Becoming civil in Hong Kong: a tale of two schools

This chapter describes the study as it was conducted in Hong Kong in two case study schools. The first is a new school located in a recently developed area close to the mainland border. The second is a long established school, operated by the Anglican Church. The results suggested that the goals promoted by the government were not a strong feature of the schools’ implemented programs. Although the planned goals of civic education in the first school reflected the national policy, in practice, the emphasis was on prescribing correct attitudes and the maintenance of order and discipline. In the second school, there was no continuity between the school's goal and the national policy; however, there was a strong continuity between the school's goal and the perspectives of all stakeholders.     

Crossing boundaries: Exploring the theory,practice and possibility of a ‘Future 3’ curriculum

In this article, we examine a case of innovation in curriculum and pedagogy at a new school in the UK. We begin by outlining the 3 Futures model, which we use as a methodological heuristic in the case study of the school that appears to be both knowledge-led and learner-engaged; characteristics of the Future 3 scenario. In considering the school's curriculum, we also draw on a number of concepts from the work of Basil Bernstein: classification, framing and the idea of open schools, and a curriculum integration model developed by us to consider the degree of epistemic emphasis in the school's predominantly interdisciplinary curriculum. Together, these concepts provide the means to examine the organising principles of practice operating in the school, as links are drawn between the 3 Futures model, Bernstein's concepts and the data. We theorise this as a form of ‘opening up’, suggesting that even within the context of an interdisciplinary curriculum, access to powerful knowledge may be maintained in a whole-school approach where the demands of both knowledge and knowers are brought into balance. The school's approach and the theorisation we offer may provide insights for other schools embarking on a futures model for education and for twenty-first-century educational discourses more generally.     

Are separate schools divisive? A case study from Northern Ireland

In Northern Ireland, where the majority of children are educated at schools attended mainly by coreligionists, the debate concerning the role of schools in perpetuating intergroup hostilities has recently been reignited. Against questions regarding the efficacy of community relations policy in education, the research reported in this paper employs qualitative methods to examine social identity and intergroup attitudes amongst children attending a state controlled Protestant school and the school's response to dealing with issues of diversity and difference. Findings suggest a relationship between ethnic isolation experienced by children and negative intergroup social attitudes and the discussion focuses on issues germane to the separateness of the school that are likely to contribute to strong ‘own’ group bias, stereotyping and prejudice. The implication of the school's separate status for its engagement with a policy framework for relationship building is also considered. The paper concludes with some policy reflections that are likely to have resonance beyond Northern Ireland.     

The case of the leaving certificate applied

This paper deals with the topic of child protection in Irish primary schools, and reports on a recently completed survey of newly qualified teachers’ knowledge of and familiarity with their school's child protection policies and procedures. The study was undertaken by means of a questionnaire survey, and conducted with 103 teachers from different schools. The child protection roles and responsibilities of schools are clearly spelt out in national guidelines. However, the findings from this research indicate that compliance with the requirement to inform new staff about the guidelines and ensure that they have read them is weak. This is evidenced by the data concerning the teachers’ reported knowledge of, and familiarity with, their school's child protection policies. Half of the respondents did not know if their school had a child protection policy or not. Of those who were aware of their school's child protection policy, only just over half had read it. Well under half of the respondents knew if there was a Designated Liaison Person (DLP) with responsibility for child protection in their school. Furthermore, nearly two-thirds of respondents reported uncertainty or lack of confidence in being able to identify suspected child abuse. The paper draws on international research on child protection in education to provide the context for a discussion on the factors that influence schools’ motivation and willingness to collaborate as key protectors of children's safety and welfare, and makes recommendations for policy makers, school managers and frontline staff.     

Facilitating Teachers' Participation in School‐Based Health Promotion—A Qualitative Study

The focus of this article is on examining Norwegian teachers' perception of what factors at the school's organisational level have facilitated their participation in a school‐based health promotion project. The study is based on 12 semistructured interviews with teachers from two of the pilot schools participating in the European Network of Health Promoting Schools. The findings indicate that there are a number of conditions at the organisational level facilitating the implementation process and the teachers' participation in the project. These conditions are common goals, good leadership, sufficient and available resources, competence and cooperation inside the school and with the local community. The results from this study also indicate that working with the Health Promoting Schools Project helped the teachers in fulfilling many of the goals of the new Norwegian National Curriculum (L97), and in the longer term, also contributed to the implementation of the new reform.     

