Administrators in higher education: organizational expansion in a transforming institution

Recent European research has revealed growth in the number of administrators and professionals across different sections of universities—a long established trend in US universities. We build on this research by investigating the factors associated with variation in the proportion of administrators across 761 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in 11 European countries. We argue that the enactment of expanded and diversified missions of HE is one of the main factors nurturing universities’ profesional and administrative bodies. Our findings support such an assertion; regardless of geographical and institutional differences, HEIs with high levels of “entrepreneurialism” (e.g. in service provision and external engagement) are characterized by a larger proportion of administrative staff. However, we find no empirical support for arguments citing structural pressures and demands on HEIs due to higher student enrolments, budget cuts or deregulation as engines driving such change. Instead, our results point towards, as argued by neo-institutionalists, the diffusion of formal organization as a model of institutional identity and purpose, which is especially prevalent at high levels of external connectedness.     

事业单位非编制人员人事代理制度探究

当前国内事业单位存在多种用工机制,非编制人员使用和管理逐渐成为一项重要课题.其中,以高校为例的事业单位非编制人员人事代理制度即具有较为普遍和突出的代表意义.结合高校人事工作实际,就高校运用非编制人事代理制度促进人力资源优化配置工作的优势与问题,进行建设性探究,对于高校事业单位用人体制改革具有积极意义.     

Navigating dilemmas in transforming assessment practices: experiences of mathematics teachers in Ontario,Canada

Current thinking encourages teachers to incorporate a range of assessment practices that are responsive to student thinking and promote student learning. At the same time, teachers are situated in a landscape of accountability, where they are often seen as technicians who implement prescribed curriculum, policies, and procedures with success measured by externally created assessments. This paper considers how teachers navigate this difficult terrain as they incorporate new assessment practices in their classrooms. We report on a two-year project undertaken with 42 teachers of mathematics (Grades 4–12) in Ontario, Canada. Using an analytic framework adapted from Windschitl (Review of Educational Research, 72(2), 131–175.2002), we explore the dilemmas these teachers identified as they met in communities of practice. Our findings highlight the need for coherence in the assessment messages communicated to teachers and provide evidence of the critical role of ongoing collaboration and dialogue to support the development of teachers’ professional judgement and enable change in their assessment practice.     

试论政府与公立高校之间的准监管关系

我国政府当今与公立高校之间存在着一种全新的关系———本文谓之准监管关系。准监管关系与准市场机制相对应,属于科层内部总部与分支机构之间建立的界于管理与监管之间的一种关系。在准监管模式下,政府角色定位由“家长”转变为“监督者”;工作方式由直接指挥转换为间接问责;工作重心由决策、传达与检查等转换为目标指导、绩效问责与财政激励。     

Transition from a teaching institution to a research institution: An African American female perspective

According to Mooney (1993), the proportion of tenured faculty has shrunk as the overall size of the professoriate has expanded. However, this expansion has not included African American and other faculty of color. Professional and personal isolation, lack of supportive collegiality, and unique challenges in establishing research records are among factors contributing to the shortage of African Americans initiated and accepted into the professoriate (Bowen & Schuster, 1986; Lopez, 1991; Sorcinelli & Billings, 1992). Consequently, the revolving door syndrome experienced by many faculty of color (Blackwell, 1988) is sustained by such factors. Additionally, according to Lagowski (1992) the requirements of a research culture are basically incompatible with the demands of undergraduate teaching (p. 42). This paper provides a review of the status of African American females in academe, describes career success at teaching and research institutions, presents dynamics of transition from teaching to research institutions, and offers coping strategies useful during transition.Myra Womble is an assistant professor of business education in the Department of Occupational Studies at the University of Georgia. She received her B.S. in Business Education; her M.A. in Vocational Education; and her Ed.D. in Training and Development. Dr. Womble's most recent research activities include examining career development and school-to-work transition issues relative to students economically, socially, and academically at-risk.     

