Standard Setting as a Participatory Process: Implications for Validation of Standards-Based Accountability Programs

In standards-based accountability programs, test scores are interpreted with reference to cut scores that establish categories like "proficient" or "below basic." The meaning of these cut scores is set forth in their associated "performance standards." Validity arguments for such interpretations require both a criterion-referenced score scale and a legitimate exercise of authority by those who set the standards. Stakeholder participation in a rational and coherent deliberative process is necessary to assure that these conditions are satisfied. This article sets forth a framework for the required validity argument and suggests possible ways to enable such participation. A new standard-setting method, the "briefing book" method, is suggested for possible study.     

Learning,action and solutions in action learning: investigation of facilitation practice using the concept of living theories

This paper explores the practice of action learning (AL) facilitation in supporting AL set members to address their ‘messy’ problems through a self-reflexive approach using the concept of ‘living theory’ [Whitehead, J., and J. McNiff. 2006. Action Research Living Theory. London: Sage]. The facilitation practice is investigated through personal observations and explanations of learning and action through shift in identity, thinking and approach of AL members in resolving complex problems raised during the AL sessions. The paper demonstrates how AL can be applied as a methodology for supporting leaders to address complex organisational problems through inquiry, critical reflection and advocacy to gain new insights as well as new practice. The findings highlight that key theoretical principles in AL such as critical reflection and problem-solving can be applied to support managers and leaders to analyse and solve complex organisational problems. The paper also contributes to the current literature on AL through the application of the living theory approach as a discipline for critical inquiry, self-reflection and evaluation.     

多目标进化算法性能评价指标综述

多目标进化算法常用于解决较复杂的多目标优化问题,该类算法是基于种群的进化算法,通过产生一组近似Pareto最优解集满足决策者偏好。介绍了多目标优化问题背景知识及相关定义,根据评价指标衡量解集特性,将现有算法性能评价指标分为3类并分别进行阐述,分析、比较其特点与区别。     

Performance Government: Activating and regulating the self-governing capacities of teachers and school leaders

This article analyses ‘performance government’ as an emergent form of rule in advanced liberal democracies. It discloses how teachers and school leaders in Australia are being governed by the practices of performance government which centre on the recently established Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) and are given direction by two major strategies implicit within the exercise of this form of power: activation and regulation. Through an ‘analytics of government’ of these practices, the article unravels the new configurations of corporatized expert and academic knowledge—and their attendant methods of application—by which the self-governing capacities of teachers and school leaders are being activated and regulated in ways that seek to optimize the performance of these professionals. The article concludes by outlining some of the dangers of performance government for the professional freedom of educators and school leaders.     

School leadership development in China: a case study of schools in one district education bureau

This paper considers the effectiveness of leadership development (LD) processes in relation to school leaders’ needs within an eastern Chinese District Education Bureau (DEB). The analysis is based on Chinese and English sources relating to LD, documentary analysis of DEB initiatives and interviews with ten school leaders from two schools. The findings reveal that LD within the district stalled at principal level because of the tension between their managerial interpretation of the role and the expectation that they should develop as leaders. Although leaders reported that the emphasis in development activities on classroom teaching and learning, the interpretation of policy initiatives and school visits were helpful, much of what the government is doing is counter-productive. Informants also said that poor outcomes tended to arise from factors beyond the scope of the LD programme itself, for example from the centralised regulatory system, from their own lack of power and influence, from the absence of programme-based or wider in-school support, and from limited evaluative studies. School leaders believed that they needed to be trained to review their own real-world work collaboratively and to devise improvement. They suggested that policy-makers should encourage an inquiry-based approach.     

Clones,drones and dragons: ongoing uncertainties around school leader development

This article examines a number of key issues around successful school leadership and leader development. Three metaphors are used to frame, track and analyse recent research and commentary in the area – these are clones, drones and dragons. Although development mechanisms rarely fall neatly within one category, the metaphors provide a useful way to examine some of the ongoing uncertainties around leader development. Clones duplicate what others think they know about successful leadership. Drones carry cloned knowledge and are controlled ‘from afar’ by centralised authorities or other ‘outsiders’. Dragons take organic forms which can mutate in terms of shape, colour and form in line with more localised needs. As such, they aim to nurture leaders who lead change successfully within their communities with reference to but not dictated by standardised knowledge. Issues flowing from interactions between these categories form a set of questions or tensions faced by systems and leaders themselves.     

