Remote and unresearched: educational leadership in Canada's Yukon Territory

Educational leadership is a field that historically has not been closely examined in the Yukon Territory. The generation of Yukon‐specific theory therefore remains difficult, particularly given the historical absence of an Indigenous cultural lens through which to examine educational leadership. This is the central argument presented by this paper. Employing research from Yukon's southerly neighbour, the province of British Columbia (BC) as a basis for comparison, the manner in which educational leadership may be constructed, developed, and enacted by practitioners requires a fundamentally different approach in the Yukon, given that a number of Yukon First Nations, representing many Indigenous people, have settled land claims and established self‐governing agreements with the Canadian and Yukon Territorial Governments. These factors pose specific challenges, resulting in variations and adaptations to the way that education is provided and how educational leadership may be constructed and enacted in this northern Canadian Territory.     

Science education: innovation in rural and remote Queensland schools

Outside its heavily-populated south-eastern corner, Queensland is a huge administrative area with many small, remote communities that can be separated by hundreds of kilometres of dirt road, or, in other areas, not accessible by road. In this study, parents, students and teachers in nine schools from rural and regional Queensland were interviewed about their perceptions of school science. Teachers, parents and students defined remoteness by reference to their social ties, as well as the social capital and resources they drew on to teach science meaning that not only did different groups differ in their interpretations of remoteness; different teachers in similar circumstances also responded differently. Science teachers’ responses to remoteness were related to their perceptions of school-community communication and their perceptions of their freedom to innovate. Teachers who felt that remoteness gave them more freedom and recognised opportunities to utilise their environment created innovative and relevant science programmes. Teachers who felt their remoteness gave them less freedom felt isolated from the community were less likely to innovate.     

Challenges for teacher education: the mismatch between beliefs and practice in remote Indigenous contexts

The poor performance of Australian Indigenous students in mathematics is a complex and enduring issue that needs a range of strategies to enable success in schooling for these students. Importantly, large numbers of teachers in remote Indigenous contexts are new graduates who, although full of enthusiasm, lack experience. Similarly, many of them are unfamiliar with the demands and nuances of teaching in remote and/or Indigenous contexts. This paper explores the nexus between the beliefs and practices of teachers working in a remote, Indigenous region of Australia. In particular, it proposes that the discrepancy between beliefs and practices found in the reconnaissance phase of a design study is due to the teachers realising that they need to implement changed practices to enable students to learn but having little knowledge of what such practices may look like. This finding has implications for pre-service and in-service teacher education.     

School leadership and professional learning community: case study of two senior high schools in Northeast China

Abstract

This article presents findings of a qualitative study on school leadership and professional learning community in two high achieving senior high schools in Northeast China. The findings show that teachers participated in school-based communities of professional learning, such as Teaching and Research Groups, Lesson Preparation Groups, and Grade Groups. While the term professional learning community (PLC) was not commonplace, the actual practices of PLC characterized by collective enquiry and collaborative learning became the norm in the two schools. School leaders demonstrated strong instructional leadership and visionary stewardship for school continuous improvement. They played a critical role in developing and communicating a shared vision, shaping a culture of trust, supporting and monitoring collegial learning. Teacher leadership was evident in collaborative teams and expertise leadership was acknowledged. Emotional bonds and shared responsibility in these teams strengthened professionalism. Concerted efforts were made to create aligned structures and processes that support collective enquiry, and to develop a culture of collaborative learning that builds collective capacities. Developing and sustaining the embedded PLC process within a school seems to provide a promising infrastructure for supporting school improvement in the Chinese school context.     

