5 Leadership turnover and business mobilization: the changing political ecology of urban school systems

This chapter addresses evidence of leadership turnover in urban school systems and explains this leadership problem as emanating from the changing political ecology of urban school systems. The average tenure of urban superintendents is now 2‐5 years, coupled with a shortage of applicants for vacant superintendencies, indicating a crisis of legitimacy for many urban school systems. Demands for racial representativeness on school boards and among superintendents led to more African‐Americans in these positions, but responsiveness to these demands did not check still other demands for improved quality. The evolution from racial equity (integration and representativeness) to quality is reviewed. Most recently, business leaders have mobilized to demand improved quality. An analysis of events in Detroit, Atlanta and Milwaukee illustrates the difficulty these school systems have had managing these cumulative political demands.     

资源与体制:我国私学发展史的社会学分析

我国私学发展的历史源渊流长 ,它对我国教育发展起着重要的作用。用社会学中的“资源—体制”理论框架对社会渐变和社会剧变过程中的私学发展史考察 ,印证了我国私学存在的必要性和必然性。因此 ,在未来的很长一段时间内 ,我国应继续改革教育管理体制 ,大力扶持和发展民办教育 ,以弥补教育资源的不足 ,满足教育需求     

School Leadership and System Leadership

School effectiveness and improvement research shows that leadership plays a key role in ensuring the vitality and growth of schools. Yet, there is growing appreciation (Elmore 2000, 2) that “public schools and school systems as presently constituted are simply not led in ways that enable them to respond to the increasing demands they face under standards-based reforms.” For Elmore (2000, 2) and others, the way out of this problem is “through the large scale improvement of instruction, something public education has been unable to do to date, but which is possible with dramatic changes in the way public schools define and practice leadership.”     

Between legal requirements and local traditions in school improvement reform in Austria: School leaders as gap managers

The implementation of a new school type has changed the context of school leadership in Austrian lower secondary schools. An interview study with 25 secondary-school leaders was undertaken. The goal of the study was to inquire how school leaders conceptualise their role in the local policy adaptation of a centrally driven reform. The results indicate that school leaders saw themselves as double agents in facing increasing demands from within and without schools for legitimating their work. Neo-institutionalist theory is used for explaining the role of school leaders as gap managers. The concept of gap management is deployed for describing the role of school leaders as balancing multiple and contradictory interests at school and among local actors such as teachers, parents, students, and community partners.     

创建世界一流的学校教育体系——英国学校白皮书《教学的重要性》解读及其启示

《教学的重要性:学校白皮书2010》 的颁布标志着英国力争创建世界一流的学校教育体系的教育发展愿景进入实质性改革阶段.白皮书指出:英国将从促进教师专业发展、提高校长领导素质、推进课程评估改革、创建新型学校制度和加大学校经费投入等几个方面来着手推进基础教育阶段学校教育体系的全面改革.这些举措为我国当前基础教育改革与发展提供了有益启示.     

Unsettling the State — How 'Demand' Challenges the Education System in the US

'Demand' in the education system has traditionally been articulated almost entirely in terms of access to more, better, and higher-status opportunities within the traditional public school system, rather than for alternatives to the standardised, highly-regulated opportunities provided by the state. This is changing, in the U.S. and elsewhere, as households and groups increasingly articulate demands that cannot easily be accommodated by the existing system. These new demands include calls for schooling that more fully reflects the linguistic, religious, or cultural preferences of specific communities. They represent a fundamental challenge to the assumption of collective interests pursued through public institutions that underlie contemporary public school systems. This article explores the character of this challenge and presents an assessment of the ways in which the U.S. education system is changing in its response.     

Inclusive vocational schools in Canada and Germany. A comparison of vocational pre-service teachers′ attitudes,self-efficacy and experiences towards inclusive education

Both Canada’s and Germany’s school systems are transitioning into inclusive education systems. This transition is also happening in vocational schools. This paper addresses the new demands that vocational teachers face, due to the introduction of inclusive education in Germany and Canada, by examining Canadian and German pre-service vocational teachers’ attitudes, self-efficacy and experiences related to inclusive education. The study identifies significantly more positive ratings in the Canadian sample across all the three scales. We conclude that the different ratings relate to different school systems, experiences with inclusion and the teacher education systems. Based on these research findings, recommendations for teacher education are discussed.     