Directing and facilitating distributed pedagogical leadership: best practices in early childhood education

This paper uses a hybrid leadership framework to examine how formal teacher leaders at the middle management level direct and facilitate staff resources for distributed pedagogical leadership. By conducting qualitative shadowing, involving video observation, field notes and stimulated recall interviews, and abductive analysis, this study demonstrates and discusses how formal teacher leaders step forward as hybrid leaders who integrate leadership into both interaction and their positional capacity. Building upon established leadership categories, the new category of leading knowledge development is discovered. The main finding is that hybrid leadership is illuminated in various leadership actions, which expand the understanding of leadership work. Conclusions drawn from the data and results suggest that hybrid leadership, in its exercise of both positional and distributed leadership, must be considered a move towards a new leadership identity. For policy and practice, this new hybrid leadership opens up a new conceptual space that is crucial to understanding how leaders recognize and contextualize their actions as a result of highly complex and dynamic work practices.     

学校领导干部心理健康现状调查及对策研究

本文采用SCL-90为研究工具,研究表明中小学领导干部心理健康水平与其他职业人群差异不显著。但组内差异明显,其中,许多中层和副校级领导干部的心理健康水平低于正校级领导干部甚至普通老师。建议提升中小学教师和领导干部的社会地位,关注重点人群,建立和健全中小学领导干部的心理健康教育机构,广泛开展中小学领导干部的心理健康教育活动、个别咨询和辅导。     

论领导干部和公务员的公共权力意识

公共权力意识是领导干部和公务员对政府权力的公益性、公共性原则的一种思想观念和自觉意识。公共权力意识对政府政策执行及防止腐败具有积极作用。西方国家公共权力意识是西方政治文化综合作用的结果。加强领导干部和公务员的公共权力意识教育,对提高党和政府治国理政能力具有重要意义。     

Variability in the Play of Preschoolers with Cognitive Delays Across Different Toy Sets

The variability in the play of 30 preschool children with cognitive delays associated with different toy sets was examined. Twelve dependent variables representing categorical and sequential play were coded from videotaped home‐based independent play sessions using a continuous 15 s interval coding procedure. Analyses of toy effect were conducted both across and within toy sets. Sex by toy set interaction effects emerged for exploration, pretend, ordered multischeme sequences, and global play sophistication. Main effects across toy sets were noted for nonplay, functional play, construction, overall proportion of play, time spent sequencing activities, and length of play sequences. The pattern of play observed within each toy set was strikingly similar across each of the three toy sets. The implications of these results for practice are discussed.     

College grades as an adaptation level phenomenon

Using adaptation level (AL) theory as a frame of reference for determining the perceived value of college grades, 166 students rated the following sources of influences affecting grade incentive AL: self, peers, major field, and parents. Subjects also provided GPAs, ACT scores, and evaluative ratings for the grade categories of A-F. Results revealed that AL values for family were most similar to AL values for self and that family influences were more significant than any other in affecting overall AL value. Students having higher incentive ALs rated all grade categories less positively than did student having lower ALs. Grade AL was found to predict GPA significantly (even when ACT score was controlled); it did not predict satisfaction with grades, which was more directly a function of GPA. Results were taken to suggest that college grades, for both students and professors, are best conceptualized as an adaptation level phenomenon in which their meaning for the individual depends upon the personal and situational frames of reference within which they are given and received.     

Using action research and action learning for entrepreneurial network capability development

This paper applies an action research (AR) design and action learning (AL) approach to network capability development in an entrepreneurial context. Recent research suggests that networks are a viable strategy for the entrepreneurial firm to overcome the liabilities associated with newness and smallness. However, a gap emerges as few, if any, studies have examined the process and challenges in developing and using network capability to generate advantage through collaboration with network actors. In recognising that capabilities are developed rather than acquired, this paper address this theoretical gap and contributes to literature by tracing the development of network capability in an entrepreneurial context. A further contribution of the paper is in applying an AR design and AL sets as a method for capability development for the entrepreneurial firm. Findings suggest that, although network capability is of use, to develop the ability to use it requires a change in the market making perceptions of the entrepreneur from an independence mind-set to a more collaborative, interdependent one. Our research also supports the applicability of AL as an intervention strategy to promote action and learning among entrepreneurs for capability development, fitting the learning preferences of the nascent venture. For practitioners, evolving towards an interdependent mind-set facilitates network capability use and has the potential to relieve some of the resource pressure on entrepreneurs by providing them with strategic routes through their existing and potential network ties. For the entrepreneurship literature, a benefit stemming from this study is in introducing AR in its design and AL sets as an invention strategy in addition to developing theory in relation to network capability development.     

