AIDS and the school: The role of the school counselor

If statistical projections are accurate, by the year 2000 there will be 10 million children, worldwide, infected with the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS virus (The World Health Organization). This is considered by Dr. Jonathan Mann of Harvard University's International AIDS Center to be a conservative estimate (Signor, 1992). We do know as a fact that by 1991 in the United States there were 3,624 children under the age of 13 who had been diagnosed with AIDS since 1981, and 211,633 adolescents and adults diagnosed during that same period (United States Federal Centers for Disease Control). There are many who believe that counseling with students who have AIDS soon will become the major challenge facing school counselors (Arnzen, 1992). This article will discuss a two-pronged approach for use by school counselors in responding to AIDS in the school setting: a preventive approach through AIDS education, and a model for counseling with students.     

Professionalizing school governance: the disciplinary effects of school autonomy and inspection on the changing role of school governors

Since the 1980s, state schools in England have been required to ensure transparency and accountability through the use of indicators and templates derived from the private sector and, more recently, globally circulating discourses of ‘good governance’ (an appeal to professional standards, technical expertise, and performance evaluation as mechanisms for improving public service delivery). The rise of academies and free schools (‘state-funded independent schools’) has increased demand for good governance, notably as a means by which to discipline schools, in particular school governors – those tasked with the legal responsibility of holding senior leadership to account for the financial and educational performance of schools. A condition and effect of school autonomy, therefore, is increased monitoring and surveillance of all school governing bodies. In this paper, I demonstrate how these twin processes combine to produce a new modality of state power and intervention; a dominant or organizing principle by which government steer the performance of governors through disciplinary tools of professionalization and inspection, with the aim of achieving the ‘control of control’. To explain these trends, I explore how various established and emerging school governing bodies are (re)constituting themselves to meet demands for good governance.     

The policy discourse of networking and its effect on school autonomy: a Foucauldian interpretation

Policy discourse officially operates to distinctly influence public perception in an irrevocable and normalising manner. In a Maltese educational scenario of gradual decentralisation and increased accountability, I explore the ‘effects’ of both the global and the local policy discourse of networks and networking on the practising leaders, in addition to their reaction to the policy document mandating these multi-site school collaboratives, with a particular interest on their imposed nature and how this reform impinged on individual school autonomy. This research adopts a case study methodology, with data collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews; participant observation; and documentary analysis, interpreted via a Foucauldian theoretical framework through narrative analysis. The findings reveal an inherent tension among autonomy, centralisation, and decentralisation both within the policy discourse and the unfolding network leadership dynamics. This paper has particular philosophical implications for educational policy, practice, and theory in an educational scenario of school policy globalisation.     

Administrative support and its mediating effect on US public school teachers

This study examined the effect of administrative support on teachers’ job satisfaction and intent to stay in teaching. The study employed a path analysis to the data of regular, full-time, public school teachers from the Schools and Staffing Survey teacher questionnaire. Administrative support was the most significant predictor of teachers’ job satisfaction, while teachers’ job satisfaction was the most significant predictor of teachers’ intent to stay in teaching. It was also confirmed that administrative support mediates the effect of teaching experience, student behavior, and teachers’ satisfaction with their salary on teachers’ job satisfaction and intent to stay in teaching.     

职业生涯规划教学对中职学生的导向作用观察

对中职学生进行职业生涯规划教学,可以使中职学生树立正确的职业意识。本文主要就职业生涯规划教学对中职学生的导向作用展开论述,主要从引导学生做好由"学校人"到"职业人"的角色转换、做好适应社会融入社会的准备、以及让学生掌握求职的基本方法这三个方面来探讨。     

The school sociologist: A new role for the public school

An argument is made for the usefulness of sociology in solving current problems of the public school and for the creation of a new professional role—the school sociologist—to carry this out. Five areas of sociological knowledge useful to the school are discussed: family and community life, youth culture and adolescence, organization and bureaucracy, teaching as a profession, and the school as a social system. Specific tasks that the school sociologist would undertake are then discussed, followed by an analysis of how the sociologist would fit into and work within the school organization. Finally, suggestions are made about university training for the job and the kind of curriculum necessary for that purpose.

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Résumé L'auteur défend l'utilité de la sociologie dans la solution des problèmes actuels de l'école publique et dans la création d'un nouveau rôle professionnel—celui du sociologue scolaire—pour résoudre ces problèmes. Il étudie cinq domaines de connaissances sociologiques utiles à l'école: vie familiale et communautaire, culture des jeunes et adolescence, organisation et bureaucratie, l'enseignement en tant que profession, et enfin l'école en tant que système social. L'auteur étudie ensuite les tâches particulières qui seraient entreprises par le sociologue scolaire et il analyse la façon dont celui-ci pourrait s'intégrer et oeuvrer au sein de l'organisation scolaire. L'auteur présente enfin des suggestions sur la formation universitaire à donner à ce sociologue et le type de programme d'études nécessaire à cette formation.

