Linking QWL and job performance: Implications for organizations

This study contributes to the literature on quality of work life (QWL) by testing the relationship between QWL and job performance by using questionnaires to survey a sample of 475 managers in a manufacturing industry in Malaysia. The results indicated a significant positive relationship between QWL and job performance. A two‐factor model with correlated factors was postulated and supported. Structural equation modeling procedures showed that the two constructs are highly correlated (r = 0.94) and represent a distinct concern on work life. Implications of results and directions for future research are offered.     

Support staff in primary schools: Reflections upon the benefits of training and implications for schools

This article will examine the roles and involvement of support staff in the primary school. It will consider rationales for training and identify the benefits that accrue following this investment. It will highlight the training needs of support staff, identify implications for schools and discuss the constraints that schools may face with this process.     

Maltreatment of primary school students by educational staff in Israel

OBJECTIVES: This paper reports on the prevalence of emotional and physical maltreatment of students in primary schools by school staff in Israel. Victimization by staff was analyzed according to students' gender, age group (4th, 5th, and 6th grade), cultural group (Jewish-non-religious, Jewish-religious, and Arab schools), school characteristics (school size and class size), and by socio-economic status of the students' families. METHOD: Data were obtained from a nationally representative sample of 5472 students in Grades 4-6 in 71 schools across Israel. The students completed questionnaires during class, which included a scale for reporting physical and psychological maltreatment by staff. Data on the socio-economic status of the families of the students in each school were also obtained. RESULTS: Students reported generally high rates of maltreatment by staff members. Almost a third reported being emotionally maltreated by a staff member, and more than a fifth (22.2%) reported being a victim of at least one type of physical maltreatment. The most vulnerable groups for maltreatment were males, students in Arab schools, and students in schools with a high percentage of students from low-income and low-education families.CONCLUSIONS: These high rates of primary school students' victimization by staff are unacceptable. We recommend educational campaigns among teachers, as well as allocating more resources to support staff in low socio-economic neighborhoods.     

Assistant professors of school psychology: A national survey of program directors and job applicants

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the nature of academic position openings in the field of school psychology and to gather information about the characteristics sought and attributed to those individuals who were hired at the assistant professor rank. Survey methodology was used to gather information from both program directors and new assistant professor hires about the job‐search process. A total of 178 program directors in school psychology from the United States were sent surveys in the fall of 1998. One hundred twenty‐six of the program directors responded (71%). Fifty‐five (44%) program directors reported their program had an assistant professor job opening within the last 2 academic years. Of the 55 program directors that reported having job openings, five of these reported that they had two position openings in the last two academic years. Thus, data were gathered on a total of 60 job openings at 55 schools. Information about the job search process and characteristics sought in applicants, from the program directors perspective, are described. In addition, demographic data, prior teaching and research experiences, and information about the new hires' job‐search process is presented. Recommendations are provided to help graduate students, faculty advisors, and future applicants with the job‐search process. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 40: 691–698, 2003.     

Work commitment and job satisfaction for program staff: How to build it

Children develop appropriately in social, cognitive, physical, and emotional ways in a stable environment. Early childhood administrators can help create this stable environment by minimizing staff turnover. Staff turnover can be kept at a reasonable rate through the development of administrative skills which will enhance staff self-esteem and job satisfaction.Nora Palmer Gould is an Early Childhood Administrator who is currently working as a consultant to Early Childhood Programs.     

Pupil mobility and educational achievement in schools: an empirical analysis

One of the problems facing education policy-makers is how to raise achievement in schools. Improving schools and raising achievement requires, at the very least, an understanding of the factors influencing performance in schools. Previous research has looked at a number of factors, including quality of teaching and learning, patterns of resource use, gender, ethnicity, social class and socio-economic background in schools, but there has been little empirical research into the effect of pupil mobility on school performance. Pupil mobility in schools also has implications for many important policy areas, such as school funding, target-setting and league tables, and yet it is only just beginning to be recognized as an important policy issue. This paper examines the relationship between pupil mobility and educational achievement in an inner city LEA. The performance of three cohorts of pupils at key stages 2 and 3 and GCSE are analysed by the mobility factor to illustrate the effect of pupil mobility on educational attainment. This is followed by a discussion of the causes of pupil mobility in schools and strategies adopted by schools to address mobility problems. The final section of the paper addresses the implications of the empirical evidence for school improvement strategies and funding allocations.     

