Qualified to lead? A comparative,contextual and cultural view of educational policy borrowing

Abstract

Background: Around the globe, education policy borrowing remains pervasive and prevalent. The strategies, interventions and innovations of education systems that perform well, in international assessments, are enthusiastically borrowed and copied in the anticipation of similar educational performance and outcomes.

Purpose: This purpose of the article is to highlight some of the implications and consequences of policy borrowing by comparing the preparation and development programmes for school leaders in various education systems. The article explores the way in which the leadership programmes and models are being adopted and developed by different countries.

Sources of evidence: The article draws upon findings from a contemporary, comparative study of leadership preparation and development across seven different education systems (Seven System Leadership Study). This large-scale, mixed-methods, comparative research study is collecting quantitative and qualitative data about the nature and impact of leadership development and preparation programmes in seven different education systems.

Main argument: The findings from the study reinforce how leadership preparation and development programmes are increasingly becoming standardised as a result of education systems borrowing and adapting from each other. This article also argues that in the contemporary policy discourse, important cultural and contextual influences that significantly affect subsequent implementation and outcomes are increasingly being side-lined and ignored.

Conclusions: This article highlights some of the limitations and unintended consequences of educational policy borrowing. It concludes that adopting some of the design features of effective interventions rather than simply borrowing policies or strategies, in part or in their entirety from very different contexts, may be a more productive way forward.     

国外学校变革中的教育性领导及其建构

有效的学校领导是学校质量和学校变革的关键因素。学校领导者是学校组织变革和发展的中心。发达国家在学校组织变革过程中越来越强调学校领导者的作用,强调学校领导者应该成为教育性领导。发达国家的研究者们揭示了教育性领导的内涵,从三个维度解释了教育性领导的职能及其相互关系,包括教学领导、课程领导和学习领导,同时还指出了教育性领导的建构策略。     

Farewell to the tick box inspector? Ofsted and the changing regime of school inspection in England

Since its inception in 1992 Ofsted (The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills) has inspected schools under Section 9 of the Education (Schools) Act 1992; Section 10 of the School Inspections Act 1996; and Section 5 of the Education Act 2005. Pressure on England to improve its system of education has not only emerged from the national need for all schools to serve their pupils well, but has also been prompted by an increasing emphasis on international league tables such as that produced by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development). In tables such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), England is viewed as underperforming against comparable countries. As a result, Ofsted has introduced what the agency terms to be one of the most stringent and demanding inspection frameworks since its inception. This framework reduces the previous 29 inspection judgements to just four, purportedly placing a far greater emphasis on the professional judgement of the inspector and representing a major departure from the ‘tick box’ approach which characterised previous frameworks. This paper examines the paradoxical fate of inspector professional judgement and concludes that whilst this may appear to signal a rapprochement between inspectors and teaching profession, there are considerable tensions when professional judgement is considered alongside quality control within a highly complex system. The study concludes that in order that inspection attains credibility as a method by which to govern education, this shift requires a more considered approach to ways in which this professional judgement can be effective within the challenging environment of the English education system.     

反思与中小学教师专业成长

对于中小学教师而言,反思直接指向的是教师个人以及群体的教育实践,它促使教师去思考教育实践的发生发展及实践的意义。反思唤醒了教师的主体意识,它可以帮助教师去审视自己的教育行为,意识到自己是教育实践的承担者。反思也使教师在复杂的教育情境中,评价自己行为的后果,形成工作的主动性、能动性和自觉性,不断地改进自己的教学实践,更好、更有效地开展教育活动。     

在构建学习型学校过程中教育领导角色与策略分析

文章通过对学习型学校特征以及教育领导概念和角色的分析,认为构建学习型学校的首要策略是树立学习型教育领导,如此可以使学校每个人在承担学校的责任上分享领导权力,实现对学校共同利益意识的承诺与尽责,唤起高绩效学校的共同愿景,充分发挥学校组织创新能力。同时探讨了在构建学习型学校过程中教育领导策略：1）建立延伸的领导概念,建构多水平的教育领导;2）教育领导者要确立角色意识,领导学校发展;3）教育领导者要建立清晰的共同愿景;4）建立分享反思的学校学习文化;5）构建高效能的团队学习,促进专业发展;6）建立学习机制,使教育领导产生巨大的创造力。     

