Competences desired among educational leaders of technical education degree institutions

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to identify and classify various competences and competencies that educational leaders should essentially possess. Design/methodology/approach The systematic review of the literature was conducted to identify various competences of educational leaders in the institutions. Later, an empirical research was conducted. The data were analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using AMOS 20.0 to classify these competences according to their relative importance considering natural gaps in standardized beta (ß) values. In all, 96 administrators of 35 technical institutions of Punjab (India) offering engineering and management programs and 93 veteran educational experts had responded in a survey. Findings The results of the study identified five competences: pedagogical, leadership, innovative, research and evaluation competences. The competencies “help others in improvement and not blame circumstances”, “set high benchmarks” and “align class activities with learning objectives” have qualified among the “most important” competencies for the educational leaders. Research limitations/implications The sample was specific to one state. There may be the chances of response bias in a few situations. Therefore, there are few reservations in generalizing the findings. Practical implications The study has several implications for both the faculty and the technical education degree institutes. The study provides a link between the characteristics and competencies of educational leaders. This study also contributes in terms of mapping of these competencies while recruitment of the faculty to test whether the candidates possess the potential of becoming educational leaders. Originality/value The administrators can test these competencies in their faculty for the purpose of identifying both the educational leaders within their institutes and the potential educational leaders in future by assessing “requisite” and “important” competencies.

Faculty competences development components: an integrated model for the development of educational leaders in technical education institutes

“…Teacher's competence is a multi-layered concept that included cognitive, skill-based and affective components-knowledge, skills, attitudes, values and ethics (European Commission, 2018;Nousiainen et al, 2018). There are five main competences that an EL should essentially possess: pedagogical, leadership, innovative, research and evaluation competence (Sharma and Pandher, 2019;Ghasemi et al, 2023). Pedagogical competence refers to educator's deep knowledge of central facts and concepts, relationships between concepts and processes of generating knowledge (Toom et al, 2021).…”

“…, 2018). There are five main competences that an EL should essentially possess: pedagogical, leadership, innovative, research and evaluation competence (Sharma and Pandher, 2019; Ghasemi et al. , 2023).…”

“…However, there is limited literature that shows the comprehensive idea about the various components that develop the competences of the ELs. Hence, it becomes imperative for educational institutions to recognize different components which are responsible for the competences development of the ELs (Sharma and Pandher, 2019).…”

The mediating role of competency in the effect of transformational leadership on lecturer performance

“…Then, in 1980s–1990s, competency expanded into other fields related to managerial success to achieve effective performance (Boyatzis, 1982; Spencer and Spencer, 1993). Recent scholars (Sharma and Pandher, 2019) differentiate between competency (plural: competencies) and competence (plural: competences). A competency is “a component of the competence that is seated in a particular (professional, occupational and task) situation” and can be better understood in specific contexts, while competence refers to “a series of integrated capabilities (competencies) that are comprised of the bunch of knowledge, skills, and attitudes essential for performance and problem-solving” (Sharma and Pandher, 2019, p. 378).…”

Bringing clarity to the leadership of teaching and learning in higher education: a systematic review

“…Foci of studies: There are two major foci among the ten papers. On the one hand, three papers discuss educational leaders' personal characteristics or development, such as development of educational leaders' identity (Tupling and Outhwaite, 2017), what does it mean to be an educational leader (Laksov and Tomson, 2017), and educational leaders' competence and capacity development (Fields et al, 2019;Sharma and Pandher, 2019). On the other hand, four papers discuss the experiences and challenges educational leaders face and the strategies they use in their work.…”