Towards a Learning Profession: changing codes of occupational practice within the new management of education

Professionals were once considered to be the civic leaders, the deliverers of the good society. However, the old order has cracked under the pressure of social change, leaving a very different relation between professionals and their publics. This paper addresses some of the questions occasioned by these changes: Where does the altered power relation between parents, students and teachers leave the notion of teacher professionalism? What is the role of professionals within the emergent order? The paper is a product of the ESRC‐funded New Forms of Education Management Project (Local Governance Programme). It argues that, within the new management of education, the professional codes and practices point to a changing relation between teachers and what has traditionally been seen as their specialist knowledge. An outcome of this altered relation is the empowerment of parents and students in relation to teachers. However, the new relation depends upon new shared understandings and new sets of agreements; and these in turn depend upon new processes of agreement‐making and a radically altered power relation between parents, students and teachers as they jointly develop these processes. The paper reviews the changing purposes of professionalism during the second half of the 20th century and outlines a new version of teacher professionality based upon the enabling of learning, the accommodation of difference, and the practice of agreement. Agreement is then ‘theorised’ in terms of the nature of agreement and the institutional structuring of agreement.     

The Experience of Collaborative Assessment in e-Learning

This paper examines the various ways in which students talk about their experience and perceptions of collaborative review and assessment as it occurs in e-learning environments. Collaborative review and assessment involves the student, their peers and tutor in thoughtful and critical examination of each student's course work. The process involves two stages: review and discussion of the student's work with a view to bringing different critical yet supportive perspectives to the work. This is followed by the use of two sets of criteria to make judgements on the student's work: one set provided by the student, the other by the tutor. The purpose of collaborative assessment is to foster a learning approach to assessment and to develop a shared power relationship with students. From analysis of face-to-face interviews, examination of e-learning discussions and student-completed questionnaires, a set of analytic categories was built describing the learners' experiences of collaborative e-assessment. These categories are: (1) the appropriateness of collaborative assessment; (2) collaborative assessment as a learning event; and (3) the focus for assessment. The paper focuses on analysing and discussing these categories of experience. The research shows that a positive social climate is necessary in developing and sustaining collaborative assessment and that this form of assessment helps students to reduce dependence on lecturers as the only or major source of judgement about the quality of learning. Students develop skill and know-how about self- and peer assessment and see themselves as competent in making judgements about their own and each other's work, which are surely good lifelong learning skills.     

Intergenerational learning practices—Digital leaders in schools

This paper explores the management and outcomes of a specific model of intergenerational learning, concerned with student digital leader support in a number of secondary schools in England. A local educational partnership set up a student digital leader project late in 2011, which aimed to develop a range of skills and outcomes for both the digital leaders themselves and for a potentially wider variety of personnel within the schools. Five schools were involved in the project. The student digital leaders shared their digital technology expertise with others with less developed skills, including teachers and managers in these schools. The study reported in this paper explored ways that the digital leader initiative was implemented, identifying and analysing outcomes and issues arising. Evidence from informants and from the analysis of benefits arising indicates that the student digital leader initiative led to a variety of positive outcomes. A key finding and conclusion is that this form of initiative has involved some students who tend not to be involved in other leadership or school-wide activities. The initiative enables these students to contribute to the community, rather than just receiving from it; students become active contributors to, as well as receivers from, the educational system.     

