Drawing a veil over managerialism: leadership and the discursive disguise of the New Public Management

Through a focus upon the simultaneous rise of leadership and the New Public Management (NPM) within the context of education in England this article offers an analytical account of these developments and their entry into the field of education. This analysis is located within contradictions and tensions arising out of the agential promises inherent in the construction of leadership and the simultaneous managerialist and directive intent of the NPM. The way in which discourses of leadership and, more latterly, distributed leadership act to draw a veil over these tensions and contradictions is demonstrated within the context of research in two schools. The article concludes by examining how discourses of leadership have enabled schools and teachers to adapt to educational modernisation in ways that have undermined teacher professionalism.     

Part of the assignment: student–teachers’ planning instruction within/across activity systems

ABSTRACT

Looking closely at lesson plans as mediating tools, this study examines preservice teacher learning. By using activity theory in our analysis of lesson plans and other data collected in a student-teaching course, we uncovered tensions within/across the contexts of university teacher education program and secondary school field placements. This study serves to further understandings of how new teachers learn to appropriate the genres of teaching and to explore contradictions between a university preparation program and secondary school contexts. Findings provide an account of the student–teachers’ lesson planning and an explanation of how disruptions in those plans provided insight into points of tension. By viewing these tensions as contradictions within/across activity systems, we identify them as opportunities to better understand teacher learning and ways we might support new teachers in navigating tensions in their classrooms and schools.     

Redesigning the role of deputy heads in Norwegian schools – tensions between control and autonomy?

A substantial body of research emphasises school leadership as a major influence on quality improvement in schools. Although numerous studies have identified the importance of the principal, fewer studies have examined the middle management level within schools, the deputy heads and assistant principals. Influenced by international trends, local education authorities in Norway have reorganised a traditional administrative deputy head role into a new role with expanded leadership responsibility for teacher staff and for performing instructional leadership. The primary objective of the present qualitative study is to provide additional insight into how deputy heads make sense of increased responsibility and power distribution as members of the leadership team and as leaders of the teachers in lower secondary schools. Drawing on focus group interviews and observations, the findings show that the reorganisation may open for a change from traditional administrative roles towards becoming learning-focused leaders. However, the findings also indicate that the shift can produce tensions between autonomy and control for the new leader role in the middle.     

Promoting teachers’ instructional practices in alternative assessment through teacher collaboration

This paper reports the findings of a study which aims to examine the processes and effectiveness of the collaboration between teachers in their professional learning which some Singapore schools are currently engaged in. The learning process attempted to raise the profile of teacher professionalism in classroom alternative assessment through action research. A total of nine schools participated in this two-year study. Participants included teachers and school leaders. Guided by a university researcher and supported by a cluster superintendent and school leaders, the collaboration helped familiarise teachers with alternative ways of assessing student learning, connect theories with practice in their classroom assessment, and acquire the skills of doing research. Facilitated by a structure that supports the development of partnerships between teachers from different schools, the collaboration focused on teachers working on a common task. The data reveal how teachers took ownership of their own learning through this process and led their peers in their respective schools in curriculum customisation through alternative assessment practices. Such an education reform process, which has driven the effectiveness of the collaborative teacher learning in promoting teachers’ instructional practices, is analysed from four dimensions, namely, (a) macro level (systemic reform), (b) school level (school improvement plans), (c) teacher level (teacher community), and (d) micro level (classroom level). This paper concludes with a discussion of the challenges in sustaining teacher collaboration across schools in Singapore.     

Just‐in‐time pedagogy: teachers' perspectives on the response to intervention framework

The purpose of this mixed methods research is to examine teachers' perspectives on the response to intervention (RTI) framework and its implementation in Michigan and Texas schools. Both states have been leaders in literacy, increasing preservice and in‐service teacher certification standards and developing similar batteries for assessing literacy skills. Using the International Reading Association's RTI principles, the following question directed this inquiry: what are the perspectives of teachers in various educational, geographic, economic and cultural settings of the RTI? The research was developed through questionnaires, focus groups and semi‐structured interviews. Findings revealed that teacher professional development, assessments and collaboration for instruction were highly integrated themes when developing RTI strategies as reforming practice and increasing student literacy. Michigan and Texas teachers were more confident and comfortable in measuring and identifying students with reading difficulties over their ability to prevent learning disabilities through their instruction.     

