Introduction
The topic area of investigation is educational management; the target population consists of educators, social workers, youth, school administrators, and policymakers. The primary sources revealing the basis of the discipline policies in educational institutions are the scientific research made by Daniels (2009), Cameron (2006), Wolf et al. (2016), Wiley et al. (2018). The question of leadership was revealed in articles of Seymour and Moore (2017), Masewicz and Vogel (2014), Xie and Shen (2013). In papers provided by Sapriel (2003), Okilwa and Robert (2017), Gullo (2018), Roch and Elsayed (2020), the concept of crisis responses is considered in detail. Based on the works of Murphy (2012), Booth et al. (2012), Pearson et al. (1997), and Darling and Monk (2018), other approaches to educational process management are determined. A synthesized literature review on the research topic is applicable to analyze the available materials and form a new approach to the problem to verify the results and conclusions based on the research results. It demonstrates the difference between the author’s research and already published works, indications of novelty and scientific contribution, and formulates the evidence’s relevance.
Methods
Several methods are used in articles, such as evidence-based, grounded theory, conceptual and correlational, conventional, multivariate, and qualitative. Besides, most of the researches adopted the meta-analysis method. Its purpose is to identify, study, and explain differences due to statistical heterogeneity. The undoubted advantages of meta-analysis include increasing the statistical power of the study, and, consequently, the accuracy of assessing the effect of the analyzed intervention. Moreover, empirical research is used in the literature review to answer practical questions that need to be accurately identified according to the data.
Discipline Policies
School discipline is one of the forms of public control. The work of school staff should aim to explain the necessity of regulations related to the interests of the individual, group, and society. Much of the literature focuses on implementing some management techniques in the educational process, especially discipline policies.
Types of Schools’ Discipline Policies
Several strategies are already implemented in schools and other educational institutions. Daniels (2009) suggests that the zero-tolerance policy has also been adopted in schools and other educational institutions worldwide. Such an approach is usually promoted to prevent drug addiction, violence, and deviant behavior in educational institutions. In schools, the possession and use of drugs and weapons is a general zero-tolerance policy. Students, employees, parents who have prohibited substances, objects, or commit illegal acts, are immediately reprimanded and punished.
Employees of educational institutions are prohibited from using their judgments, personal connections to reduce punishment or provide mitigating circumstances. Another evidence made by Cameron (2006) focuses on the school’s discipline policies and practices in the United States of America. The discipline is not monitored by a teacher, but by a particular employee who can conduct a competent conversation with the offender and determine an adequate punishment. It helps maintain an atmosphere of equity and fairness in the classroom, albeit an imaginary one. The paper of Cameron (2006) asks whether schools can adopt some practical non-punitive disciplinary approaches with the assistance of school social workers and other social workers or not.
As it is used to be considered, by providing high-quality education and being a model for other public schools, charter schools can apply the most advanced methodology, develop innovative curricula, and introduce new organizational systems. However, with regard to discipline policy, this type of educational institution remains imperfect. According to Wolf et al. (2016), there are no elaborated codes for a charter school. The study can explore charter school discipline policies to describe the charter schools’ compliance. Technical questions are one of the most critical issues regarding policy changes. Wiley et al. (2018) suggest that the reformation of school discipline is a problem, mainly concerning the modification of discipline codes and protocols. “These changes may overlook additional and vital aspects of reform, namely, the normative and political dimensions within which technical elements are embedded” (Wiley et al., 2018, 275). This article focuses on illustrating this theory extension to the topic of school discipline. The critical findings are the ones the elaboration of school discipline was determined by teacher’s usage of educational resources and capacity.
Leadership
Sociological analysis of the problem of educational leadership involves studying the essence and specificity of this phenomenon in the semantic context of broader categories – management and leadership. A modern leader acts within the framework of the appropriate prescriptions (authorizing interactions with followers as a social community), established norms and patterns of behavior that determine the scale of leadership influence, and the ways of its implementation. Besides, each field of activity has different professional situations; different requirements are imposed on the personal and professional qualities of potential leaders.
