In Secondary Education, students need innovative skills and competences that the current education system does not sufficiently offer. Also, educators need pedagogical support to develop teaching to respond to 21st century skills requirements. In order to achieve these goals, an experimental culture of learning needs to be implemented in practice. The aim of this paper is to introduce and pilot a pedagogy for teaching innovation, collaboration, and co-creation in secondary education. The proposed pedagogy is based on a designerly way of thinking, digital competences, and entrepreneurial spirit, together with an experimental culture of creating, making, and collaborating in order to improve students’ innovative, co-creative and collaborative way of thinking and making. The main finding is that the proposed pedagogy enhanced innovative, collaborative and co-creative student competences. Moreover, digital and entrepreneurial skills gave the ability to the students to create new valuable products and services.

The development of emotional intelligence skills offers sufficient leadership qualities for advancing the organization and for achieving its objectives. In particular, the emotionally intelligent leader–principal is able to inspire and facilitate a self-conscious and organizational culture by adopting the values of understanding, trust, prospect, achievement and effectiveness and combining emotions, beliefs, vision and values in a flexible manner. In order to inquire on the above, a data-gathering process was employed in the spring of 2011, with the use of anonymous questionnaires administered to 301 educators/teachers and 36 principals who work in primary schools in Athens. The data-gathering process included the application of a questionnaire that derived key insight into the identification of key emotional intelligent and leadership factors. The data analysis process has set off 14 significant statistical factors. Ten of them were related to the principal’s emotional intelligence and four referred to leadership. The research findings have offered key insights into profiling the school principal from a leadership and emotional intelligence standpoint. Hence, such information could be rather useful in the training and development of principals, as well as for further research that could investigate the correlation between emotional intelligence and effectiveness of primary school principals.

The purpose of this study was to research the level of satisfaction teachers received from communication within their working environment, their sense of the effectiveness of the institution itself, as well as the relationship between these factors. A quantitative method was used in the study. A total of 296 questionnaires were answered by teachers aged 25–64. Statistical analysis of the data was performed using the statistical software SPSS, while for the implementation of the statistical tests we applied the independent-samples T-test parametric, as well as one-way ANOVA, Kruskal–Wallis, and Mann–Whitney parametric statistical criteria. According to the results, the teachers showed high levels of satisfaction with the communication related to their feedback and believed that both parents and the local community do not participate actively in the school life. The development of an effective communication system within an educational institution can potentially become the driving force for effective functioning. The study complements the existing research on communication as a factor in the effectiveness of an educational organization. It highlights the dynamics of the teachers’ association to the greatest possible extent, attempting to link the communication factor to all aspects of school effectiveness.

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been the subject of various studies in recent decades. The purpose of this research was to study the Corporate Social Responsibility of companies, in combination with customers’ perspectives, in terms of their trends regarding their trust and loyalty. In this study, the business sector of the Greek mobile telecommunications’ companies was selected, where research on issues related to CSR is not considered extensive, to analyze customers’ attitudes towards a company that emphasizes its social responsibility. To complete the theoretical framework, questionnaires were collected to empirically investigate correlations and highlight, ultimately, the importance of having socially responsible companies in the mobile telecommunications sector in Greece. The present research proved that both at the bibliographic and practical level, successful companies are the ones that are concerned not only with increasing their sales and profitability, but also with enhancing and emphasizing their social impact and returning value to society.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to reflect the multi-level mentoring practices of a Teacher Education Program in Greece and the mentors’ perceptions on them. The mentoring practices of the specific Program are unique in Teacher Education in Greece; and therefore, the paper examines the extent to which they are considered as capable of developing in mentors and mentees specific skills that contribute to the development of student-teachers’ professional identity.Design/methodology/approach: The case study is based on qualitative research and 32 interviews with mentors of the specific Program who report their experience. Six mentees have also been asked to provide the researchers with comments, so as to observe whether their answers confirm the mentors’ perceptions.Findings: The different types of mentoring of the specific Program are perceived as able to enhance the mentors’ and the mentees’ professional development and self-confidence as well as to the latters’ improved transition and engagement to the Program. The authors also contribute to the fostering of the mentees’ experiential learning and to the capitalization of knowledge in Teacher Education. The EES teacher mentoring is considered of important adding value to the formation of student-teachers’ professional identity, according to the mentors interviewed. Mentees comments were found to confirm the mentors’ perceptions.Originality/value: The conclusions of the paper are of significant value, since multi-level mentoring as a holistic approach to teacher-candidates’ experiential learning and professional development examined in a single paper is rather rare. Moreover, the Program of the paper’s case study follows this multi-level innovative approach, which includes EES teacher mentoring, and which is of considerable adding value, according to the mentors and the mentees interviewed. It could, therefore, constitute a paradigm for other Teacher Education Programs in Greece and in other countries.

Evaluating teachers and educational work is now mandatory in the Greek educational system. The current study aims at investigating the attitudes and perceptions of principals of Piraeus Secondary Education units regarding the contributions of this evaluation law to the orderly functioning of schools in terms of administrative and educational aspects. For this qualitative research, a semi-structured interview was chosen as the results collection method. The interview questions included respondents’ demographic information and interview questions corresponding to three thematic axes according to the research questions. The convenience sample consisted of twelve (12) principals of secondary school units from the greater Piraeus area. All interviewed principals recognized the need for the evaluation process in education and agreed on the importance of their roles and responsibilities for the effectiveness of the proper functioning of their units. Nine respondents underlined the need for training teachers on new technologies, six considered internal evaluation reports as a means of weaknesses identification and improvement and five believed the evaluation imposed by the Ministry of Education creates negative feelings. As concluded, evaluation is of great educational importance, as it contributes to teachers’ professional development and schools’ educational quality improvement. However, when implemented suddenly or imposed by the state, it causes pressure, stress, fear, nervousness, and insecurity.