Professional learning community process in the United States: conceptualization of the process and district support for schools

Abstract

As the Professional Learning Community (PLC) process becomes embedded within schools, the level of district support has a direct impact on whether schools have the ability to re-culture and sustain highly effective collaborative practices. The purpose of this article is to share a professional learning community conceptual framework from the US, and to highlight recent findings relating to district level support for the PLC process in schools. The professional learning community conceptual model is organized around five dimensions: shared and supportive leadership, shared values and vision, collaborative learning and application, shared personal practice, and supportive conditions. The overarching question guiding this qualitative research study is: How do school district personnel (central office staff) support schools in the professional learning community process? Findings reveal the importance of transformative and proactive district involvement, and the use of transparency, trust, accountability, and autonomy in school re-culturing. It was also found that developing leadership capacity, embedding professional development, and focusing the culture on student success were critically important. As districts provide support for the PLC dimensions and themes, school leaders will have a foundation of curricular strategies, collaborative skills, and necessary resources to serve teachers and students through continuous school improvement.     

Diversity and equality in academic publishing: the case of educational leadership

There have been ongoing criticisms of the field of educational leadership and management with respect to over-reliance on research from ‘Western’ contexts. However, evidence on the extent to which voices alternative to the dominant ‘Western’ discourse are represented in the international English-medium discourse of educational leadership and management is thin. Using a three-phase sequential mixed-methods approach, this paper explores knowledge production in the field by analysing the prevalence and impact of empirical articles published in four English-medium international journals. Additionally, the membership of editorial boards and editors is analysed to geographically locate key decision makers. Findings demonstrate that an exceptionally small set of core inner-circle Anglophone and non-inner-circle Anglophone settings enjoys disproportionate influence in the field. There is need for a knowledge base enriched with leadership and management practices from different sociocultural contexts and system structures with a multiplicity of voices to portray a more nuanced and balanced picture of leadership and management practices.     

When Identity and Leadership Intersect: The Experiences of Six Female Principals in South Africa

While literature on the interplay between educational leadership and context abounds, the attention granted to the experiences of female principals has, to a large extent, treated the construction of women as a homogeneous entity. Consequently, very little, certainly within the South African context, is known about how women in leadership positions construct and enact their leadership identities. Drawing on the experiences of six female principals at public schools, this article investigates the extent to which conceptions of gender give shape to the formation of leadership identity. To this end, the focus of the article is to explore the complex intersections of constructions of identity in relation to female principals; and how these constructions hold particular implications for conceptions of gendered leadership in South African schools.     

The theory and uses of metaphor in educational administration and leadership: a rejoinder

ABSTRACT

This rejoinder article first examines the foundational theories and models for metaphor use in a number of related fields, as well as in educational administration and leadership, presenting a model for analysis. Secondly, it reviews the articles in this special issue against the model proposed.     

Understanding the emergence of females as leaders in academia: The intersections of gender stereotypes,status and emotion

Drawing on the expectation state theory, this paper seeks to analyse the social cognitive process of the impacts of gender stereotypes along with their culturally derived schemas of status belief, status characteristics and emotion at the early stage of women's endeavour to emerge as leaders in academia. Employing a convenience sampling and interviews held with five women academic participants from three public and private universities in the western region of Indonesia, this research reveals that two social cognitive practices affect women's endeavour to emerge as leaders; (1) the incongruities of cultural and cognitive expected status belief and status characteristics about females with the expected performance of leadership. The pervasive effect of these can be mitigated when women adopt a strategy of neglection, coupled with a strategy of networking both via their own networks and their husband's networks; (2) the incongruities of cultural and cognitive expected ways of emotional expression on women with the expected performance of leadership. This impacts the status conferral that shapes the worthiness of females to emerge as leaders, leading female leaders in our study to build a protective shield of emotion display to keep them perceived as worthy individuals for leadership roles.     

