Education for national identity: Arab schools principals and teachers dilemmas and coping strategies

Abstract

This article discusses strategies used by Arab principals and teachers in Israel to cope with dilemmas involved in education for national identity stemming from conflict between two national narratives. While the Israeli Ministry of Education expects the Arab education system to educate students according to the Jewish State’s values, Palestinian Arab society expects its schools to educate its children according to Palestinian Arab national-cultural values. A qualitative research employed a semi-structured interview to elicit views on this issue from 7 principals and 14 teachers in the Arab education system in Israel. The findings indicate a conflictual reality. Interviewees expressed fear, humiliation and affront when required to obey Ministry of Education instructions in contradiction to attitudes prevalent in their society. They therefore developed coping strategies to foster students’ national identity without disrupting the necessary balance; primarily the construction of a covert learning program through manipulations in the official overt learning program. This study contributes to our understanding of minority education in a reality of conflict between the state and its national minority.     

The principals as literacy leaders with indigenous communities: professional learning and research

Recent educational changes in China such as the decentralization policy and the marketization of education have introduced concepts such as performativity, competition and effectiveness to the education sector and they have become part of the educational lexicon. Such policy shifts force more local participation in teacher education programmes and schools are now identified as the prime site for offering relevant professional learning activities to teachers. However, interestingly, research on professional development of teachers in China has not devoted significant attention to the voices of teachers. This paper examines how teachers from seven schools in Guangdong Province view the effectiveness of these school‐based learning activities within the new context of educational change.     

Social justice dilemmas: evidence on the successes and shortcomings of three principals trying to make a difference

Social justice leadership has become a popular topic and catchphrase in the field of educational leadership. However, most scholarly and empirical contributions have ignored the inherent tensions, challenges and dilemmas associated with the practice of school leadership and the realities principals confront on a daily basis. This is partly because researchers have tended to ignore multiple facets of justice in their empirical investigations as well as how larger forces outside the school associated with historical, political, social and economic injustices marginalize students and communities. This article explores three cases of challenging school–community contexts that confound and partially subdue the efforts of well-intentioned principals. Each case highlights a dedicated principal committed to their school and community, and documents the significant progress made in addressing particular social justice issues, but also how they confronted justice dilemmas that they believed required them to prioritize certain social justice issues over others. These findings have important implications for how principals view their communities and engage in critical reflection about the leadership decisions and actions they take on a daily basis. This article concludes with implications for future research and a discussion of how aspiring principals can be better prepared to lead for social justice and effectively address justice dilemmas without ignoring or putting off other injustices.     

Socialising principals: early career primary school principals in Trinidad and Tobago

This paper utilises an interpretivist framework and recent developments in practice theory to examine the conditions which influence practices of socialising into the role of school principal in Trinidad and Tobago. The results indicate that for the 11 early career primary school principals, role socialisation occurs within complex practice landscapes, where the practices of preparing classroom teachers for the principalship materialise within a context of contest. There is conflict between historical antecedents and the expectations and practices of socialising institutions such as the church, the school, the community and the Ministry of Education. This small-scale study has implications for leadership preparation practices and highlights principal socialisation as a challenge of context and history.     

Action research,stories and practical philosophy

This collaborative piece written by a philosopher/action researcher and an action researcher/philosopher explores the use of practical philosophy as a tool in action research. The paper explores the connection to be made between what we refer to, roughly, as ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ (while never losing hold of either). The connection is made around ideas of ‘practical philosophy’ and social justice. The authors suggest that ‘practical philosophy’ might develop as a ‘philosophy in human practices’. It begins from the understanding that philosophy is rooted in social practice, with philosophy in educational practices being rooted in educational practice. The paper goes on to explore the use of ‘little stories’ as a way into the diversity of significant particularities. Finally the links are drawn with action research. It is argued that the process of reconceptualisation is itself an action that will make a difference as part of a series of action research cycles.     

No Easy Answers: the dilemmas and challenges of teacher research

ABSTRACT

Our aim in this article is to analyse the research process developed in the ANTEC project (The Application of New Technology in Science Teaching) both by the university research team that promoted the project and the groups of teachers that participated in it. We attempt to provide answers to the following questions. Can we characterise the research carried out as being action research? Or should the process rather be considered as being ‘classroom case‐studies'? And lastly, supposing that teachers really did manage to write something resembling classroom case‐studies, what relation was observed between the action research process and the process in which the classroom case‐studies were produced? In order to answer these and other questions we delve into the history of the events that probably occurred during the 3 years that the project lasted – at least, that is, from our own point of view (the authors were themselves involved in the research team in their respective capacities of project director and research collaborator).     

