study of the professional development needs of Shiraz high schools' principals in the area of educational leadership

Introduction: The increased emphasis on standards-based school accountability since the passage of the no child left behind act of 2001 is focusing critical attention on the professional development of school principals and their ability to meet the challenges of improving the student outcomes. Due to this subject, the current study examined professional development needs of Shiraz high schools principals

Methods: The statistical population consisted of 343 principals of Shiraz high schools, of whom 250 subjects were selected using Krejcie and Morgan [1978] sample size determination table. To collect the data, a questionnaire developed by Salazar [2007] was administered. This questionnaire was designed for professional development in the leadership skills/competencies and consisted of 25 items in each leadership performance domain using five-point Likert-type scales. The content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed and the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient was [Alpha = 0.78]. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics and Paired-Samples t-test were used. Also, the data was analyzed through SPSS14 software

Results: The findings showed that principals' [Importance] ratings were always higher than their [Actual proficiency] ratings. The mean score of the difference between [Importance] and [Actual proficiency] pair on [Organizing resources] was 2.11, making it the highest [need] area. The lowest need area was [Managing the organization and operational procedures] at 0.81. Also, the results showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the means of the [Importance] and the corresponding means on the [Actual proficiency] [Difference of means=1.48, t=49.38, p<0.001]

Conclusion: Based on the obtained results, the most important professional development needs of the principals included organizing resources, resolving complex problems, understanding student development and learning, developing the vision and the mission, building team commitment, understanding measurements, evaluation and assessment strategies, facilitating the change process, solving problems and making decisions. In other words, the principals had statistically significant professional development needs in all areas of the educational leadership. Also, the results suggested that today's school principals need to grow and learn throughout their careers by ongoing professional development

relationship between socialization and organizational commitment among staff of both Volunteers and Youth Organizations in Red Crescent society of Iran

Organizational socialization considers as an important factor for new employees to adapt themselves to the organization. The major problems of the executive organizations are lack of sense of belonging to the organization and lack of sufficient accuracy on tasks. This paper aims to examine and promote the relationship between socialization and organizational commitment in both employees of Volunteers Organization and Youth Organization of Red Crescent society. In this study, a total of 134 employees [from 225 people] employed in Volunteers Organization and Youth Organization were selected and studied by random stratified sampling according to Morgan. The data for this study was collected by Jones organizational socialization questionnaire and organizational commitment questionnaire developed by Alien and Meyer. Reliability of organizational socialization questionnaire was 0/69 through Cronbach's alpha and then was obtained 0/82 by deleting some items. Cronbach's alpha was 0/78 for organizational commitment questionnaire. Three experts were used in order to investigate the validity of the questionnaire using sample t-test. The relationship between variables was assessed by Pearson correlation and linear regression. The results of the study indicated that there was not any relationship between socialization and organizational commitment. There was a significant positive relation between continuous commitment and socialization with a correlation coefficient of 0/209 [Sig=0/016]. Coefficient of determination was also equal to 0/156; indicated that the independent variable of socialization explain 15/6% of changes in the dependent variables of the continued commitment. According to the results, there was no relationship between socialization and organizational commitment. There was a weak relationship between socialization and continuous commitment. In addition, there was no relationship between socialization and affective commitment