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.     

Principal evaluation – linking individual and building-level progress: making the connections and embracing the tensions

The article examines the tensions one superintendent in the USA experienced as he evaluated principals in a high-stakes environment that had undergone numerous transformations at the central office. Using qualitative methods, primarily, shadowing techniques, observations and debriefing, the following tensions emerged and were examined in light of the work of the superintendent evaluating principal performance: (1) discrepancies between principal performance when compared to performance data, (2) length of time in the principalship compared to results, (3) finding the right balance between student achievement data and other indicators of principal performance, (4) what types of achievement data are important and when these data are made available, (5) credence paid to complaints about structural changes implemented by the principal, (6) balancing the principal self-evaluation rating scores with the final evaluator scores and (7) accounting for personal factors such as relationship to principals and knowledge about principal capabilities. Each of these tensions contributes to the difficulty a superintendent may feel when conducting the principal evaluation process.     

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.     

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.     

协调性:教育政策执行不可忽略的属性

党的十七大报告将增强改革措施的协调性作为提高决策科学性的重要举措,对政策执行的有效性给予高度重视。近年来,我国教育政策执行出现了许多失真现象,严重阻碍了教育事业的健康发展。究其原因,不乏教育政策执行协调性的缺失。从理论上讲,教育政策执行的协调性符合政策本身所具备的协调功能,符合唯物辨证法的基本要求,符合行政管理的基本要义。从内涵上看,教育政策执行的协调性是教育事业健康发展的必然要求,是“以人为本”思想的具体体现,是教育领域落实科学发展观的重要举措。实现教育政策执行的协调性要处理好四种关系,即教育政策制定主体与教育政策执行主体间的关系、教育政策执行各环节的关系、教育政策所涉及各利益主体的关系、教育政策执行与影响教育政策执行的各外在环境的关系。     

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.     

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。     

Promoting professional growth in new teacher evaluation systems: Practitioners’ lived experiences in changing policy contexts

International recognition of the teacher’s role in student learning has increased attention to teacher quality and evaluation. In the U.S., policy has relaxed requirements for using student outcomes and granted more flexibility to evaluate teachers in ways that ostensibly improve instructional practice and student learning. This exploratory single case study examined the perceptions of practitioners at one high school in a large, suburban district during the implementation of a new evaluation system posited as focused on teacher support and growth. Findings suggest teachers and administrators appreciated the emphasis on communication. However, tensions inherent to the conflation of evaluation and support created challenges. These included distrust of policymaker motives, complexity of the model, technical challenges to implementation, time constraints, and teachers’ need for additional support. Practitioners’ lived experiences can inform policymakers reconsidering how and to what extent evaluation systems tied to accountability can meaningfully impact teacher professional growth and student learning.     

The Purpose and Functions of Budgets – Some Theoretical Perspectives for Education Managers

While educational leadership and management has experienced impressive development over the last three decades the fact that a robust comparative branch of the field has failed to emerge is equally conspicuous. This article builds a case for comparative and international educational leadership and management, arguing that the development of conceptual frameworks and instrumentation are imperative if the field is to keep abreast of globalisation of policy and practice. Accordingly, a conceptual framework is described and justified based on a cultural and cross-cultural approach focusing on the school level as the baseline unit for analysis. Specifically, the proposed framework is architectured around the interrelationship between two levels of culture, societal and organisational, and four elements comprising schooling and school-based management, namely, organisational structures, leadership and management processes, curriculum, and teaching and learning. Finally, limitations and implications of the model are discussed, including the need for the framework to be operationalised by developing appropriate research instruments.