道德冲突与小学语文育人功能

语文的育人功能是以人为本，以人的建设、人的发展为出发点和归宿的，然而不论是人的建设还是人的发展，都要依赖于道德冲突的妥善解决。道德冲突的解决是语文育人的任务之一，同时道德冲突的解决过程其实也是语文育人功能的发挥过程。而当前小学语文教学过程中普通存在道德冲突解决缺失的现象。本文试图针对这一现状探寻对策以更好地发挥小学语文育人功能，提升小学语文教育的实效性。     

Guidance on the use of physical force by staff in educational establishments

Dave Hewett, independental consultants, and Andy Arnett, Hertfordshire Social Services Department, attempt to clarify the present legal position on the use of physical force by staff in schools. The authors, who conducted an informal survey of education authorities in England and Wales, report their findings and discuss the implications.     

Children's reports of emotional,physical and sexual maltreatment by educational staff in Israel

OBJECTIVES: This paper reports on the first nationally representative study on the prevalence of emotional, physical, and sexual victimization of children by school staff in Israel. The study identifies groups of children that are at higher risk for such maltreatment. We examine the differences in staff-induced victimization by the children's gender, age group (junior high vs. high school), cultural groups (Jewish non-religious, Jewish-religious and Arab schools) and by socioeconomic status of the children's families. METHOD: The study is based on a nationally representative sample of 10,410 Israeli students in Grades 7-11 in 161 schools across Israel. Students completed questionnaires during class. In addition, we obtained data on the socioeconomic status of the families of the students in each school. RESULTS: Overall, children reported high rates of victimization by staff members. Almost a quarter of all children participating in this study reported being emotionally maltreated by a staff member, almost a fifth (18.7%) reported being a victim of at least one type of physical forms of maltreatment, and 8.2% reported on at least one sexually inappropriate behavior by a staff member. The most vulnerable groups for all types of maltreatment were males, children in junior high schools, children in Arab schools, and children in schools with a high concentration of students coming from low-income and low-education families. CONCLUSIONS: The overall prevalence rates of staff maltreatment should be considered high and unacceptable. Although rates of physical and sexual maltreatment were lower than emotional maltreatment, they were still high and are worthy of greater attention. Both cultural beliefs and low family socioeconomic status increase vulnerability to staff maltreatment. We suggest conducting an educational campaign to reduce rates of staff maltreatment. We also recommend allocating more resources to support staff in low SES neighborhoods, to alleviate their stress and to provide them with the support that would reduce maltreatment of children in the educational system.     

Policy and practice: the changing nature of special educational provision in schools

Carol Vincent (a former teacher in London primary and special schools, now a lecturer in Special Education at the Open University), and Jennifer Evans, Ingrid Lunt & Pam Young (from the London Institute of Education) draw on data collected in a recent research project, which studied the effects of LMS on the funding and organisation of specials education services and resources, to provide a snapshot of some recent developments in special education provision.     

中小学教育评价的新思想新要求

综合提升各实践经验并分析教育评价发展的路向和趋势,从十个方面阐述了教育评价的新理论、新思想、新要求。     

Leading Innovation and Change: knowledge creation by schools for schools

This article explores the process and practice of knowledge creation within development and research (D and R) networks. It focuses upon D and R networks in England that are currently engaged in collaboration and innovation. Early evaluative evidence suggests that D and R school networks offer 'spaces' for collaborative working, mutual sharing and active dissemination of knowledge. The evidence also suggests that D and R networks are beginning to positively impact upon instructional practices and learning. The article concludes that these networks have the potential to provide an important infrastructure for co-construction and knowledge creation by schools for schools.     

Professional support staff at higher education institutions in Sweden: roles and success factors for the job

This paper aims to analyse and discuss the professional support staff at higher education institutions in Sweden in terms of how they view their roles and what the success factors for them are. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with support staff from the fields of business liaison, internationalisation and strategic research support. The results show that the participants have shaped their own roles and see themselves as back-office staff. This can make it challenging for them to prove their contribution to the academic activities of education and research. Because they neither identify themselves as administrators nor hold academic positions, their ability to build credibility on a personal basis is a central success factor. Aware of being actors in a culture dominated by academic values and norms, they see a more transparent discussion of their roles as a desirable development in the sector.     