TRANSITION TO SCHOOL: THE EXPERIENCES OF CANADIAN AND IMMIGRANT FAMILIES OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS

Transition to school for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) places demands on children, parents, and school settings. The unique experiences of parents from diverse backgrounds have not been studied extensively. This qualitative study explored the experiences of 5 Canadian and 5 immigrant families during the transition to school for their children with ASDs. Parent perceptions of support systems during this transition and their experiences with preschool and elementary school staff were analyzed to understand their experiences. Thematic analyses of parent interviews revealed that parents perceived the quality of care during preschool as more supportive than the care received in elementary school. A variety of resources, such as familial, educational, and community support, seemed to help some Canadian and immigrant families in different ways. The transition to school experiences of parents of children with ASDs has important implications for school psychologists who facilitate and mediate parent–school partnerships and interagency collaboration.     

School autonomy reform in Queensland: governance,freedom and the entrepreneurial leader

This paper examines conceptions of governance and freedom embedded within a new school autonomy policy in Queensland (Australia). Drawing on interview data from case study research, it foregrounds the practices of two school leaders from a secondary school in regional Queensland. It considers how such conceptions foster an entrepreneurial leadership of competition and compliance but also how they create space for something other than these dominant performative priorities. The paper’s theoretical contribution responds to calls for more nuanced accounts of entrepreneurial leadership to better understand how current performative demands are impacting on school leaders amid increasingly autonomised education systems.     

The 2002 Conference on the Future of School Psychology: Implications for Consultation,Intervention, and Prevention Services

In November 2002, the multisite Conference on the Future of School Psychology was sponsored by major professional associations of school psychologists. Conference goals included achieving consensus on current and future demands for school, conceptualizing the practice of school psychology in the face of diminishing numbers and increasing demand for services, and developing an agenda to use school psychology resources to maximize the benefits to the children and schools. Consultation, intervention, and prevention were major themes in all conference activities. The present article provides an overview of the conference and a summary of issues and outcomes from the conference that relate to educational and psychological consultation services.     

Teacher evaluation in Illinois: school leaders’ perceptions and practices

The aim of the current study is to assess school leaders’ perceptions and practices in the context of a new policy that emphasizes teacher evaluation. The study draws from survey data of 606 K-12 school leaders in the USA in a state implementing a new teacher evaluation model under Race to the Top. Findings illustrate that school leaders spent significant time on teacher evaluation. Some felt this was a good investment of time (e.g., rich conversations with teachers), increasing the ability for evaluations to improve instruction. Most, however, perceived the time demands as a cost (e.g., spending longer hours on the job, delegating more tasks to others). School leaders felt very confident in their ability to conduct observations and provide feedback to teachers. The opposite was found for student achievement data. Administrators’ reported preparedness, confidence, and beliefs suggest that barriers exist to using student achievement data to evaluate teachers. Findings suggest that school leaders need resources to build capacity, particularly in accommodating the new time demands of teacher evaluation. Administrators could benefit from professional development that addresses the use and value of student achievement if this measure continues to be a substantial component in teacher evaluation models.     

Feminist Educational Leadership: Locating the concepts in practice

This article describes a qualitative study of the feminist educational leadership of three co-educational secondary school principals in New Zealand. The findings showed that while each of the women was committed to many of the same ideals, such as leading for social justice, how each went about and achieved that was unique and dependent upon their individual value systems and the cultural and socio-economic mix of the student body they were working with. The women were not passive reactors to the demands of political and school community forces. Rather, they were active and creative in constructing their own feminist leadership practice to effectively meet the needs of their students.     

School reform and the emotional demands of principals: Lorna's story

The issue of emotions in school leadership is one that has received increasing attention in recent years. In this paper we present a case study of the emotional demands upon one principal as she undertakes a programme of school reform. This case study works against the common discourse of ‘emotional maturity’ inherent in an individual that is prevalent in leadership standards and literatures and shows how this principal's emotional work is constructed within the political frameworks of schools. This principal was both normalised into traditional ways of being a school principal and also sought to resist such normalisations. This paper provides an important contribution to understanding the ways that women leaders are negotiating the emotional terrain of enacting change and reform in their schools.     

