Life on Mars: headteachers before the National College

In the hit BBC TV drama Life on Mars Sam Tyler had an accident and woke up in 1973. Is he mad, in a coma or actually back in time? As the drama unfolds he experiences a world without performance audits but also one without the safeguards for arrest, detention and the interviewing of suspects mandated by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984). The acclaimed series has led to flights of nostalgia, not least for a world in which police could get on with ‘real policing’ without ‘unnecessary’ paperwork. In this article, we will metaphorically go back in time to contemporary and historical practices of headship in English schools. If a headteacher from 2009 were to wake up in 1973 what would they understand about their work, what would be the same, what would be different? What taken‐for‐granted current practices might get them into trouble, what might frustrate them – and what might delight them that they would bring back to the current job if they could? Mobilising Bourdieu’s thinking tools, we will examine these questions through an analysis of published and unpublished texts produced by heads about their work.     

A little more madness in our methods? A snapshot of how the educational leadership,management and administration field conducts research

ABSTRACT

The field of educational leadership, management and administration (ELMA) uses methods drawn primarily from cognate educational disciplines. But does this matter? This paper explores the methods used in recently published papers through a snapshot of six issues of six ELMA journals. The analysis showed a preponderance of survey, interview and case study methods, with one journal, JEAH, also publishing papers using methods drawn from history, philosophy and sociology. The snapshot also revealed the methods that were rarely used – for example, ethnography, visual and on-line methods. Through a Bourdieusian lens, the paper argues that the ELMA field appears to be somewhat removed from methods developments and debates in the wider educational and social science fields. There may thus be mileage in the ELMA field considering the use of additional methods, including the ‘wilder’ ones. The field might also benefit from understanding methods as more than tools and as practices possessed of a social life.     

The Twenty Day Program

Conversational competence is a process, not a state. Ithaca does not exist, only the voyage to Ithaca. Vibrant campuses are a series of productive conversations. At its core, communicative competence in academic settings mirrors a collective search for meaning regarding the purpose and direction of a campus community. Communicative competence requires a cogent answer to the question: “Do we each organize our work from the same shared sense of what is significant?” Research suggests that as much as 90 percent of the time spent in effective faculty conversations is devoted to creating clarity regarding what colleagues desire to achieve. Conversationally adept leaders and followers can consciously design their own conversations to set the tone and direction of collegial conversation and create a shift in thinking and action for everyone in a meeting room.     

Leading a school through change – principals’ hands-on leadership strategies in school reform

Principal’s hands-on strategies reflecting their theories of changing have a substantial effect on the development of their schools and on how the large-scale reform takes root. The study explores five comprehensive school principals’ leadership strategies during a large-scale school reform in Finland. The principals’ strategies in the middle of reform acknowledged the process nature of leading and involved coherence-making. The inclusive and learning-oriented strategies were applied quite consistently in terms of the horizontal, but not so much in the vertical coherence-making. Exclusive strategies we used to decrease teachers’ workload. Principals’ theories of changing seem to focus on creating and protecting teachers’ opportunities for meaningful learning.     

‘Catholic schooling with a twist?’: a study of faith schooling in the Republic of Ireland during a period of detraditionalisation

The role of faith-based schools is increasingly debated within a context of school reform, rights and plurality in multi-ethnic societies. The Catholic schooling system in the Irish Republic (always referred to as Ireland in the text) represents an interesting case internationally because of the extent to which Catholic education is structurally embedded as normative across the education system. Yet, Ireland is in a process of detraditionalisation and wider societal change. Drawing on Bourdieu and Bernstein, and a mixed methodological study of Catholic secondary schools, the article presents a typology of Catholic schooling in transition. This identifies a continuum of Catholicity among the study schools that is mediated by dynamics of social class in an increasingly competitive and diverse system. It is argued this has implications for considering the role of a recontextualised model of Catholic faith schooling, underpinned by principles of social justice in a multicultural and more secularly oriented society.     

Preparing ‘educational’ leaders in managerialist times: an Australian story

The preparation of educational leaders is a global phenomenon. Education systems have developed numerous means by which current and aspiring leaders are prepared for the role. Through the example of a large public school system in Australia, this paper argues that the doxa of school leadership establishes a particular identity of the principalship. One which constructs the principal as the deliverer of state initiated reforms. Theoretically informed by Bourdieu, this paper argues for an alternate way of thinking about leadership preparation, one based on introducing participants to the conversation of the world.     

