This article looks at the challenges involved and seeks to provide guidelines for leadership decisions and practices for the Deans that can be effective in institutions of higher learning. This paper provides an overview of academic leadership by faculty deans, and assesses the degree to which deans exhibit the behaviors embedded in this leadership in addressing the challenges and expectations of this century. Deanship is therefore treated as the academic act of building programs and a community of scholars to set direction and achieve the expectations of stakeholders in the current challenging economic times. The need for transformational leadership is emphasized. The paper shows how academic leaders must be the purveyors of ideas and knowledge that shape managerial thought and practice. Further, academic leadership needs to develop a human resource network inside and outside the departments and university and at the local, national, and international levels. Academic leadership needs to have a clarified program for faculty and staff promotion and development, and it should be placed on a priority list and agenda. Deans will need to use technology effectively and communication innovations to improve access to knowledge. Keeping pace with change in the world of work means offering education programmes that are relevant, are of high quality and, increasingly, include practical or work experience, as well as working more closely with stakeholders such as employers in course design or delivery. They will also need significantly to streamline their operations by incorporating new teaching and learning delivery mechanisms. Finally it is observed that academic leaders should take the initiative by adopting measures of success that are truly useful management tools for their institutions and that have credibility with the institution's external stakeholders.

Managers and leaders in organization are entrusted with employees whom they must work with and through to realize organizational objectives. In organizations, perceptions of leaders, managers and employees shape the climate and effectiveness of the working environment. Perception is the way we all interpret our experiences. Having the right perception is significant skill for any effective leadership. It is important to understand that perception is often portrayed through communication in any organization be it big or small and therefore, it is a pertinent tool in leadership. What sets great leaders apart is their ability to manage perceptions in the process of handling people and organizational issues. What people often observe or assess as your ability to be a leader and your effectiveness becomes their perception, which in turn becomes reality.Keywords: Perception, Organizations, Decisions, Leaders and Managers. PerceptionPsychological investigation of human behavior began with the study of perception by Wielheim Wundh in Germany, in 1879. Since that time it has been significant in understanding human behavior. The important revelation is that no two people experience and interpret sensations, situations, or their own feelings the same way. Just like lights, that sequentially flash on and off are perceived as motion, people use visual and auditory causes around them to interpret and react to their immediate environment. In addition to external influences people also react to internal feelings, ideas, expectations based on past experiences and other personality experiences they might have. Perception in leadershipIn organizations, perceptions of leaders, managers and employees shape the climate and effectiveness of the working environment. Perception is the way we all interpret our experiences. It is a marvelous and difficult part of human behavior; managers must realize that all individuals have differing perceptions.People are not necessarily successful by attempting to serve their values. People do not, in fact, do what serves their values. They do what they perceive will serve their values. First, this means that there is always a time gap between the brain's consideration of a behavior and the behavior itself. Second, the processing that takes place in this time period, Is what can be referred to as perception. In the work place, when employees and employers have very strong differing perceptions about quality, quantity, schedules, etc, it becomes very difficult to accomplish meaningful objectives.Most of the time people believe that they are effective and efficient leaders using their perception but their supposed followers may have a very different perception. In scientific community Berelson and Steiner in their book Human behavior, define perception as the complex process by which people select and organize sensory stimulation into a meaningful and rational picture of the world. We react to specific situations based on what we see rather than on what it really is. Often we see only what we wa...

Learner-centered pedagogy (LCP) is one of the best approaches in developing knowledge, skills, and attitudes of learners to cope with the changing world. Implementation of LCP practices tend to vary from one context to another. It is within this perspective that this study was conducted with the aim of investigating the teachers’ attitudes toward LCP in public primary schools located in Nyarugenge District. A sample size of 165 teachers was selected from 13 public and government-aided primary schools. Simple percentages, and chi-square analysis were used to analyze data, and the findings were triangulated with questionnaire and interview responses. Results show that primary school teachers manifested negative attitude toward LCP. The study also indicates that both institutional and individual factors, such as insufficient and inadequate trainings, lack of clear indicators on LCP, and lack of prior experience on LCP among colleges and university tutors during preservice training, affect the attitude of teachers. It is further revealed that gender does not influence the attitude of teachers; however, training was found to be significant at .05 level. It is therefore important that authorities ensure proper training to head teacher, school subject leaders, and teachers on LCP and avail clear indicators on those methods.

This study sought to determine the relationship between monitoring and evaluation (M&E) practices and academic staff motivation in higher education, from a Rwandan perspective. Particularly, the study aimed at describing the M&E practices applied, assessed how quality of feedback affects academic staff motivation, and determined the relationship between M&E practices and academic staff motivation. The study employed a mixed-methods approach to collect data from academic staff. A total of 105 faculties were sampled. The study established that M&E practices, including staff self-evaluation, students-staff evaluation, peer evaluation, and evaluation by supervisor, are applied at varying emphasis. Furthermore, both the supervisees and supervisors agreed that the quality of feedback provided during evaluation is fairly effective, although recognition of their performance is rarely appreciated. It was further established that weak to moderate correlations exist between M&E practices and academic staff motivation with "r" varying from 0.268 to 0.4460. Although some indications for the direction of influence have been generated, the study, however, does not permit one-way final conclusion about the effect of any of the M&E practices to academic staff motivation. Based on the findings, this study recommends that policy makers design a policy on M&E, which would guide supervisors in M&E exercise.

This study provides a situation analysis of enrolment and graduation rates between female and male students in public and private higher learning institutions in Rwanda. The study tracked graduation rates of female and male students for nine years (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)