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The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of two colleagues, William G. Spady of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and Norman L. Friedman of California State College, Los Angeles. Their criticism of the first draft of this article was extremely useful in the preparation of the final version presented here.     

浅析斯金纳的强化理论及其在学校教育中的作用

强化理论对于学校教育发展的影响至今没有消失过,本文一方面从斯金纳的强化理论的概念及功能入手,深入浅出地分析正强化与负强化在学校教育中的用途,以及怎样使教师在日常的学校教育中灵活运用它们。另一方面,斯金纳的程序教学法也为我们日常教学提供了丰富的理论指导,文中详细列举了程序教学法的几个方面和我们应采取的措施。     

Childhood depression: Rethinking the role of the school

Schools play a privileged and strategic role in the lives of children acting as their principle environment away from home. Additionally, schools act as part of the community linking families and neighborhoods. These characteristics make schools a relevant setting for mental health service delivery and support to children and parents. In this article the role of the school environment on the development of childhood depression and as a leverage point in the prevention and treatment of depression will be discussed. Rationales for this viewpoint, as well as practical suggestions for reducing the deleterious effects of schooling on children's emotional well‐being, are offered. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Public role of school teachers in Korea: For its conceptual reconstruction through its historical tracing

Abstract

This paper makes a bold attempt to make sense of contemporary Koreans’ common expectation of the educational role of public school teachers by tracing its historical and cultural roots to the neo-Confucian humanistic tradition of the Joseon dynasty in Korea that lasted for about 500 years until Korea began to modernize in the late nineteenth century. In this attempt, the key concepts to be explored as equivalent to the Western idea of ‘liberal learning’ are the Confucian ethics of ‘learning for oneself’ and its relation to schooling and teaching. The discussion focuses on whether and how this ethics of learning can be recovered in such a way as to accommodate the postmodern condition of our society, as the educational legacy of the humanistic tradition of East Asia that can keep the public spirit alive in (post-) modern schooling.     

The effect of school inspections on school improvement

This study uses a school-level longitudinal control-group design to examine how teachers and principals of inspected versus uninspected schools perceive school improvement at their schools. During the phasing in of school inspections in the states of Berlin and Brandenburg (Germany), both inspected and uninspected schools were surveyed with respect to school improvement activities over a 1-year period. The main finding is that principals’ and teachers’ perceptions of school quality were highly stable, irrespective of the introduction of school inspections. The results show school inspections had a comparatively low impact on the aspects of school quality measured here.     

Longitudinal inter-relations between school cultural socialization and school engagement: The mediating role of school climate

The question of whether schools should promote cultural pride and engage students in ethnic traditions is hotly contested. To contribute to this debate, this longitudinal study examined whether school cultural socialization predicted adolescents' engagement in school over time and whether this relation was mediated by school climate. Data were collected in four waves during a two-year period from 254 African American fifth-graders (53.9% males; M_age = 10.95 at Wave 1) enrolled in three public middle schools. Results revealed that African American youth who reported more school cultural socialization also had greater school engagement over time. This longitudinal relation was fully mediated by youth's perceptions of school climate. Implications for how to promote African American youth's perceptions of schools as culturally sensitive and supportive environments are discussed.     

Informal learning of primary school teachers: Considering the role of teaching experience and school culture

Teacher learning does not solely occur within formal professional development activities; in fact, the majority of learning occurs through daily practice. The current study focuses on this everyday learning and examines primary teachers' informal learning. Results showed that teachers learn through a variety of learning activities including ‘experimenting’, ‘reflection’, ‘learning from others without interaction’ and ‘collaboration’. In addition, differences between novice and more experienced teachers were identified. More experienced teachers learn as much as their novice colleagues, however they undertake different learning activities. Finally, results reveal that although collaboration is an important source of learning, primary teachers value their autonomy.     

Data feedback for school improvement: The role of researchers and school leaders

The aim of this study is to better understand the role of researchers and school leaders in supporting school improvement through data feedback in the context of more responsive forms of accountability in the Netherlands. A process evaluation was conducted concerning the first three years of a collaborative project of a multi-management group of 18 primary schools and a group of researchers. The results show that implementing a system of data feedback starting from a shared vision on the need to learn from data, fostered processes in the school of learning from data for school improvement. The results also show a growing inquiry habit of mind amongst school principals, whereas the researchers learned how to take their role in the collaboration by providing conditions that enhance school improvement from data feedback. The results indicate that the collaborative process can be characterised by several learning functions and thus contribute to a better understanding of how the conditions for data feedback and school improvement can be enhanced.     