从自发走向自觉：促进教师课程领导的策略

教师课程领导是指教师在课程事务上通过相互影响来实现课程发展目标、促进教师专业成长、提升学生学习品质的过程。目前教师课程领导仍处于自发状态的因素主要在于：传统学校课程管理体制的影响、教师的课程意识淡薄、教师的课程参与意识不强、教师课程领导知能不足、教师文化的封闭与保守等方面。为使教师课程领导从自发走向自觉,应从赋予教师权限和建立对话平台,提高教师课程领导的专业知能,增强教师课程意识,建立合作开放的教师文化四方面努力,以促进教师课程领导。     

组合战略:获取竞争优势的另一种选择

波特认为差异化和成本领先这两个基本战略通常是不相容的,通常企业要在两者中做出选择,否则就会“夹在中间”。文章认为差异化和成本领先并不互相排斥,并讨论了差异化可以成为企业获得成本领先的可能性条件框架,以及在超竞争环境下差异化和成本领先的组合是获取持续的竞争优势的选择。     

Problematising the Intellectual Gaze of the Educational Administration Scholar

Abstract

Whereas epistemological debates raged in educational administration during the Theory Movement, or inspired by intervention from Thom Greenfield, Richard Bates or Colin Evers and Gabriele Lakomski, epistemology and the quest for the scientific study of educational administration has somewhat diminished in the era of managerialism and the pursuit of research that has a direct impact on practice. Theoretically informed by the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, I seek to re-engage with the epistemological preliminaries of scholarship in educational leadership, management and administration. In doing so, I argue that administration is central to our way of seeing the social world and raise questions about the embedded and embodied nature of the educational administration scholar and what this means for scholarship. A social ‘scientific’ approach to educational administration, as advocated for in this article, must break free of the ambition of grounding in (rational) reason, the arbitrary division of the social world (e.g. administrators/non-administrators) and instead, take for its object, rather than getting itself caught up in, the struggle for the monopoly of the legitimate representation of the social world.     

小学二年级数学学优生与学困生应用题表征策略差异比较

本研究运用实验法和临床访谈法对某普通小学的43名二年级学生进行了一致/不一致应用题测验(任务一)和条件多余/条件不足应用题测验(任务二),以考察数学学优生和学困生在解决这些应用题时表征策略的差异。结果表明:⑴在任务一中,学优生在一致题目和不一致题目上的反应时差异显著,而学困生在这两类题上的反应时差异不显著;学优生和学困生在一致题目和不一致题目上的正确率差异显著;口头报告显示,学优生较多使用问题模型策略对问题进行表征,学困生较多使用直接转换策略对问题进行表征;⑵在任务二中,学优生的成绩要好于学困生,口头报告分析证明了前面的结果,即学优生较多使用问题模型策略,学困生较多使用直接转换策略;⑶由于表征策略的使用差异,学生在条件充要应用题上的正确率高于非常规应用题。     

学生领导力发展的内涵及其策略

当前学界对于教育领导力的研究主要集中在校长领导力方面,对教育中的主体——"学生"其领导力的发展较少关注。对学生领导力发展的研究是国际教育领导力理论研究和实践的新趋势。本文从学生领导力发展的研究意义开始,探究了学生领导力发展的内涵,阐述了影响学生领导力发展的学校、教师等教育教学因素,提出了在学校中促进学生领导力发展的三个主要策略。     

校长领导力的解读及提升策略

校长领导力体现在教师发展引领力,学校效能提升力,多元关系构建力等方面.校长必须要提升办学理念,通过提高校长综合发展能力,完善绩效评估制度,创新培训方式等途径实现校长领导能力的提高和改进     

道德领导的目标与策略

学校文化能否成为学校发展的本源,关键在于学校文化建设中道德领导的实施。因此,明确再造道德领导的目标与策略,为学校的改善觅得高的杠杆点,以促成名校的持续发展,具有重要的现实意义。     

革新课程领导的现实意义和策略

新课程改革实施给学校教育教学工作带来了全方位的挑战。新课程实施中遇到的问题不能完全归结为教师个人的能力、水平和适应性,而应该是学校组织行为方式的问题;也不能归结为评价改革问题,而是学校全方位的课程领导问题。现实的革新的课程领导发展路向应该重点放在学校的教育哲学和课程实施策略的革新、学校课程与教学的整合革新、学校组织的重组和行为优化以及评价制度和方式的革新。