Fluctuations in value: the shifting worth of journal articles in educational administration

Journal rankings are increasingly being used as proxies for assessing the quality and worth of individual faculty and their contribution to institutional performance. Problematic within this agenda is the historical mapping and projection of current journal rankings. Individual papers are being assessed against criteria far removed – temporally – from when decisions were made regarding where to publish. Drawing upon three examples of publishing in educational administration journals, this paper explores how the assessment of paper quality is dislocated from the scholarly labour that generates those outputs in the first place. Different ranking systems and often lengthy submission to publication processes mean that the worth of individual papers can dramatically shift independent of any actual engagement with the content of the paper. The value of an individual’s track record can fluctuate quickly and any intervention to alter the situation takes time to come into effect. This paper does not suggest replacing one ranking system with another, or even remove research assessment. Rather, it offers a means of problematising the application of journal rankings by calling into question their timelessness. In doing, it provides the intellectual resources to make strange the status quo and open the prospect of alternatives.     

Indigenous graduate research students in Australia: a critical review of the research

Over the last decade, there has been a steady increase in the number of Indigenous graduate research students in Australia, yet research and pedagogy has not kept pace with changes underway in the sector. From an extensive search of literature published between 2000 and 2017, 15 papers (representing 10 research projects conducted by seven teams or authors) were identified that addressed Indigenous graduate research student experience. Overall, the literature tends to focus on identifying barriers to completion, noting in particular the impact of financial difficulties, social isolation and racism. A research degree is a key site for the assertion and legitimation of Indigenous knowledges, and it is here that Indigenous students are navigating tensions between legitimated disciplinary practices of the centre and the peripheral status of Indigenous knowledges. We, therefore, adopt Herbert's ‘centre–periphery’ model to interpret the research, arguing that this framework explains the focus on barriers, the neglect of pedagogy centred on academic excellence and student strengths, and research relationships between students and Indigenous communities. Our review identifies the need for a systematic research agenda specifically focused on Indigenous student success at the graduate research level, and looking internationally in order to assess the performance and strategies of Australian higher education providers in comparison to international institutions meeting the aims of First Nations research communities. This approach, we suggest, should move beyond an analysis of the nature of enablers and barriers to focus on Indigenous Higher Degree by Research success.     

Going upstream: the experiences of women in leadership in Myanmar

This study conducted an appreciative investigation of the experiences of Myanmar women in leadership. Specifically, the focus was on what sustains them, how they negotiate the complexity of their context, and what propels them. Drawn from the experiences of three Myanmar women leaders, the findings indicated that ‘their formal and informal learning’, ‘the influence of their female role models’, and ‘their religion’ were the most important aspects shaping their leadership. The philosophy of Buddhism appeared to be an important factor in their leadership formation and practices, either as a strengthening or limiting factor. This study suggests that to enhance Myanmar women’s increased participation in leadership positions, encouraging continuous learning, visible acknowledgement of female role models, and cultural change are necessary.     

Constructing the rural in education: the case of Outback Kids in Australia

The majority of the still limited literature on education in non-metropolitan areas adopts an understanding of rurality as a fixed and known geographic entity. This paper departs from such a functionalist perspective to explore how rurality is constructed in a programme for at-risk teenagers in remote Australia. Drawing on a range of texts about the programme, including a documentary series entitled Outback Kids, we examine how the rural space is imagined as simultaneously therapeutic and disciplining and therefore appropriate for troubled youth. Alongside this discussion we map the way in which other qualities and values associated with bifurcated definitions of the rural as a place of tradition and authenticity, and the urban as a place of disorder and pretence, are engaged in the texts to endorse the programme and its practices.     

Middle leaders and middle leadership in schools: exploring the knowledge base (2003–2017)

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to explore the development of the knowledge base on middle leadership in schools. Since the seminal reviews conducted by Bennett a contemporary scan only of the scholarly literature on middle leaders/leadership in schools has not been undertaken. Consequently, this article looks at outputs relating to this topic by examining research papers indexed in the Web of Science and in SCOPUS between 2003 and 2017. The prime purpose of this review is to offer some reflections on the development of the empirical base on middle leadership in schools since 2003 and to highlight some of the implications for future research. The article concludes that middle leadership in schools remains an ongoing focus of research inquiry in a growing number of countries but suggests that the knowledge base would benefit from more sophisticated empirical studies and greater theoretical analysis.     