评析美国的教育券政策

教育券是20世纪90年代以来美国公共教育改革实现私有化与市场化过程中流行起来的一种新的教育资助方式。美国政府资助的教育券实验最早出现在20世纪60年代末,到90年代,教育券开始付诸实践。文章试图对美国教育券政策的实施背景、具体实施政策、关于教育券争论的一些分析以及关于教育券提议的未来思考等方面作一系统的分析与研究。     

教育政策研究的一个可能视域——教育政策与教育实践的关系

教育政策与教育实践总是处于双向动态互动过程之中。当前我国教育政策与教育实践经常面临无效关系、负效关系和模糊关系的困境,而教育政策理论研究尚缺乏解释教育政策与实践关系的工具,因此,在我国教育改革与发展的转型时期,研究教育政策与教育实践的关系问题具有重要的历史意义,有利于拓展教育政策学科的研究视域,提升我国教育政策活动的质量。研究两者关系重点在于教育政策与教育实践的本质研究、教育政策与教育实践互动本质与过程研究、教育政策与教育实践关系的困境类型及其特征研究、教育政策与教育实践互动的有效机制及对策研究。     

OECD教育发展指标体系分析及启示——以《教育概览：OECD指标（2003）》为例

《教育概览:OECD指标》作为经济合作与发展组织在教育领域的重要研究成果,具有很强的政策性、前瞻性、实用性和准确性。《教育概览:OECD指标(2003)》从背景、投入、过程、产出四个维度分析教育现象的CIPP模式以及2003年指标的变化趋势,对我国教育指标的制定有着重要的参考意义。     

School leadership for the future: heroic or distributed? Translating international discourses in Norwegian policy documents

School leadership as a key for school reforms has become a dominant theme in education, as demonstrated by a growing body of research during the last 15 years. Still, little attention has been paid to how changing international discourses on school leadership are translated into national public policy documents during the last decade. As such, this study provides additional insight into this field by analysing how Norwegian policy documents translate international discourses and re-contextualise national constructs of school leadership. Inspired by a critical approach, the authors address this issue by identifying discursive shifts in ideas about school leadership roles and practices. Based on an examination of four recent white papers on Norwegian education and school leadership, the authors argue that the policy documents constructed a tension between an international ‘explicit’ principal and a national ‘docile’ principal in 2003–2004, while recent documents construct a consensus-oriented, distributed leadership role for principals through the term ‘facilitating school leaders’. This may lead to contested interpretations as to how to perform school leadership in practice.     

Effective Legislative Advocacy: Policy Experts’ Advice for Educators

Educators and policy makers often lack the ability to work together to address issues facing schools. For this multiple case study, three educators who advocate regularly at the local, state, and national levels were asked by the researcher to offer advice for influencing legislative change. The findings suggest that educators interested in advocacy should use personal strengths and interests to advocate, focus on one issue and one level of government, and build professional relationships with policy makers and constituents.     

Binding Forces and Teachers’ School Life: A Recursive Model

Attempts were made to formulate a theoretical framework of binding forces in school organizations and to examine their effects on teachers’ feelings about school life. After a series of tests with factor analyses, 4 major scales of organizational binding forces were confirmed, that is, bureaucratic linkage, cultural linkage, tight coupling, and loose coupling. An implication of the study is that school administrators should make full use of the 4 binding forces to bind people together in schools and resort more to cultural linkage, loose coupling, and tight coupling to enhance school effectiveness and to give people meanings in their work.     

The influence of school leadership on teachers’ perception of teacher evaluation policy

The understanding of teachers’ perception of new educational policy is crucial since this perception shapes the policy’s implementation. However, quantitative research in this area is scarce. This article draws on empirical data to investigate whether the school leader might influence his teachers’ perception of the new teacher evaluation policy. The conceptualisation of teachers’ perception consists of three policy characteristics: practicality, need and clarifying function. Our results indicate that school leadership influences teachers’ policy perception. More specifically, the structure a school leader provides in a school and the amount of trust teachers have in the school leader have a significant impact on teachers’ perception of the practicality of the new teacher evaluation policy.