School Leadership Master’s Program Enhancement Through Cross-Border Collaboration Between Assiut and Kuwait Schools of Education

Abstract

Despite the efforts made by the Ministry of Education in both Egypt and Kuwait to promote teachers’ and administrators’ professional competencies, schools remain mired in a centralized culture that controls school practice .The purpose of this paper is to conduct a comparative analysis of leadership components presented in the Education Administration Master program offered in Assiut and Kuwait Faculties of Education in order to suggest the best ways to enhance cross-border collaboration between Assuit and Kuwait Schools of education. In addition , the paper examined Master’s in Educational Leadership programs offered by top-ranked universities with a special focus on education transformation and school improvement to inform the proposed program’s general framework Results revealed that the core concept and philosophy upon which the two programs are constructed is administration, not leadership, which contradicts recent school reform in Egypt and Kuwait, calling for more autonomous, inspiring leaders. Implications for improving master programs in both countries are discussed.