Gender in schools and culture: taking stock of education in Italy

When politicians discuss Italy's position in terms of achieving equality between men and women, the school environment is rarely called into question or mentioned. This is despite the fact that gender inequality remains a prominent feature of the Italian education system. The reason for this failure to perceive the problem, and the consequent lack of investment in policies for gender equality in education, derives from a massive misunderstanding: school is perceived by the public and the political class as one of the few environments within the highly sexist Italian social fabric in which equality has been achieved. On closer examination, however, it is clear that the Italian school is merely the image of a sexist society which in turn acts as the driving force for a traditional and stereotypical view of male and female roles. This article will discuss this perspective and investigate three areas of education that are problematic in gender terms: gendered educational choices; sexist stereotypes transmitted through textbooks; and the lack of adequate training for teachers.     

Comparing the gender gap in educational attainment: the impact of emancipatory contexts in 33 cohorts across 33 countries

Nowadays, women outperform men in educational attainment in many countries. Still, large variation between countries remains. Emancipatory contexts in which individuals are raised might explain these differences in male–female educational attainment, both over time and across countries. This study examines individual and contextual factors that affect educational attainment of men and women for cohorts born between 1950 and 1982 across 33 countries. Possible explanations for differentiation over time and across countries relate to women’s labour market participation and an emancipatory normative climate, indicated by degree of religiosity. We employ multilevel models on data (N = 138,498) from 6 waves of the European Social Survey and the US General Social Survey (2002–2012) to test our hypotheses. Results show that a higher level of female labour market participation in early adolescence improves women’s performance in education, whereas high levels of religiosity during that phase negatively affect women’s educational attainment.     

Evidence informed practice for autism,special educational needs and disability in schools: expanding the scope of the research learning community model of professional development

Research learning communities (RLCs) are an increasingly popular form of collaborative professional development that takes participants into deep engagement with research evidence and empowers them to become researchers themselves. This study describes the use of the RLC model to make research about autism and school system change accessible to teachers in primary schools. An interdisciplinary team of specialists guided teams made up of a school leader and a class teacher through structured engagement with recent, high quality research. Participants devised and trialled evidence-informed interventions that supported pupils with autism and facilitated the improvement of whole school policy and practice on special education and disability (SEND). The RLC allowed them space to share their experiences with other teachers in a process of mutual reflection and learning. Evaluation showed that participants gained confidence in leading change and made effective use of research to develop SEND school policy and practice.     

社区教育资源的协调统筹问题探讨

作为提高社区全体成员素质与生活质量的社区教育，由于其教育形式的多样性和教育内容的丰富性，需要社区全体成员的支持。社区教育资源的协调统筹是一项关系社区教育成败与走向的关键问题。在协调与统筹的过程中必须遵循互惠互利、公益性和自愿的原则，并注意把学校的作用发挥好，把社会力量办学的积极性调动起来。     

Picking winners: An empirical analysis of the determinants of educational outcomes in India

We use data from the Young Lives longitudinal survey to analyse the effect of socioeconomic conditions and gender on the educational performance of young children in India. In particular, we use data for standardised scores on two cognitive tests: the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and a maths test. Our results show that there are significant gender differences in the way that household wealth affects the educational performance of children. Specifically, boys born into wealthier households perform significantly better in maths than those from worse-off economic backgrounds. The effect of wealth on the PPVT is stronger for girls than it is for boys. The results are robust across a range of specifications. The effect of household wealth on performance differed between the genders, even when we focused our analysis on the bottom 10% and top 10% of the performance distribution. One possible explanation for these differences is parental aspirations. We tested this hypothesis and found that boys from wealthier households with higher parental educational aspirations are positively and significantly associated with higher maths scores. Further analysis showed that the moderating role of parents’ educational aspirations was more pronounced at the top of the test score distribution, an indication that more able children are associated with wealthier and more ambitious parents.