in education system all over the world. In his paper Crossman (Crossman, 2006) finds job satisfaction is one of the most important factors in teaching efficacy. Using statistical methods he finds the relation between job satisfaction and personality, environment, age and gender. He finds those persons who tend to focus on outwards circumstances for anything are less job satisfied than the inward looking personalities who tend to find problems and solutions in themselves. He also finds that the teachers aged between 35 and 45 in general tend to be more unsatisfied in their job. Male teachers are also slightly more job satisfied than female teachers. However these differences are not very significant. The real difference in job satisfaction depends on the type of school they are employed in. Teachers in privately managed schools show a significantly higher degree of job satisfactions than others. The statistics also showed that teachers of schools managed by Church of England were least satisfied. This indicates that management of school contributes greatly to the job satisfaction in comparison to other factors of teachers and hence the responsibility of the management in furtherance of quality of education is greatest.
The paper by Karen DeAngelis (DeAngelis, 2013) focuses on the importance of the departmental heads in improving the quality of education and focuses on which persons actually chair the departments. He finds that majority of departmental heads are white, female and middle aged and most have more than 11years of experience in their fields. They mostly held some standard teaching certificates. They were mostly chosen by chosen by some individuals taking regard of their teaching experience and administrative capacity. However the paper does not throw much light on why the departmental chairs are so important for teaching quality of an institution although he touches on the motivating and leadership factor at the beginning of the paper.
The paper by Sharon Dole et al (Dole, Bloom, & Kowalske, 2015) investigates an important aspect of creative teaching. Their paper is based on quantitative and qualitative findings through many interviews to groups of students and teachers. They find that problem and project based learning (PBL and PjBL) are most helpful in creative learning for students. Students are generally enthused and find creative solutions of their own when they are given the opportunity of PBL and PjBL. Teachers mostly recommend this type of learning. However teachers face problems while conducting such learning because of strict curriculum and deadlines to meet the dates of the syllabus. A more open minded course schedule will help greatly to solve this problem and greatly enhance teaching creativity and student learning by actual problem solving.
In the age where teachers are handed with multiple tasks of teaching students of different standards as well as speciality need children the need and practice of co teaching is on the rise. In this case more than one teacher take charge of the class and take complimentary roles in teaching. Mostly one teacher takes care of the “general “ students and the other teacher takes care of the children who need special attention. The paper by (Nierengarten & Hughes, 2010) focuses on problems of such teaching and tries to find solutions. Co- teaching needs great amount of co operation and understanding between the teachers and it is better to let them choose their teaching partners. Also planning, teacher training and professional development is needed for a proper and happy co teaching. Not more than 25-50% of the students should be speciality groups. Administrative support must given to the fullest extent to understand and ameliorate the tough positions of teachers who face a hard task of meeting the requirements of achievement of school and needs of hugely varying degree of needs of different students.
The paper by Kamalpreet Kaur Toor (Kaur Toor, 2014) examines the relation of teacher effectiveness between gender of teachers, intelligence, creativity and type of school, particularly in the context of the state of Punjab in India. She uses a large number of data and statistical method to arrive at her conclusions. The findings are that a) although there is slight difference between male and female teachers as far as general intelligence is concerned there is no difference in creativity and teaching effectiveness b) there are significant difference in teaching effectiveness between private and government schools c) the third conclusion is that there is significant relationship between effectiveness, general intelligence and creativity. However the language of the paper is confusing and sometimes self contradicting. However it shows that school management is a significant determinant factor in teaching effectiveness.
Conclusion
For effective and creative teaching many factors are involved. Team work, creativity in setting curriculum and teaching methods can improve greatly the inner ability of a student to think for professional and real life problems. Job satisfaction of teachers is another important factor which should be looked upon by the school administration. Problem and project based learning can greatly improve creative learning. However less regimented course work is needed for improvement of such type of learning and teaching. Same is also true for schools where co- teaching is in existence. However more research wok has to be done to find out how these problems can be effectively reduced and what measures can administrations take to improve the creative thinking among students and effective teaching. More data based researches can help a lot in finding the ways to ameliorate the situation.
References
Allamnakhrah, A. (2013). Learning Critical Thinking in Saudi Arabia: Student Perceptions of
Secondary Pre-Service Teacher Education Programs. Journal Of Education And Learning, 2(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/jel.v2n1p197
Crossman, A. (2006). Job Satisfaction of Secondary School Teachers. Educational
Management Administration & Leadership, 34(1), 29-46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1741143206059538
DeAngelis, K. (2013). The Characteristics of High School Department Chairs: A national
Perspective. The High School Journal, Winter 2013.
Dole, S., Bloom, L., & Kowalske, K. (2015). Transforming Pedagogy: Changing Perspectives
Kaur Toor, K. (2014). A STUDY OF TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS, GENERAL
INTELLIGENCE AND CREATIVITY OF SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS. MIER Journal Of Educational Studies, Trends & Practices, Vol. 4,(No. 1), pp.51 - 65.
Kind, J. (2014). United We Learn. Journal Of Staff Development. Retrieved from
https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-3226074161.html
Nierengarten, G. & Hughes, T. (2010). What Teachers Wish Administrators Knew About Co-
Teaching in High Schools. Electronic Journal For Inclusive Education, 2 (6). Retrieved from http://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/ejie/vol2/iss6/9/