Dyslexia in higher education: creating a fully inclusive institution

Disability legislation demands inclusive institutional policy and practice to meet the needs of the growing numbers of students disclosing specific learning difficulties (SpLD)/dyslexia. However, surveys of provision indicate mixed levels of student satisfaction. Institutions need to be able to monitor the extent to which their practice embodies their inclusive mission statements. Fuller, Healey, Bradley and Hall developed a stage model of progress towards the fully inclusive institution which suggests that departments or individuals can remain at different stages, delaying transformation of the whole system. This case study, conducted within a small university, used documentation, interviews, questionnaires and focus groups to explore attitudes and practices at each level of the institution to establish the extent to which Fuller's model might enable identification and elimination of ‘disablist institutional practice’ and the development of the fully inclusive ethos. Policy, management, lecturers and students were surveyed to explore attitudes and practices relevant to SpLD/dyslexia. Findings indicated that Fuller's model provided a clear and practical way of charting the institution's journey towards full inclusivity. Participants demonstrated the existence of examples of inclusive culture at all levels in University X, alongside a need for strengthened and clarified systems cementing links between management policy and the work of facilitators and lecturers. Inconsistencies in the systems connecting the levels potentially allow disablist practices to survive. Hence, identifying these gaps can facilitate their closure and promote the establishment of the fully inclusive institution.     

All against all competition: the incorporation of the International Baccalaureate in public high schools in Canada

ABSTRACT

Since the 1980s, education in Canada has been through a process that led to school choice, targeting the improvement of students’ performance through school competition. These policies fostering an education quasi-market became an ideal framework for the expansion of IB schools. Since the Diploma Programme of the International Baccalaureate (IBDP) offers a differentiated international curriculum and is perceived as a program that contributes to students’ achievements, it has been increasingly adopted in school districts and schools. This paper explores the marketing strategies developed in schools and districts in response to school competition by tracing the incorporation of the IBDP in high schools in different districts in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. Based on interviews with school staff, district officials and IB local association representatives, this study analyzes schools’ marketing decisions from a consumer and producer orientation taking into account the macro environment (federal government) and micro-environment (provincial government and districts). Rather than fostering efficiency and improving students’ achievement as intended, marketization policies resulted in an increased focus on the recruitment of high achieving students, which led to a competition between schools, between districts and between other programs in the districts or in other words –an ‘all against all’ competition.     

Democratizing computer science knowledge: transforming the face of computer science through public high school education

Despite the fact that computer science (CS) is the driver of technological innovations across all disciplines and aspects of our lives, including participatory media, high school CS too commonly fails to incorporate the perspectives and concerns of low-income students of color. This article describes a partnership program – Exploring Computer Science (ECS) – that directly counters this problem in our nation's second largest school district. With a mission of democratizing CS learning, we argue that despite the constraints of working within public schools, it is imperative to do so. We discuss the ECS program based on inquiry, culturally relevant curriculum, and equity-oriented pedagogy. We describe two ECS-affiliated projects that highlight the importance of authorship, purpose, and agency for student learning and engagement: DietSens using mobile technology to study community health, and a project in which students create video games about social issues. Our work offers a counter-narrative to those who have written off the possibilities of working within public schools and a debunking of the too widespread myth within our educational system that females and students of color are inherently uninterested in rigorous CS learning.     

Child abuse: The role of a consultant psychiatrist in a specialist institution

This paper is based on the experience of a consultant psychiatrist in a child abuse agency. Working with abusing families produces high levels of anxiety in the staff and conflicts over role are particularly strongly felt. These processes, as they affected the consultant psychiatrist and a staff group, were used to try to understand the anxiety and conflicts of the client families. The split between consultant and psychiatrist, between caregiver and authority figure, between parent and child, had to be acknowledged and accepted before the staff could work more effectively. Abusing families benefit from the range of skills offered by a multidisciplinary team. But the stresses for individual staff members working with these emotional, damaged, demanding, difficult families, can at times appear to be increased by the multidisciplinary team with its diversity of views. In the light of experience so far, it seems that work on the conflicts and anxiety needs to be part of a continuing process of staff development. Some of the difficulties for the consultant psychiatrist in such an institution are also discussed.     