Characterizing the Decision Process Leading to Enrollment in Master's Programs: Further Application of the Enrollment Process Model

ABSTRACT

As part of an ongoing market research function, the administration at a private university's business school implemented a project to better understand the composition of its master's students. This research was an extension of a similar study conducted for the school's doctoral programs. Like the earlier study on doctoral students, a behavioral approach that employed a theoretical model of the decision process leading to enrollment was applied to master's students. This enrollment process model was utilized to guide the implementation of a survey that sampled the school's current students. Application of this model to questionnaire development procedures is also presented. Based on the information collected, the decision process leading to enrollment in the master's business programs was characterized. Quadrant analysis was applied to selected data derived from the enrollment process model in order to develop a two dimensional profile of students. In practice, this depiction provided insight to student perception of ideal versus actual program characteristics. The usefulness and applicability of the enrollment process model in achieving enrollment management objectives is also discussed.     

'School is Like an Ant's Nest': Spatiality and embodiment in schools

Processes of differentiation and formation of subjectivities in schools have embodied and spatial components. This article illustrates the significance of what is termed the physical school by a discussion of space and embodiment organised through one of several metaphors that school students have used to describe their schools: an ants' nest. The metaphor tells a tale about the lack of spatial and embodied autonomy school students experience. Gendered meanings of the metaphor are also questioned. Gender is seen as dynamic and processual. The article is based on a collective work on 'Physical school' by the Gender and Education research network in Finland (1992-94). Theoretical concepts are elaborated further within another project in secondary schools 'Citizenship, difference and marginality in schools - with special reference to gender' that was in its preliminary phase when the article was written.     

THE ORTHODOX DAY SCHOOL AND ITS NONOBSERVANT POPULATION

Many of Canada's day schools¹ are experiencing a phenomenon whereby only 10 to 20 percent of their student populations reflect the school's Orthodox ideology. This ratio of observant to nonobservant is also an accurate estimate of their parent population. Yet, virtually all Canadian senior high schools² and many elementary schools of similar populations remain Orthodox in their philosophies. Such a situation can present schools and parent bodies with a variety of dilemmas: Parents are often not aware of Jewish educational goals; children are more educated than their parents; there is little parental support to many school values (eg. kashrut, Shabbat, etc.); some school values are discouraged; and parent/school tensions can result out of a lack of understanding. Such schools as Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto, Associated Hebrew Schools of Toronto,³ Herzilia Academy of Montreal,⁴ and Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate of Winnipeg⁵ all must address this issue since the observant population is a minority in their systems. Consequently, a significant percentage of their students do not subscribe to their school's philosophy. This situation is not unique in Canada. Many Orthodox day schools see their original mandate as increasing Torah awareness of all their pupils in the communities they serve.     

Underlying Cultural issues That Effect Sound Consultant/School Collaboratives in Developing Multicultural Programs

This paper examines some underlying cultural issues that effect collaborations between consultants and schools, addressing multicultural curriculum and teaching developments. As a prelude to such a discussion, the author first advance the argument that Western chauvinism may interfere with the consultant's and the school's ability to perceive other cultures on their own terms. Six multicultural considerations are then explored to shed some clarity on intracultural perceptions. The sixth of these considerations in the Implications For Effective Curriculum and Teaching Development section serves as my 'bottom line' concerning the true purpose of multicultural programs within schools. The author contend that multicultural programs must foster equitable optimum learning opportunities for all children regardless of cultural diversity. This is academically universal. In the final analysis a sound consultant/school collaborative makes optimum learning a reality.     

Mind the Gap: How Students Differentially Perceive Their School's Attendance Policies in Germany

Truant student behavior can be due to various reasons. Some of these reasons are located in schools. So far, little is known about how student perception of school rules is related to truancy. This study aims to identify types of school attendance policies and how these policies are associated with individual truancy. Self-reports from the German student sample of PISA 2012 (N = 5,001) were analyzed to evaluate truancy and student perception of school attendance policies. A linear regression model was specified to predict truancy. Two styles of school attendance policies as perceived by students could be distinguished: active and passive. Students who perceived their school's attendance policy to be active were truant less often than students who thought their school's attendance policy was passive.     