魅力型校长:特质、成长环境和使命

教育创新需要魅力型校长。魅力型校长的特质由个人素质和管理方式两方面构成。通过制度创新和理念创新为魅力型校长的形成创造一个良好的环境。魅力型校长的使命是要完成教育组织再造,即校长要形成学校的愿景、组建专业化的教师团队、改变学生培养方式等。     

Women principals in South Africa: gender,mothering and leadership

This paper draws on qualitative data from a mixed‐method study that analysed women's access to the principal role and their leadership experiences. The paper draws on a subset of interviews with 54 female head teachers in the Gauteng and North West provinces of South Africa. Since a mothering style of leadership was self‐reported by over half of the participants in our study, this paper aims to explore the diverse ways in which motherhood was constructed and the outcomes of these constructions on women.     

Kindergarten philosophies and practices: Perspectives of teachers,principals, and supervisors

This article reports findings from an ethnographic interview study which examined kindergarten philosophies and practices from the perspectives of teachers, principals, and supervisors responsible for implementing kindergarten programs. Analysis of interviews with 36 informants led to the identification of two broad generalizations: (1) Kindergarten programs are increasingly academic and skill oriented; and (2) Individuals responsible for implementing these programs may not believe that their kindergartens best serve the needs of young children, with the result that these individuals experience philosophy-reality conflicts. Research procedures are described, data supporting the findings are presented, and implications are discussed in three areas: (1) the gap between what the current literature calls developmentally appropriate practice and actual kindergarten practice; (2) the gap between current knowledge of how literacy is developed and actual instruction in kindergarten classrooms; and (3) the problems inherent in educational settings where philosophy-reality conflicts are created and perpetuated.     

Interrogating conceptions of leadership: school principals,policy and paradox

Currently educational research literature demonstrates wide discussion and endorsement of ‘distributed’ leadership while concurrently traditional, hegemonic forms prevail in practice. This article investigates understandings about educational leadership held by Australian school principals. The article describes the contradictory conceptions about educational leadership currently in circulation. It interrogates underlying assumptions and questions how both hegemonic and newer leadership conceptions and assumptions serve educational leaders. Data from principals around the country and across education systems reinforced the predominance of un-theorised or under-theorised notions about leadership, with similar assumptions found in important policy artefacts and practices. This article emerges from interviews with 100 principals focusing on their professional learning needs, which revealed interesting ideas, issues and dilemmas concerning ‘leadership’. It fills a gap in research on distributed leadership by exploring contradictions inherent in policy, practice and understandings in this area. The article is structured into four sections. First, extant literature on this topic and the research are explained. Second, the article focuses on principals' conceptions about leadership and those inherent within important policy and practical artefacts. A discussion of the findings focuses on the discrepancy between theory and policy endorsement and the views of practitioners. Finally, the article canvasses the implications of the research.     

中小学校长资格证书制度研究

在世界范围内，中小学校长专业化成为现代教育的一种发展趋势，而完善中小学校长资格证书制度，必然成为实现校长专业化的一个重要保证。因此建立和完善中小学校长资格证书制度是建立和完善我国中小学校长管理制度的一个重要组成部分。     

Action research: A situated perspective

Rigoberta Menchú has become an icon for the struggles of oppressed peoples for justice and self-determination. For many academics and activists around the world, the accusations of lying made against Ms. Menchú by David Stoll brought into sharp focus the politics of "truthmaking" and the absolutist categories of fact and fiction. In this attempt to discredit Ms. Menchú, and through her, the Mayan experience of genocide by the Guatemalan military and its U.S. sponsors, important questions have been raised about how and when Third World women can speak, the conditions under which they will be heard, and the strategies used to silence them. In this paper, the author draws upon some of the lessons of the Rigoberta Menchú case to examine the politics of truth making in Canada in a recent controversy regarding a speech she made criticizing American foreign policy and urging the women's movement to mobilize against America's War on Terrorism. The highly personalized nature of the attacks on the author by political and media elites sought to accomplish a closing down of public space for informed debate about the realities of U.S. foreign policy and to silence dissent. Repeatedly emphasizing her status as an immigrant outsider, this controversy also contributed to the (ongoing) racialization of people of color as a treacherous "enemy" within the nation's geographical borders, against whom "Canadians" had to be mobilized.     

