School Culture and School Effectiveness in Emergencies: Lessons from Israeli Experience during the Gulf War∗

This paper examines the relationship of school culture to school effectiveness in emergencies. It presents a study of: (a) the nature and variability of Israeli schools’ emergency preparation and response to the Gulf War, and (b) the association of school culture with school effectiveness during this emergency. The findings show that two dimensions of school culture, religious orientation and school level educational approaches, have different associations with preparation for the war and with different measures of effectiveness during the war. Results indicate that policy guidelines for preparation for emergencies need to address aspects of school culture that may influence school effectiveness in emergencies.

     

Mini‐Enterprise in Schools: The Pupils’ Experience

Abstract

Mini‐enterprise in schools is the most tangible manifestation of ‘education for enteprise’. Despite its growing presence in schools, and diverse views about its potential impact, little is known about how pupils experience such activity. Findings suggest that interpersonal learning objectives are achieved effectively through mini‐enterprise but more narrow economic goals (such as fostering positive attitudes towards self‐employment) may not be. This paper sets out the pupils’ perspective on mini‐enterprise in schools and raises questions about current models of practice.     

The School and the Reduction of Inequality∗

ABSTRACT

The need to develop reasoning skills in children through discussion is generally acknowledged by curriculum aims. There is, however, a lack of any definite teaching strategy to fulfil this need. Matthew Lipman's Philosophy for Children programme has had success in this area. As with other ‘collaborative enquiry‐based’ approaches to learning, it depends upon a teaching strategy which enhances children's self‐esteem. This seems a necessary ingredient for the development of rationality, critical awareness and autonomy in children. Inadequate teacher training is suggested as a major reason for the failure of ‘collaborative’ approaches greatly to influence educational practice. With a shift away from the ‘authority/knowledge‐based’ paradigm and the provision of effective teacher training, it is considered that our educational institutions could become more democratically organised, and we would move closer to realising the liberal ideal of developing human potential to the full.     

Profiles of Organizational Culture and Effective Schools∗

This study intends to investigate how school organizational culture is related to important organizational characteristics and observe how the profiles of strong culture‐effective schools are different from those of weak culture‐ineffective schools in terms of organizational variables (such as principal's leadership, organizational structure, and teachers’ social interactions), teachers’ job attitudes, and school effectiveness criteria. It is a cross‐sectional survey research involving 54 randomly sampled Hong Kong secondary schools and 588 teachers. The unit of analysis is the school.

Organizational ideology index was found to be substantially correlated with schools’ perceived organizational effectiveness. Among the 10 measures of these organizational variables, teachers’ esprit and principal's charismatic leadership can contribute substantially to the prediction of school's strength of organizational culture. The organizational profile of perceived strong culture‐effective schools is contrastingly different from that of perceived weak culture‐ineffective schools. The findings suggest that difference in organizational culture can be reflected at least in three overt levels: 1. organizational level in terms of principal's leadership behaviors, organizational formalization and participation, and teachers’ social norms; 2. teachers’ attitudinal level in terms of organizational commitment, social job satisfaction, intrinsic job satisfaction, and influence job satisfaction; and 3. school effectiveness level in terms of perceived overall organizational effectiveness and academic achievements in public examinations.

The findings reinforce the importance of organizational culture to the ongoing effort and discussion of school improvement and school effectiveness.

     

‘Decolonialism’ and the Counselling Profession: The Aotearoa/New Zealand Experience

This paper makes a case for the coining and exploration of a term ‘decolonialism’. Although there is likely to be greater familiarity with the use of the term ‘decolonization’ for the work indigenous people might undertake on themselves to transcend the shackles of colonization, this paper suggests that colonizers also need to work at ridding themselves of vestigial mechanisms of control. The paper suggests the term ‘decolonialism’ to represent this challenge. However, the issues go deeper than the examination of a counsellor’s personal beliefs, awareness and worldview, but also extend to the systems that underscore and guide the counselling profession. Whilst such issues are of relevance to various contexts around the world, this paper focuses on a case study of the reformation of the New Zealand Association of Counsellors—Te Roopu Kaiwhiriwhiri O Aotearoa as an example of the counselling profession striving to decolonialize its structure and its practices.     