Creating the effective school : The role of evaluation

The concept of children's rights evolved during the 1980s giving prominence to the role of children as active participants in the construction of their lives. The rhetoric of children's rights has emerged as an important consideration in all policy and practice relating to children. Implementation of children's rights in practice is necessary to maximise their potential to improve the lives of children. This paper presents an argument for the importance of giving meaning to the implementation of children's rights in the Individual Education Plan (IEP) process for pupils with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) in Ireland. The study, on which this paper is based, was conducted in two stages using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The first stage focused on the development of a set of indicators for the IEP process based on a children's rights framework and informed by the perspectives of children, parents and teachers, alongside the literature on best practice on IEPs. In the second stage, a survey questionnaire was designed, based on the children's rights indicators, to evaluate current IEP practice in Ireland for pupils with autistic spectrum disorder. This article outlines the development of a set of indicators for the IEP process. It also presents findings of the survey which evaluates current practice in relation to the IEP process for pupils with ASD in Ireland. The article focuses specifically on Article 3(1) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) which stipulates that in all actions concerning children, ‘the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration’.     

Managing senior management team boundaries and school improvement: an investigation of the school leader role

The present study purpose was to investigate the unique role and activities of school principals in managing their senior management team (SMT) boundaries. The study examined how school principals’ internal and external activities mediate the relationship of principals’ personal factors from the Big Five typology, the team and contextual characteristics of functional heterogeneity and goal interdependence to SMT effectiveness and school outcomes of teachers’ absenteeism, school violence and academic emphasis. The results of the structural equation model from a sample of 92 schools indicate that internal activities fully mediate the relationship between principal extraversion and conscientiousness, SMT functional heterogeneity, intra-and inter-team goal interdependence to SMT effectiveness. The external activities were found to fully mediate the relationship between principal extraversion, SMT functional heterogeneity, intra-and inter-team goal interdependence to school outcomes. By concluding that both internal and external activities remain fundamental to overall effectiveness, this study may provide principals with boundary management techniques and practices. The findings may encourage principals to establish priorities and allocate their time, resources and attention effectively both inward and outward the SMT boundary so as to improve SMT and school outcomes.     

The role of the school psychologist in school desegregation: A plan for action

The research on the outcomes of school desegregation has been generally disappointing. This paper briefly reviews the historical role of social science in desegregation, and reviews some of the current research on cooperative learning in the desegregated classroom. A comprehensive role for the school psychologist is outlined, in which goals and subgoals, means for achieving them, and anticipated outcomes are clearly delineated. It is proposed that implementation of this role would lead to a much more positive school desegregation experience for all students.     

Implementing the role of the school psychologist

Even though the role of the school psychologist has become more diversified in recent years, many public school systems remain unaware of the range of potential competencies available. A number of suggestions are made pertaining to practitioner-initiated activities that can serve to facilitate implementation of the desired role.     

Examining school leadership effects on student achievement: the role of contextual challenges and constraints

The present study examined indirect effects of principal leadership on the mathematics achievement of 254,475 15-year-old students from 10,313 schools in 32 OECD economies. Results showed that the students could be divided into three categories (Disadvantaged, Average, and Privileged) differing in levels of student SES and prior achievement, parental academic expectations, and access to school resources. Results also showed that principal leadership effects accounted for a greater proportion of between-school achievement variance for Disadvantaged vis-à-vis Privileged or Average students. In particular, instructional leadership had the largest positive effect on Disadvantaged vis-à-vis other students’ achievement via the mediating variables of teacher autonomy and morale. Distributed leadership negatively affected the achievement of Disadvantaged but not other students. The negative effects of principal goal-setting were the largest while those of principal problem-solving were the smallest for Disadvantaged students. The study contributes to the literature by examining contextual influences on the leadership–achievement relationship.     

Parental perspectives of the role of school factors in school refusal

The aim of this study was to explore parents’ perspectives on the role of school factors in school refusal (SR). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 parents who had experienced SR with their own child. They identified several school factors related to SR. Some of these findings suggest that students who are prone to SR need more predictability and more teachers’ support than they sometimes get in school. Their need for predictability seems to occur particularly during less structured activities and during transitions in school. Findings also imply that disruptive behavior among classmates and harsh management from teachers affects perceived predictability and support for SR-prone students. All parents expressed concern about bullying, and roughly a third of them reported that their child had been a victim of bullying. Insufficient adaptation of schoolwork was also mentioned relatively frequently. Parents emphasized that adaptation of schoolwork needs to be done in close cooperation with the student and parents to avoid negative differentiation from classmates or stigma. Finally, several parents commented that teachers and schools need more knowledge about SR and felt that schools needed a more coordinated approach to supporting students who are at risk of SR.