Achieving ethnic minority students' inclusion: a Flemish school's discursive practices countering the quasi‐market pressure to exclude

The purpose of this paper is to identify how ethnically diverse schools can discursively maintain a good reputation. Reputation allows attracting the mixed student population necessary to achieve inclusion or closing the gap between the attainment of ethnic majority and minority students. In semi‐market educational systems where students are free to attend the school of their choice yet education has no market price, the share of ethnic minority students functions as one of the main indicators of a school's educational quality. Ethnically diverse schools are thus perceived as offering lower quality education. Based on the case of a highly ethnically diverse, inclusive secondary school in the exclusive Flemish secondary educational semi‐market, we found that a positive reputation could be achieved through three related discursive practices: affirming the high‐quality education of the school, redefining the relation between students' ethnic diversity and educational quality and reconstructing ethnic diversity as an educational resource.     

Effective Dutch School Improvement Projects

This article describes 2 effective school improvement projects in primary education. In The Netherlands, there is a long history of failing innovations in education. The 2 programmes are selected because they are known to be effective. They have almost the same goals (strengthen the school's capacity for managing change, improving teachers' capacity to adapt instruction to student's needs, and prevent and reduce disadvantage, especially in reading and arithmetic) and theoretical background (a balanced mix of the school and class effectiveness knowledge and the concepts of school improvement). They use, however, partly different strategies for school improvement. The characteristics (aims, theory, design, implementation, improvement, outcomes) of both programmes are described. These data are used to discuss what lessons are learned for effective school improvement.     

Why are teachers absent? Probing service delivery in Peruvian primary schools

A high rate of absence of teachers from their posts is a serious obstacle to delivery of education in many developing countries, but hard evidence on the problem has been scarce. This study, carried out as part of a new multi-country survey project, is the first systematic investigation in Peru into the extent and causes of teachers’ absence from schools. Data from our nationally representative survey of public primary schools, based on unannounced visits and direct observation of teachers, reveals that public school teachers in Peru are absent from their posts 11 percent of the time. While this overall absence rate is low compared with those of other survey countries, the absence rates in Peru's poorest and remotest communities are much higher—16 and 21 percent, respectively. In our multivariate analysis of the causes of public school teacher absence, we identify several important variables that are associated with increased absence: poor working conditions, such as poorer communities and infrastructure; teachers with fewer ties to the school's community; contract teaching; and, perhaps, an absence of private competition. By contrast, proxies for more vigorous top-down and bottom-up monitoring are not associated with lower absence. These results, together with the relatively high overall public school teacher attendance rates in an environment where financial incentives for performance are weak, suggest that non-pecuniary incentives are important determinants of teacher performance.     

Finding a Golden Mean in Education Policy: Centering Religious and Public Schools

The separation between Church and State, private and public education, is blurring, and coming together, as the government gives families vouchers to attend private and religious schools. Religious groups are starting and supporting their own charter schools, and local jurisdictions (cities and counties) are providing free transportation and food services to children attending private schools. What emerges, and is the focus of this analysis, is the new “middle ground,” a “golden mean,” by which public schools learn diversity and choice while private/religious schools are helped by public programs and funds. The oldest, perhaps, was Lyndon Johnson's compromise with the Catholics to get Title 1 passed as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that sends public school teachers into private schools to help children in need. This study examines the emergence of a middle group in public–private education, and how the policies are working and what's changing. It argues that the child is the center of education, and government and private agencies are changing and should come together to serve the clients, the children.     

Teachers' responses to noncompliant students: The realities and consequences of a negotiated curriculum

This research examined the context in urban high school physical education classes that influenced 10 teachers' conceptualizations of realistic educational goals for their students. Ethnographic data in the form of field notes and interviews were analyzed using constant comparison. Teachers reported that many students were unwilling to participate and were becoming progressively more difficult to teach. Teachers actively sought explanations for this behavior both in the students' backgrounds and their lack of interest in school. They identified inconsistencies between the school's educational mission and the students' aspirations for the future. Teachers reported substantial changes in their programs over their careers. Although they had begun their careers teaching skills and other knowledge-based curricula, the diversity and difficulties associated with teaching urban students had forced them to move from a curriculum of skills to a “curriculum” of motivation and order. Many of these programs exhibited characteristics of an elitist, discriminatory, and decontextual approach to curriculum.     