Investing in teaching development: navigating risk in a research intensive institution

It is often assumed that academics working in a research intensive university are unlikely to invest in the professional development of their teaching. Institutional structures and culture tend to undermine investment in academics’ teaching role. This study, conducted at the University of Cape Town, draws on an analysis of the environment within which academics make decisions to invest in their role as teachers. While acknowledging the privileging of research embedded in the institution, a significant group of academics have found ways to assert their academic identities as teachers despite the possible consequences and risks that this position entails.     

公立高校与政府、个人委托代理关系及其问题分析

随着高教体制改革的深入,厘清公立高校所涉及的委托代理关系,分析和解决其存在的委托代理问题迫在眉睫。公有产权下解决委托代理问题的关键,是设计激励、约束和竞争制度来排斥信息效率低下和激励不相容问题。     

Principals and vice-principals: exploring the history of leading and managing public schools in Ontario,Canada

ABSTRACT

For teachers seeking formal school leadership roles the key choices have been either the vice- principalship or the principalship. In Ontario, Canada, however, the principalship has traditionally been considered the premier leadership goal with the vice-principalship regarded as merely a necessary transitional step toward achieving the principalship. In this article, we consider the enactments of principals and vice-principals plus the common and unique work typically demanded of each position by examining how both roles came to fruition from a historical context. How principals and vice-principals’ work came to be what it currently is in Canada’s most populace province is a reflection of the prevailing economic, social, political, historical, and educational contexts and particular interests being advanced. Both engage in complex, purposeful work that requires excellent interpersonal strengths, strategic thinking, an inclusive leadership disposition and values, organisational change capacities, and the ability to make evidence-based decisions. As well, both are expected to work in complementary ways to advance students’ academic and social learning, yet despite the need for leadership synergies, principals often ‘lead’ while vice-principals are left to ‘manage’. While the principal’s role is expansive and more clearly defined, the role of the vice-principal has broadened over decades. We will investigate the history for preparing and developing vice principals in this context to learn about why they continue to be reactive, situationally contingent, and dependent on task delegation from the principal. Such role-based differences can contribute to high job satisfaction and role clarity for principals, but disappointment for vice-principals who wish to exercise greater leadership.     

Distance learning and interaction: Toward a virtual learning institution

This paper considers distance learning at all levels, learning that can occur anywhere. Most education today in schools, universities, and companies is dependent on students being at a particular location, such as a university. The major distance learning institutions today are in Europe, but the potential for this type of learning is great as we reach out to serve greater numbers of students. The following factors are critical in forming a distance learning institute today: the quality of learning provided to each student; whether courses work for very large numbers of students; and the cost per student hour, for both development and delivery. Many delivery technologies are possible today. We examine them from the standpoint of these factors. The conclusion is that highly interactive multimedia learning units, either CD ROMs or (in the near future) broadband networks, provide the best delivery system today for distance learning. The paper concludes with a brief review of strategies for developing the curriculum units needed to support distance learning.     

Educational reform and the public: Two case studies of Poland and Saskatchewan (Canada)

The involvement of the public in educational reform processes in modern democratic societies primarily serves the purpose of politically legitimizing the reform agenda. This study examines the rationales implicitly or explicitly submitted to the public to explain why educational reforms in the two countries should be endorsed. Although differences in the political culture caution against a hasty comparison of the two case studies, a number of politico-economic similarities allow for a valid juxtaposition. In Poland the context of socio-political and economic renewal prompted the reformers to emphasize the human-capital model which heightened public awareness and participation in the debate surrounding the reform. Public involvement in Saskatchewan was negatively affected for mainly two reasons. First, the government evidently manipulated public input by various means and thereby appears to have predetermined the outcome. Second, the rationale for the reform, based on a free-market model, tightened the linkage between the needs of the labour market and the mandate of the schools. As a result, public interest and participation was greatly diminished.

