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Increasingly, school principals face unique challenges to improve the educational quality of their schools. Given the vital role of educational leaders in this process, this study presents the case of a city with distinctive features due to its geographical location bordering Africa and Europe: Melilla, Spain. Based on a literature review and in-depth interviews with primary and secondary school principals, this study analyses the initial and continuing training, requirements, and procedures to become a school principal, as well as the motivations, skills, and knowledge required of educational leaders in principalship positions. The results reveal that the training school principals receive in educational leadership is often scarce and not very useful for addressing the realities they encounter in their schools. In addition, the interviewees highlight the multitude of administrative tasks they are required to perform, which often precludes them from engaging in pedagogical practices and exercising educational leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research about the significance of parent participation in school is expanding, research about the role of Parent Associations (PA)/Parent and Teacher Associations (PTA) in the integration and participation of immigrant families in schools is limited. This is still the case in Spain and the U.S. despite the continued growth of the immigrant population and that of a scholarship linking parental involvement in school with the improved educational outcomes of their children. This study explores the role of PA/PTAs leaders in the school integration and participation of immigrant families, many of whom are considered 'hard-to-reach.' The objectives are twofold: to contribute new insights with a description of immigrant families' participation in PA/PTAs in two different national contexts; and to bring new insights from the views of PA/PTAs leaders about how to engage and improve the participation of 'hard-to-reach', immigrant families in schools. We compare results derived from in-depth, semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with PA/PTAs leaders in 26 public schools in Granada and New York City. The study yields two main findings: the importance of immigrant families' active participation in the enrichment of schools; and the strategies used by PA/PTAs leaders in the participation and integration of parents in their children's schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the positive influence of leadership in the processes of institutional self-evaluation in an organization that seeks to raise a diagnosis of participatory management, promoting the collaboration of all agents involved, whose goal is to correct the weaknesses and needs detected and then make collegial and distributed decisions. and agreed on for the benefit of people and therefore the organization. To achieve participatory management, it is necessary that the institution has a self-assessment methodology and, through qualitative and quantitative techniques, it is possible to implement it periodically, according to the processes of strategic planning and accreditation that each organization is obtaining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]