A development of stategies to enhance educational leadership roles of English newspapers

Abstract

This research was focused on developing strategies for enhancing the roles of English newspapers. The researcher determined the roles of English newspapers from documentary research, questionnaire and focus groups. The results were synthesized to develop strategies for enhancing the roles of English newspapers in sharing educational leadership knowledge. The expected roles of newspapers were categorized into ten groups. The results were ranked as following: 1. to inform people about political, economic and social conditions, 2. to provide useful and helpful information for people‘s everyday lives, 3. to provide people with information on the ultimate meaning and significance of events, 4. to transmit values and social norms to the public, 5. to create awareness and educate people about various aspects of both material and social innovation, 6. to create awareness among people about the significance of ongoing and lifelong learning, 7. to crate linkage in joining different elements of society, 8. to motivate and inspire people on favorable aspects, 9. to entertain audiences with entertainment news and stories, 10. to communicate and influence people to accept or adopt certain messages or ideas. From the analysis of English newspapers‘ content, it was found that most of the content concerned fostering the learning and teaching followed by the content promoting the knowledge in community, providing knowledge on performance improvement for working people, instilling moral & value and presenting research findings and theories, respectively. The opinions of newspaper readers towards the current content of English newspapers showed that they were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. The three areas of content considered knowledgeable were on effective methods and strategies in terms of problem solving, ethical and critical reasoning for performance improvement, providing knowledge of successful management and career accomplishments, and providing guidance, success criteria and effective strategies for personal development and self-enrichment. Another three interesting areas were the features on how to learn and share knowledge among people in a society, sharing knowledge and methods to improve teaching and learning and supporting and encouraging the concepts of building up a learning society. The proposed strategies for newspapers to improve their content in order to achieve the roles of educational leaders were as follows: 1. newspapers should develop themselves from within by strengthening their strong positioning and get their editorial and sales & marketing teams must work closer and share ideas openly among themselves; 2. adding a new section for providing content based on knowledge base in educational leadership was believed to be a crucial value added for the newspapers. Yet the style of presenting the knowledge content must be practical and creative in order to draw attention from a new group of younger readers; 3. Inviting readers to engage in developing and sharing content. Engaging audience could be both on-line and print media in order to facilitate readers to participate easily and freely; 4. Collaboration among all possible parties involved: media firms, educational institutions, private sectors, government, and the community, should be developed so as to be an active part in building up learning and knowledge sharing community.