Types of Leadership
School administrators use different techniques as needed, and in some cases, the management style depends on a situation and community. With regard to varying types of leadership, the study conducted by Seymour and Moore (2017) demonstrates that there are no regulations concerning the educational process; every leader obtains an individual approach to people and projects. However, some teams require unique leadership to achieve optimal results. This research might help develop a comprehensive model to distinguish public and private management and determine the features of general management’s objectives.
Several articles are focusing on the qualities of an effective leader in educational processes. Masewicz and Vogel (2014) involved principals and teachers from four schools serving high-minority and high-poverty students in an urban district that demonstrated high student growth as designated by the Colorado Growth Model. Concerning the teachers’ leadership, the survey analyzed nationally representative data from the 2003–04 Schools, and Staffing Survey, provided by Xie and Shen (2013), has demonstrated that secondary school teachers used to have a higher leadership level in the curriculum compared to elementary colleagues. This evidence is useful in future research, emphasizing the importance of exploring various factors of the gap between educational reality and teaching educational training.
Crisis Management Responses
There are new forms of crisis that are calling for innovative crisis management responses. One of the USA educational system issues is racial discrimination in terms of disproportionate suspension and expulsion rates. Sapriel (2003) elaborates on new tools and practices for the new millennium to organize its responses. Okilwa and Robert (2017) discuss approaches that administrators can follow in applying a cause analysis with a focus on school policies. In the US education system, the trend towards racial segregation still exists.
Racial Discrimination in Educational Institutes
Several articles relate to racial discrimination issues, being wide-spread in urban school districts. Gullo (2018) suggests that the practical usage of data is the essential competence of school leaders. “While interpreting and using data in a meaningful manner, students are challenged to evaluate the presented data’s quality and efficacy” (Gullo, 2018, 29). Another study, provided by Roch and Elsayed (2020), is also dedicated to racial issues in the educational process. The question concerns the “discipline gap” between white and black students. The latter tend to be discriminated more significantly than white students, being suspended from school for disproportionately misbehaving. This study is profitable in the matter of reducing the disproportion between the suspension of white and black students.
Alternative Approaches
The Chaos theory is a relevant and broad concept, viewed as a scientific version or a metaphor for the late 20th century cultural values of relativism, plurality, and chance. In his survey, Murphy (2012) made the audience look at the educational system from another perspective. It might become necessary for considering both the institution within the framework of human society and the organization at its more local or global levels as long as the study conducted by Booth et al. (2012) is about the campus discipline policy. These aspects include the interaction of various levels of an organization.
Organization of Educational Process
The ethics of education considers patterns of behavior and positions characterizing participants in interaction in various educational systems. Some of the literature suggests that ethical aspects play a crucial role in the organization of the educational process (Pearson et al., 1997). In specific pedagogical practices, moral principles are rarely formulated explicitly. Still, they are always necessarily expressed in the entire set of means, methods, and activities in the interaction.
Furthermore, intelligence is a crucial concept of modern psychology and is directly related to education. This concept combines all the cognitive processes of the individual, such as imagination and perception, sensation, memory, thinking, and representation. Darling and Monk (2018) argue that the proper approach ensures students’ personal and intellectual development with the correct selection of materials for the educational and developmental environment. It requires an understanding of the organization of the child’s intelligence, the steps that need to be taken to develop this very intelligence.
Summary/Synthesis Discussion Main Heading
Synthesized literature helps in substantiating the significance of the problem, the correct use of terminology on the relevant issues, and identifying the leading research methods used in the articles. Based on the theory, certain assumptions or hypotheses are proposed on the topic of ongoing research. Prediction of specific events is made from these hypotheses; appropriate experiments can verify these predictions. Depending on the investigation results, theories on which the assumptions and projections were based will be confirmed or refuted. The educational system in the United States has been criticized, as annually millions of parents, human rights defenders, and advocacy groups call on city governments to improve education. In the United States, schools’ administration started rethinking the discipline policy, trying to find an alternative to the practice of suspension from school. Moreover, since the category “educational leadership” is specific, it is assumed that the theoretical foundations of educational management are laid by the experience of studying leadership problems in society.
