Educational Decision Making Practices in Preparatory Schools in East Shoa Zone of Oromia Regional State
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Date
2013-06-01
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The rationale for the establishment of representative school governing bodies is essentially to ensure that all stakeholders participate in the governance and management of schools. The purpose of this study is to examine educational decision-making practices in government preparatory schools. It attempted to identify the degree of teachers,students and parents participation in decision-making; the dominant models of decision; how decision is logical; and factors that influence on the implementation of decisions.The method employed in the study was a descriptive survey. Questionnaire, interview and review of documents were used to collect data pom 45 teachers, 36 students ' council members, 4 principals and 4 PTA members. The samples were selected from four government preparatory schools using simple random and purposive sampling techniques. The collected data were analyzed by using various statistical tools such as percentage, frequency, mean and t-test .. The results indicated that stakeholders such as teachers, students and parents have relatively less involvement in decision makin, where as principals hold the lion share. In addition the dominant style of decision-making was more of autocratic transparency,leadership style and less participative. Moreover the process of decision-making is not logical and scientific. Furthermore, ineffective communication, lack of autocratic leadership style and hierarchical structure of authority are found to be among the major factors that negatively affect the decision-making process in the school. Finally, the research investigates that teachers, students and parents prefer participating in the administrative aspects of school leadership and indicated the need for adoption of shared decision-making. Because, it allows greater involvement of stakeholders in decision-making. Shared decision making is a process of making educational decisions in a collaborative manner at the school level. The democratization of school governance supports the idea that stakeholders such as teachers, learners and parents and other members of the community be involved in the activities and decision-making processes of the school. The recommendations forwarded include: Principals need to provide an teachers,opportunity to students and parents to participate in school's decision making in order to develop a sense of responsibility and ownership, administrators should encourage participation in planning and policy formulation, which will facilitate and commit stakeholders to effective implementation of school decisions and the school organization should be structured in such a way that hierarchical differences are diminished and that teachers are given professional autonomy and collegial involvement in decision making process
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Educational Decision Making Practices