Do Principals Affect Student Outcomes: An Organizational Perspective

This research study investigated the principal's role as instructional manager, its relationship to student achievement, and how principals influence teachers to accomplish the school's goal of increasing student learning. Conceptually, principal instructional management includes those processes, both mental and physical, that the principal uses which result in other people executing formal and informal duties to achieve organizational goals. It deals mainly with planning, organizing and controlling teacher behavior to achieve organizational goals, but also includes monitoring and controlling resources. Subjects for the study included elementary school (K‐8) principals and teachers in 27 schools. Student achievement gain was determined by regression analysis where current achievement was regressed on prior achievement and SES for two years of data. Principal instructional management behavior was measured by a modified form of the Instructional Management Rating Scales, or IMRS (Hallinger, 1983). The results from the study question whether principals should be led by researchers and policymakers into thinking that increasing their instructional management behaviors will turn ineffective schools into effective ones. School improvement is a complex process that involves a host of factors which principals can influence, but not control. While principals play an important role as part of the schools' efforts in school improvement, the role of the principal in school improvement, must be placed in its proper perspective.     

Profiles of Organizational Culture and Effective Schools∗

This study intends to investigate how school organizational culture is related to important organizational characteristics and observe how the profiles of strong culture‐effective schools are different from those of weak culture‐ineffective schools in terms of organizational variables (such as principal's leadership, organizational structure, and teachers’ social interactions), teachers’ job attitudes, and school effectiveness criteria. It is a cross‐sectional survey research involving 54 randomly sampled Hong Kong secondary schools and 588 teachers. The unit of analysis is the school.

Organizational ideology index was found to be substantially correlated with schools’ perceived organizational effectiveness. Among the 10 measures of these organizational variables, teachers’ esprit and principal's charismatic leadership can contribute substantially to the prediction of school's strength of organizational culture. The organizational profile of perceived strong culture‐effective schools is contrastingly different from that of perceived weak culture‐ineffective schools. The findings suggest that difference in organizational culture can be reflected at least in three overt levels: 1. organizational level in terms of principal's leadership behaviors, organizational formalization and participation, and teachers’ social norms; 2. teachers’ attitudinal level in terms of organizational commitment, social job satisfaction, intrinsic job satisfaction, and influence job satisfaction; and 3. school effectiveness level in terms of perceived overall organizational effectiveness and academic achievements in public examinations.

The findings reinforce the importance of organizational culture to the ongoing effort and discussion of school improvement and school effectiveness.

     

An Outlier Study of Multilevel Self-Management and School Performance

The assumption that increased autonomy and responsibility at the school site-level will result in enhanced performance of schools is often problematic. Cheung and Cheng (1996) suggested that in order to ensure school effectiveness, self-management practices at the individual teacher, group, and school levels are necessary. This article reports the findings of a case study of multilevel self-management in 3 Hong Kong primary schools. It revealed that the practices of multilevel self-management were associated with enhanced school performance at multilevels. Further, teachers' self-management practices determined largely the success of the school's self-management and demonstrated significant influence on the practices of work groups and the school.     

Book Reviews

ABSTRACT

Drawing on data derived from on-going research projects investigating the privatised inspection process recently introduced for all schools in England and Wales, the paper considers the role of school governing bodies. Reference is made to the part governors can play in school improvement, particularly in those schools deemed by the inspectors to be in need of 'special measures'. It draws upon the experiences of a small sample of such schools and their governing bodies to suggest ways in which governors are able to play an important role in increasing their school's effectiveness and contribute to its continual improvement.     

A Brief Account of the First Symposium on the Theory of Privately Run Schools

The first symposium on the theory of privately run schools was held from September 23 to September 25, 1992, at Tianjin's Educational Science Institute. It was attended by more than fifty educational theorists and practitioners as well as representatives of a number of private schools from eleven areas of nine provinces and municipalities, namely, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Shandong, Shanxi, Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong. The State Education Commission's Division of Policy and Law, Division of Basic Education, and the Central Educational Science Institute also participated. Participants discussed the following topics: definition of the concepts of privately run schools and private schools in the course of private school development; the position and role of private schools in the socialist educational system; the social background and inherent basis for the development of private schools; private schools' internal management; how private schools can improve quality and establish their own characteristics; supervision and evaluation of private schools; the history of reform of private schools and comparative studies of Chinese and foreign private schools; how educational administrations can reinforce management over private schools and the study of related policies and regulations; and the feasibility of people from foreign countries, overseas Chinese, compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan opening schools in China. Information about the development of nongovernmental and private schools everywhere was exchanged, problems in establishment and development were given priority in discussion. The Tianjin Educational Science Institutes group researching privately run schools and private schools made a special presentation on Chinassovereign right of education vis-à-vis the right to conduct educatio—question facing people from other countries in opening schools in China.