Conclusion
The methodology of interdisciplinary and systematic approaches to the analysis of the phenomenon under consideration, theoretical analysis methods, synthesis, and generalization was used. A correctly performed meta-analysis involves testing a scientific hypothesis, a detailed and precise presentation of the statistical purposes used in the meta-analysis, a sufficiently detailed presentation and discussion of the analysis results, and the conclusions from it. This approach reduces the likelihood of random and systematic errors, allowing researchers to consider the objectivity of the results. Tendencies and contradictions in the modern management of education and educational systems are revealed, including the problems of delimiting the rights, competencies.
From the perspective of general questions and current tendencies in terms of the modernization of school administration, it is possible to form an estimate of the condition of the educational management. Its basic principles that could be implemented in practice are established due to the detailed analysis of evidence and surveys. The policy’s consistency is presented, starting from the management figures’ powers and finishing with the diversity of their functions. The systemic genetic management foundations, its cyclical nature, regulation compliance, and systemic inheritance are analyzed effectiveness, as long as management capability in different dimensions such as social, economic, and pedagogical ones is explored.
The study’s scientific novelty relates to revealing the reasons for the discontinuity between the appropriate and existing educational system management; prospective directions for improving this area are outlined. The articles’ practical value concerns the recommendations for implementing the proposed ideas regarding the revision of the existing approaches to the school administration. The educational system is in the process of constant modernization and reform. The modifications are carried out continuously; many of them are unaccomplished and imperfect. Therefore, there is no noticeable improvement in results, which serves as the basis for acute criticism. The education management is time-limited to respond to the challenges; it is overgrown with bureaucratic links that hinder its development. The existence of different opinions confirms the relevance of the topic and the need to reform the existing education system, as well as the school management.
References
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Cameron, M. (2006). Managing School Discipline and Implications for School Social Workers: A Review of the Literature. Children & Schools, 28(4), 219–227.
Daniels, P. (2009). Zero tolerance policies in schools. Detroit: Greenhaven Press.
Darling, J., & Monk, G. (2018). Constructing a restorative school district collaborative. Contemporary Justice Review, 21(1), 80–98.
Gullo, G. L. (2018). Using Data for School Change: The Discipline Equity Audit and School Climate Survey. Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, 21(2), 28–51.
Masewicz, S. M., & Vogel, L. (2014). Stewardship as a sense-making model of leadership: illuminating the behaviors and practices of effective school principals in challenging public school contexts. Journal of School Leadership, 6, 1073.
Murphy, P. (1996). Chaos theory as a model for managing issues and crises. Public relations review, 22(2), 95-113.
Okilwa, N., & Robert, C. (2017). School Discipline Disparity: Converging Efforts for Better Student Outcomes. Urban Review, 49(2), 239.
Pearson, C. M., Misra, S. K., Clair, J. A., & Mitroff, I. I. (1997). Managing the unthinkable. Organizational dynamics, 26(2), 51-64.
Roch, C. H., & Elsayed, M. A. A. (2020). Race, school discipline, and administrative representation. International Public Management Journal, 23(2), 161.
Sapriel, C. (2003). Effective crisis management: Tools and best practice for the new millennium. Journal of communication management, 7(4), 348-355.
Seymour, M. & Moore, S. (2017) Effective Leadership in Public School Discipline: Worldwide Principles and Practice. London: Cassel.
Wiley, K. E., Anyon, Y., Yang, J. L., Pauline, M. E., Rosch, A., Valladares, G., Downing, B. J., & Pisciotta, L. (2018). Looking Back, Moving Forward: Technical, Normative, and Political Dimensions of School Discipline. Educational Administration Quarterly, 54(2), 275.
Wolf, K., Kalinich, M. K., & DeJarnatt, S. L. (2016). Charting School Discipline. Urban Lawyer, 48(1), 1.
Xie, D., & Shen, J. (2013). Teacher leadership at different school levels: findings and implications from the 2003–04 Schools and Staffing Survey in US public schools. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 16(3), 327.