Attitudes of academic staff towards their job and organisation: An empirical assessment

Abstract

The relationships and differences in how academic staff perceive their work and organisation are of great importance for human resource strategies in the higher education sector. The present study examines work‐related attitudes of academic staff, namely job satisfaction, self‐efficacy and organisational commitment. The purpose is to analyse how these attitudes differ among groups of individuals. Results show that there is an alternative way of classifying academic staff into distinct groups based on work‐related attitudes apart from the conventional classification based on position alone. Findings suggest that university managers should be careful in balancing between different systems of control or incentive.     

The structure of educational costs: Multiproduct cost functions for primary and secondary schools in latin America

This paper extends the existing literature on educational cost functions in the following ways: it employs flexible cost functions to comply with prior theoretical expectations about price homogeneity without the imposition of overly restrictive assumptions regarding the technological structure; it examines possible complementarities in the provision of different levels of schooling by treating schools as multiproduct firms: and it uses disaggregated school-level data for two developing countries. The major findings are: (a) the data for the Paraguayan and Bolivan samples indicate that the average primary school does exhibit scale economies with respect to percentage changes in quality-adjusted enrollment, with the level of secondary student outputs held fixed. The same finding holds for the average Bolivian secondary school, with the provision of primary levels held fixed. The results are not substantially affected when students' transport costs are taken into account; (b) at least for this sample, there do not appear to be any significant complementarities that imply lower costs for schools which offer both primary and secondary services vs those which offer only one or the other; (c) there is some scope to substitute between labor and non-labor inputs, even in the short run, particularly for the Bolivian sample. Thus, in the event of a major escalation in teacher salaries, schools may be able to absorb some of the increase by substituting teachers for materials (such as hooks and supplies) to maintain the same level of output in terms of quantity and quality: and (d) there is some evidence for Paraguay that the size of the physical plant for schools is excessive. This overinvestment would imply that long-run cost minimization should not simply be assumed in cost function studies.     

Teaching in mainstream and special schools: are the stresses similar or different?

Research evidence, and the direct experience of many practitioners, suggest that teaching is a stressful profession. However, a number of factors, including, for example, the age group taught, the number of pupils in the class, the hours worked and the type of school, may mediate the types and degree of stress experienced. In this article, Michelle Williams, who carried out this study as part of her degree in psychology at the University of East London and who is not a teacher, and Professor Irvine Gersch, course director of the MSc course in educational psychology at the University of East London, describe work undertaken to compare whether teaching in a mainstream or special school is perceived as more stressful and whether there are different stresses in both types of school.
The authors designed a questionnaire to measure teacher stress and collected data from 41 teachers in three mainstream and two special schools. Their results reveal no significant difference in the overall level of stress experienced between mainstream and special school teachers, but five factors do emerge indicating that different types of stress are experienced in the different school settings studied.     

中小学教育科研的异化与回归

中小学教育科研一般指中小学教师和学校管理人员就中小学教育实践中的问题开展的研究或尝试性实践。作为高校和科研机构及专职教育研究的移植物,中小学教育科研在移植的过程中难免会产生异化现象,这不仅影响了其自身的健康发展,而且也阻碍了其功能的充分发挥,降低了它的社会声誉。分析中小学教育科研产生异化现象的原因,以便在此基础上寻求中小学教育科研的回归,探索克服异化现象的有效方策。     

Investigating teachers' educational beliefs in Chinese primary schools: socioeconomic and geographical perspectives

This empirical study explores the nature of and profiles in primary teachers' educational beliefs in the Chinese educational settings. A survey of 820 primary school teachers was conducted using a questionnaire focusing on teachers' traditional and constructivist beliefs about teaching and learning. Analysis of variance and cluster analysis were applied. Results show that gender and subject domain affect traditional educational beliefs. Significant differences appear considering economic and geographical context variables. Cluster analysis helps to delineate four teacher belief profiles: a constructivist profile, a mixed constructivist/traditional profile, a traditional profile, and a mixed low constructivist/traditional profile. Inter-relation between teacher belief profiles and school categories are discussed.