Janet M. Okoko

Professional appointment: Associate Professor, Educational Administration, University of Saskatchewan Professional profile: Janet Mola Okoko is an Associate Professor in the department of Educational Administration, College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. Her research focuses on school leadership preparation and development. She has used qualitative research approaches such as case studies, phenomenology, and phenomenography, with contextualized methods that incorporate interviews, focus group, mind mapping, transect walks, and photo elicitation, to study school leadership problems in various African countries and in Canada. She is currently studying ways of strengthening instructional leaders’ capacity for practitioner-oriented and technology mediated research, as well as school and system leaders’ work with culturally and linguistically diverse Newcomers/Migrants. She has published work on school leadership preparation and development in Kenya, and on the experiences of Canadian school leaders with culturally diverse newcomers. In addition, she has co-authored work on a variety of qualitative research methods and a cross-cultural analysis of teacher leadership, and school principals’ preparation in Kenya, South Africa, and Canada. Her recent publications report on varieties of qualitative research methods; the framing of school leadership preparation and development for Kenya and the essence of school leaders’ work with culturally and linguistically diverse newcomer families in Saskatchewan, Canada.
Areas of scholarship:

School Leadership preparation and development

Teacher leadership

Leading schools with culturally and linguistically diverse newcomers,

Leveraging practitioner-oriented research for instructional leadership


Teaching foci:

Research Methods

Instructional leadership

Organizational theory

Community engagement and partnership


Selected publications:

Okoko, J.M., Tunison, S & Walker, K. (October, 2022). Varieties of qualitative research methods. Springer Education textbook series, Springer Nature

Webber, C, & Okoko, J. (2021). Exploring teacher leadership across cultures: Introduction to teacher leadership. Research in Educational Administration and Leadership, 6 (1) , 1-15 . DOI: 10.30828/real/2021.1.1

Arden, C, & Okoko, J. (2021). Exploring cross-cultural perspectives of teacher leadership among the members of an international research team: A phenomenographic study. Research in Educational Administration and Leadership, 6 (1) , 51-90 . DOI: 10.30828/real/2021.1.3

Okoko, J. M. (2019). Framing school leadership preparation for Kenya: Context counts. In P. Moorosi & T. Bush (Eds). Preparation and Development of School Leaders in Africa. Bloomsbury Publishing https://bloomsbury.com/au/preparation-and-development-of-school-leaders-in-africa-9781350081147/

Okoko, J.M. ( 2019). Towards school leadership development: The Essence of working with culturally and linguistically diverse Newcomers Families in Saskatchewan. Research in Educational Administration & Leadership, 4 (2) 196-229 https://doi.org/10.30828/real/2019.2.

Okoko, J.M. (2018). Framing school leadership preparation and development for Kenya: Context matters. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 1–18 doi: 10.1177/1741143218792913

Okoko, J.M., Scott, S. & Scott, D. (2015). Perceptions of school. Journal of Leadership in Education.18 (3) 270-304. doi:10.1080/13603124.2013.877160


Degrees: PhD, University of CalgaryMEd, Kenyatta UniversityBA, Kenyatta University Email address: janet.okoko@usask.ca; janetmola@yahoo.com