Predicting teacher burnout as a function of school characteristics and irrational beliefs

Irrational beliefs have been linked to negative unhealthy emotions that can contribute to occupational burnout. Maladaptive cognitive schemas, such as irrational beliefs, are theorized to interfere with an appraisal of the perceived balance of resources and demands. The aim of the current study is to investigate the extent to which irrational beliefs account for occupational burnout among high school teachers when considering school resources, job demands, and teacher characteristics. A sample of 79 high school teachers, primarily from New York and New Jersey, completed self‐report questionnaires measuring burnout, the perception of school demands and availability of resources, and irrational beliefs. Among school‐based characteristics, correlational analyses indicated that burnout was positively related to school demands (i.e., student disrespect and student lack of attentiveness) and negatively related to school resources (i.e., support from the administration and colleagues), supporting previous research findings. Among teacher characteristics, burnout was negatively related to self‐efficacy and positively related to irrational beliefs. Results from regression analyses indicated that, whereas irrational beliefs were predictive of teacher burnout, they did not moderate the relationship between demands and burnout. Implications, limitations, and directions for future directions for research are discussed.     

Professionalism and competing responsibilities: moderating competitive performativity in school autonomy reform

Discourses promoting the benefits of school autonomy have floated freely internationally since moves in the 1980s to greater devolution in the UK, New Zealand, the USA, Australia and Sweden. The most recent Australian version, Independent Public Schools (IPS), grants school leaders more latitude over aspects of their work. But this autonomy is constrained by technologies of competitive performativity, now the norm across Australian and other school systems. Entrepreneurial policies focused on competition, compliance and improved performance make schools, their leaders and teachers, more responsible to external accountabilities. At the same time, autonomy is creatively exercised by leaders due to public service orientations associated with traditional teacher professionalism. This analysis of two Australian case studies of IPS, a secondary school in Queensland and a primary school in Western Australia, illustrates how school leaders navigate conflicting demands of the audit and performance culture by exercising autonomy according to differing notions of professional responsibility, disrupting and moderating the more inequitable priorities and effects prevalent in many performative systems.     

浅谈如何加强中小学教师培训管理

随着我国素质教育和新课程改革的全面推进,我国中小学教师培训也逐渐成为当前我国教育改革中的焦点问题。“一费制”改革给我国中小学教育的发展带来了新的挑战,同时社会的关注程度和要求不断提高,中小学教师队伍建设更成为教育界的重大问题。针对我国当前中小学教师培训的现状,必须不断加强其管理,提高教师培养质量和中小学教师队伍的整体素质。     

提升职业院校社会服务能力的有效路径

职业院校社会服务能力建设的核心是基于区域行业、企业的需求,这就要求职业院校要开展各种形式的社会、行业、企业和学校调研工作,通过科学务实的调研确定学校的办学方向、专业设置、课程改革、实训体系和技术研发的方向,从而真正为地方经济建设提供最佳的人才培养、人才供给和技术服务。     

Strategic leadership for large‐scale reform: the case of England's national literacy and numeracy strategy

Both ‘strategic’ and ‘distributed’ forms of leadership are considered promising responses to the demands placed on school systems by large‐scale reform initiatives. Using observation, interview and survey data collected as part of a larger evaluation of England's National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies, this study inquired about sources of leadership, the distribution of leadership functions across roles and how such distribution could also provide the strategic coordination necessary for successful implementation of such an ambitious reform agenda     

Congruence and typology of diagnoses in school psychology: An empirical study

Focus is directed upon the logic and import of the assumption that effective preventative and remedial mental health service demands reasonable agreement among service providers as to the nature and course of psychological problems. The study proceeds to test the belief that school psychologists improve in diagnostic agreement as a function of increased training and experience. Seventy-two randomly selected members of groups of novice, intern, and expert school psychologists were presented with three child case studies containing a full breadth of information and were subsequently asked to render diagnoses. It was found that diagnostic agreement was absent at all levels of experience, and further, a trend was noted wherein school psychologists tended to demonstrate increasing disagreement with one another as they acquired more training and experience. The findings were examined in the context of comparative research from allied mental health and educational specialties, with a special concern for discovering prevailing patterns of decision-making errors that result in reduced diagnostic agreement and validity.     

全球化背景下的国际高中课程述评——以IB课程、AP课程为例

I B课程和AP课程是很优秀的国际课程,被全球教育界认可为具有较高学业水准的教育项目,在全球范围内迅速发展壮大,成为国际学生考取国外大学的最理想选择。它们的课程理念先进,强化学生学习领域的拓展,崇尚实践和创新;它们的课程体系完备,基础课程、拓展课程、选修课程,满足学生发展的真实需要。述评这两种课程,研究学习这两种课程,对于思考完善当今国内的高中课程改革很有意义。