The Service of the Association∗

This article begins with an acknowledgment of the complexities of religion's position in the English school system that open it to diverse interpretations. It uses research in a variety of schools to illustrate three different approaches to religion: doxological, sacramental, and instrumental, founded, respectively, on certain faith in God, on openness to the possibility of God, and on a default scepticism. The contested nature of religion's place in schooling is acknowledged and, in response, both secular and religious reasons are given for hearing religious voices in the educational sphere. The argument is made that an equitable religious-and-secular settlement is dependent on “religiously understood” religion being allowed into the conversation. The relationship between penultimate and ultimate is used to analyze each of the three approaches for their engagement with “religiously understood” religion and their contributions to religious and secular understanding.     

The School and ‘Contestation'∗

(The Editors are pleased to publish this article by Monsieur Maurice Niveau, Rector of the Academy of Lille, because it raises many issues that are also topical in English education: politicization of educational problems, inability to achieve a consensus, the effects of a hierarchical administration, and the composition and powers of school governing bodies (this last was discussed in the context of the Green Paper by Mr Joslyn Owen, the Chief Education Officer for Devonshire, in an article in our last issue). The recent House of Commons Expenditure Committee report ('The Attainments of the School Leaver’, HMSO, London March 1978) recommended that we should seek more information on education elsewhere in Western Europe. The publication of this paper is one small contribution to greater knowledge in this area. The paper was first published in French in the Revue de la Défense Nationale, Paris, July 1977.

Monsieur Niveau, as Rector of Lille, is nominal head of all educational institutions, including universities, in one of the largest and most densely populated ‘académies’ (educational administrative divisions) in France. He is no stranger to Britain and was one of the OECD ‘examiners’ who reported to that organization on the state of English education and which criticized the alleged secrecy of the DES. (cf. Reviews of National Policies for Education, England, OECD Paris 1977.))     

The Contrast between The Girl on the Train and The Women on the Breadfruit——The Female Images in the Literature

Love is an eternal theme of literature which plays a vital role in people's life.With cultural exchanges,the acceleration of globalization,and cultural integration,Chinese and Western’s view of love have influenced each other.There is no doubt that literature is the mirror of the culture.By comparing Western and Chinese literature together,people could learn more about the differences between the two different lifestyles and cultural values.From the angle of culture,this thesis will look at how the characters’fates are mainly infl uenced by their attitudes towards material life,different sexual understanding and the way they view themselves.     

The Pedagogy of Persuasion: The Culture of the University of Pont‐à‐Mousson

“Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on our guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posits a ‘pure, will‐less, painless, timeless knowing subject'; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as ‘pure reason’, ‘absolute spirituality’, ‘knowledge in itself: these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direc‐ tion, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective ‘knowing'; and the more emotions we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our ‘objectivity’ be.”

(Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals)

As an ‘epilogue’ to this special issue on postmodernism in. the history of education the authors, as privileged witnesses, examine to what extent ‘Paedagogica Historica’ has stimulated or just mirrored trends in (post‐)modern educational historiography. To analyse the journal they make use of both measurable and interpreta‐ tive indicators. The main conclusion runs as follows: ‘Paedagogica Historica’ acted more as a mirror than a lever in developments in the history of education.     

Nature study,Aborigines and the Australian kindergarten: lessons from Martha Simpson’s Australian Programme based on the Life and Customs of the Australian Black

This article examines an experimental kindergarten programme Work in the Kindergarten: An Australian Programme based on the Life and Customs of the Australian Black developed by Martha Simpson in early twentieth-century Australia. Here Simpson adapted international Revisionist Froebelian approaches to cultural epoch theory and nature study in an Australian context. Accepting that human development recapitulates, Simpson posited that Aboriginal culture could serve as stimulus for age-appropriate and improving child-centred activities. Local contingencies, including histories of violent cross-racial encounter, complicated an attempt by kindergartener Helen Beaumont to apply the programme in the Sydney slum suburb of Leichhardt. These contingencies are documented and analysed.     

The education of women for citizenship: the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and the British Federation of Business and Professional Women 1930–1959

This article focuses on how citizenship education was built into the organisational practices as well as the formal instructional programmes of women’s organisations in Britain in the pre‐ and post‐Second World War period. It compares the efforts of two such organisations, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI) and the British Federation of Business and Professional Women (BFBPW), to train women in the skills of citizenship. Despite their differences in constituency and structure, these two organisations had remarkably similar views on citizenship education and shared similar educational approaches until the end of the 1950s. This article argues that the NFWI and BFBPW’s understanding of political engagement and their efforts to educate the woman citizen are important historical examples of how women have negotiated issues of involved versus informed citizenry. The educational model they used is relevant today given the renewed interest in the strengthening of civic society as a key mechanism for political engagement.