Educational leadership and the Capabilities Approach: evidence from Ghana

School leaders play a central role in affecting the educational development of the young people for whom they have responsibility. This is especially the case where school leaders are operating in challenging low-income environments. This paper argues that a focus on Sen’s notions of individual agency and freedom are a necessary but not a sufficient factor in the conversion of capabilities into functionings for these school leaders. This is done through using the Capabilities Approach as a lens through which to carry out a retrospective analysis and evaluation of the activities of a group of primary school headteachers in Ghana involved in a UK Government-funded project focused on education quality. The paper argues that headteachers with the capability of initiating change in the education process in their schools are unlikely to act in this way unless they feel that they have permission to do so. It is also important that headteachers feel that they are working within a context and an environment where acting in ways which aim to improve pupil learning is seen as central to their role. This kind of supportive context for school leaders (and for other educational practitioners) cannot be divorced from a policy environment which sanctions such activities, and, hence, it is argued that such a context is crucial to policy developments which seek to establish and sustain the core capabilities which are at the heart of Nussbaum’s essentialist approach. The paper also brings to the foreground the tensions that exist between the notion of individuals being free to make choices about what they have reason to value, on the one hand, and the implications that these choices have for the freedoms of other individuals with whom they are connected to make such choices. Finally, it is argued in the paper that the action research approach used in the Leadership & Management Project in Ghana, allied to a positive policy context, provides both the sensitivity to context and a practice-oriented focus which can enable school leaders to bring about the conversion of their individual capabilities into functionings.     

The Common Core’s promises and pitfalls from the perspectives of policy entrepreneurs and ground-level actors

The Common Core State Standards Initiative (Common Core) was spearheaded by policy entrepreneurs, unveiled nationally in 2010, and initially received strong support from leaders in state and federal government, philanthropic foundations, the business sector, and teacher unions. However, the reform came into the crosshairs of an ideologically wide set of politicians and interest groups. What is less well understood about the controversy are the responses the reform encountered within states, particularly from ground-level actors, such as parents, local educators, school boards, and community members, as well as their elected representatives. This study uses two data sets to examine how the promises and pitfalls that the reform’s policy entrepreneurs anticipated in 2011 were received by ground-level actors in 10 states between late-2013 and early-2014. The findings suggest ground-level responses to the anticipated promises and pitfalls both spurred and resonated with interest groups to disrupt the reform’s support among state-level leaders. The findings also suggest that political and implementation lessons may be gained from further study of the adoption and implementation of the Common Core in California. Whether the Common Core in California or other states may improve achievement or equity is considered in light of third-wave reforms.     

The Role of Interracial Interaction in the Development of Leadership Skills and Cultural Knowledge and Understanding

While higher education leaders tout the benefits of racial diversity for developing culturally knowledgeable civic leaders, our understanding of these benefits and, in particular, the role of interracial interaction in realizing them, is still emerging. In this study, differences between the effects of interracial contact among students that are close friends versus more casual interracial interactions are examined for their affect on students' leadership skills and cultural knowledge and understanding. Findings suggest that casual interracial interaction is particularly beneficial among students with more racially homogeneous friendship circles, especially with regard to developing leadership skills. In addition, findings indicate that frequent interracial interaction among students may be more important in developing cultural knowledge than involvement in formal activities such as cultural awareness workshops.     

Moral Values and Science Teaching: A Malaysian School Curriculum Initiative

Implicit in teaching science has been the teaching of a set of values. However, its presence has remained unacknowledged because of assumptions made that its products are value-free and that work of science involves positive values. Malaysian schools have introduced a set of noble values to be taught as a subject called moral education while at the same time expecting all subjects, including the sciences to actively inculcate these noble values in their lessons. A search for values related to science included studies from science education curriculums, studies by scientists and philosophers of science, feminist and Indian critics of science. These values could be categorized into four categories representing epistemological values, supporting values, societal and moral values and power-oriented values. While some categories compliment each other, others are in contention. This paper argues for the inclusion of societal and moral values in the science classrooms. A compassionate scientist should be a reality. The task for Malaysian science educators is to find a way to raise awareness of these values.     

中国大学生高低分英语作文中元话语使用差异研究

大学生英语写作水平一直难以得到提高,原因之一是学生的读者意识薄弱。而元话语是将作者和读者有效联系的方法。本研究选取了34篇大学英语本科生英语作文为研究样本,分析了高低分作文的元话语使用差异。结果显示,高低分作文在作文字数、元话语使用的数量、比例、种类上都存在差异。而两组中的元话语比例的排序存在相似之处。研究表明,高分组使用的元话语类型和范围都优于低分组,但是整体而言,中国学生的读者意识不强,英语写作教师需要在课堂上进行有针对性的元话语教学。