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Zusammenfassung Die Beteiligung der Öffentlichkeit an Reformen auf dem Gebiet der Erziehung in den modernen demokratischen Gesellschaften dient hauptsächlich der politischen Legitimierung der Reformpläne. In dieser Studie werden die der Bevölkerung offen oder unterschwellig vermittelten Gründe untersucht, warum den erzieherischen Reformen in beiden Ländern zugestimmt werden sollte. Obwohl die Unterschiede in der politischen Kultur Anlaß zur Vorsicht vor einem voreiligen Vergleich der beiden Fallstudien geben, so sprechen einige wirtschaftspolitische Ähnlichkeiten für eine sinnvolle Nebeneinanderstellung. In Polen führte der Zusammenhang sozialpolitischer und wirtschaftlicher Erneuerung dazu, daß die Reformer das Modell des menschlichen Kapitals, das das öffentliche Bewußtsein und die Teilnahme an der Debatte über die Reformen verstärkte, besonders betonten. Die öffentliche Beteiligung in Saskatchewan bekam aus zwei Gründen einen negativen Beigeschmack. Erstens manipulierte die Regierung offensichtlich in verschiedener Hinsicht die Beiträge der Öffentlichkeit, und sie scheint damit das Ergebnis vorbestimmt zu haben. Zweitens stärkten die Gründe für die auf ein Modell der freien Marktwirtschaft gegründeten Reformen die Verbindungen zwischen dem Bedarf des Arbeitsmarktes und dem Mandat der Schulen. Als Folge davon reduzierte sich das öffentliche Interesse und die Beteiligung erheblich.

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Résumé La participation du public aux processus de réforme éducative dans les sociétés démocratiques modernes sert essentiellement à légitimation politique du calendrier de réforme. Cette étude examine la raison d'être soumise implicitement ou explicitement au public et analyse pourquoi les réformes éducatives doivent être adoptées dans les deux pays. Bien que les divergences de cultures politiques mettent en garde contre une comparaison hâtive des deux études de cas, certaines correspondances politico-économiques permettent une juxtaposition valide. En Pologne, le contexte de la rénovation socio-politique et économique a pressé les réformateurs à mettre en valeur le modèle de capital humain qui a rehaussé l'information et la participation du public dans le débat autour de la réforme. La participation du public dans le Saskatchewan a été entravée pour deux raisons. Premièrement, il semblerait que le gouvernement ait manipulé les investissements publics de différentes manières et qu'il ait par cela prédéterminé le résultat obtenu. Deuxièmement, la légitimité de la réforme, orientée vers un modèle de marché libre, a renforcé les liens entre les besoins du marché de l'emploi et le mandat des écoles. Par conséquent, l'intérêt et la participation du public ont été considérablement affaiblis.

     

The school as a social institution

Rarely has a demand regarding school been so persistently repeated through history as the demand that school be related to life. From Seneca to our day this demand has been stressed with variations, never with complete success. Evan our era, characterized by rapid and profound changes in the whole of social life, has not been spared the renewed postulation of this task: school is not only expected to establish a balance between itself and life, it is also expected to hasten social changes. Teachers, politicians and futurologists of all kinds compete in attempting to envisage a type of school which would satisfy this centuries-old aspiration. The essence of the question lies in the fact that school is an institution which originated at the time of the invention of written characters, extracting a certain strata of people who could engage in science and the arts beyond the sphere of productive labour. To this day, school has retained some basic characteristics of this origin. Many of our contemporaries would be surprised if we told them that there was a time when schools did not exist and that perhaps in the far-off future they will cease to exist. Marshall McLuhan has already announced the end of the era of written letters and books, and consequently the disappearance of school in the traditional form to which we are accustomed. Dr. Franković is a former director of the Yugoslav Institute for Educational Research and has served as president of the Yugoslav Union of Pedagogic Societies.     

Ethnographic account of a pedagogical project: sisterhood institution in the Hizmet Movement

This article focuses on the pedagogical project of the Hizmet Movement, with a special focus on its gender politics as they were activated and performed at one of the movement’s schools in a peripheral rural city in western Turkey. Through an ethnographic, conversation-based account of female teachers as active and committed adherents of the Movement, this article traces a two-tier approach to the community’s pedagogical project: the first is the examination of micro-institutional mobilization units of the Movement, while the second tier is an analysis of key themes in the discourses surrounding gender, characterizing the role and the extent of women’s participation in the movement. Drawing on the central gender discourses of the movement, this article reveals the emerging pedagogical model developed by the Movement as the constitution of a new hegemonic form, which I call the ‘conservative sisterhood.’