Action research for english teaching: ideology,pedagogy and personal growth

This article takes as its starting point the notion that the extent to which action research is accepted or rejected as a valid means of enquiry and professional development is largely determined by occupational culture and the ideology of individuals who corporately constitute that culture (Adlam, 1999; Li et al, 1999). Here, the view that the values and ideologies of teachers cannot be separated from their teaching or research into their teaching (Day, 1998) is illustrated in relation to a politically significant and strategically placed group of teachers. With the advent of the National Literacy Strategy in high (secondary) schools in the United Kingdom, there is a need for English teachers to reevaluate the nature of the subject they teach, which is being redefined, as well as their pedagogy. The beliefs of this distinct group of practitioners are explored, and it is suggested that they are positioned, ideologically, culturally and politically to be receptive to and benefit from action research. As the current emphasis on literacy and therefore on the ‘adult needs’ and ‘crosscurricular’ models of their subject contrasts sharply with this group's timehonoured valorisation of the ‘personal growth’ model of English characterised by imagination and creativity, action research is seen to provide an opportunity for these practitioners to reflect on their ‘conscious and unconscious doings’ (Altrichter et al, 1993, p. 6). Throughout this article, reference is made to the author's experience of conducting a 3-year longitudinal action research project as a high (secondary) school teacher of English funded by the ESRC (Pike, 2000a,b,c,d, e), although the intention in this article is to explore the degree of epistemological and ideological congruence between the values and beliefs of English teachers, and some prevalent features of action research     

The coordination role in research education: emerging understandings and dilemmas for leadership

Changes in expectations of research education worldwide have seen the rise of new demands beyond supervision and have highlighted the need for academic leadership in research education at a local level. Based on an interview study of those who have taken up local leadership roles in four Australian universities, this paper maps and analyses different dimensions of the emerging leadership role of research education coordination. It argues that while there is increasing clarity of what is required, there are considerable tensions in the nature of the coordination role and how coordination is to be executed. In particular, what leadership roles are appropriate and how can they be positioned effectively within universities? The paper draws on the Integrated Competing Values Framework to focus on the activities of coordination and on ideas of distributed leadership to discuss the leadership that characterises coordination. It is argued that without acknowledgement of the influences that coordinators need to exert and the positioning and support needed to achieve this, the contemporary agenda for research education will not be realised.     

Community and Learning: contradictions,dilemmas and prospects

In this article I reflect on learning and community and their joint deployment. ‘Community’ evokes images and feelings of security and comfort (‘us’ and ‘ours’), while ‘learning’ evokes a sense of progress and confidence in overcoming obstacles—a lifelong and somewhat breathless journey these days. We learn every day, but what is worthwhile learning? What types of communities are worth learning towards? Such crucial considerations can remain unexamined because these words are so beguiling—every one can agree that learning communities are worthwhile. Together these terms have provided a powerful contemporary discourse for different educational reform agendas. Recent proponents of ‘learning communi ties’ have drawn upon sociocultural theorising of learning initiated by Vygotsky and others in the early 20th century. I suggest that this recent deployment of sociocultural learning theory is opportunistic and reflects an effort to resolve certain endemic pedagogical dilemmas related to how inclusion/exclusion is negotiated, how diversity/uniformity is reconciled, and how membership of a learning community is managed over time. I suggest that our role as learning and/or community theorists is principally to critically reflect on what types of learning and communities are worth striving towards.     

对人类基因组研究的双向思考：科学价值与伦理难题

科学的社会应用具有价值取向，人类基因组研究及应用，作为一种科学活动，对人类社会的生存和发展必然会显现出伦理道德的二重性：既可以给人类带来益处，具有“善”的价值，也可以给人类带来危害甚至灾难，具有“恶”的后果。因此，对其科学价值和造成的伦理困惑进行深入分析，并采取相应措施对其进行道德调控，对于保证这一科学研究及应用的健康发展十分必要。这也是科学技术应用中的人类责任。