Standards-based accountability: reification,responsibility and the ethical subject

Over the last two decades, teachers in Australia have witnessed multiple incarnations of the idea of ‘educational accountability’ and its enactment. Research into this phenomenon of educational policy and practice has revealed various layers of the concept, particularly its professional, bureaucratic, political and cultural dimensions that are central to the restructuring of educational governance and the reorganization of teachers’ work. Today, accountability constitutes a core concept of neoliberal policy-making in education, both fashioning and normalizing what counts as teacher professionalism in the ‘audit society.’ This article focuses specifically on the recent introduction by the Australian Federal Government of standardised literacy testing in all states across Australia, and raises questions about the impact of this reform on the work practices of English literacy teachers in primary and secondary schools. We draw on data collected as part of a major research project funded by the Australian Research Council, involving interviews with teachers about their experiences of implementing standardised testing. The article traces the ways in which teachers’ work is increasingly being mediated by standardised literacy testing to show how these teachers grapple with the tensions between state-wide mandates and a sense of their professional responsibility for their students.     

The Future of Instructional Teacher Leader Roles

In response to increased performance expectations, schools and districts are turning to nonsupervisory, school-based, instructional teacher leader roles to help improve teachers’ instruction and enhance student learning. Increased opportunities to learn about teacher leadership may facilitate the implementation and institutionalization of instructional teacher leader roles. We discuss how institutions of higher education could develop programs for instructional teacher leaders, provide related coursework to school administrators and preservice teachers, and educate school communities about the potential usefulness of these roles.     

Collaboration between teacher educators and schools to enhance development

The article focuses on school-based development and how collaboration between teacher educators and leaders and teachers can promote development in teacher education, in school and in the collaboration site in school where both parties meet. The data were collected in Norway through qualitative interviews with groups of teachers and leaders at three schools, and with a group of teacher educators. With the Cultural Historical Activity Theory as the framework, central concepts within this theory have been key elements in the study. The findings reveal that collective collaborative learning is a positive form of enhancing the professional development of teachers and that both structure and culture should interact when fostering development in school. The study also shows that the development of teacher educators’ research competence can enhance development and learning both in teacher education and in school, and also improve the developmental transfer between these two arenas.     

The importance of environment for teacher professional learning in Malta and Scotland

Current reforms in the Maltese and Scottish educational contexts can only be fully implemented if teachers radically transform the way they teach. Teacher professional learning is an important mechanism that policy-makers, school leaders and administrators have to achieve this. Teacher professional learning is, above all, situated within the specific social workplace environment of teacher practice. Thus, schools need to be recognised as important sites of professional learning for teachers. In Malta and Scotland teachers were asked about their professional learning to identify how the learning environment within individual schools affects professional learning. In both countries, collaboration and school leadership were key components in determining a school’s learning environment. Data analysis led to the production of examples of expansive and restrictive features. Policy-makers, school leaders and administrators can use these features to examine how schools operate in terms of helping or hindering professional learning in the school environment.     

Purposeful Tensions: Lessons Learned from Metaphors in Teacher Candidates' Digital Stories

This collective case study examines how two teacher candidates' digital story projects created in literacy methods courses made visible their negotiated and evolving visions of teaching and learning. The digital stories were created to show and describe their future literacy classrooms. Using metaphoric analysis, the researchers uncovered the implicit metaphors of teachers and students present in each of the teacher candidates' digital stories. Looking across these metaphors, tensions and alignments between how the teacher candidates envisioned the role of teacher and the role of student and how these relate to prominent models of education including Industrial and Inquiry models are apparent. Implications for practice include modifications made to literacy methods courses to support teacher candidates to begin the negotiation of their professional identities as they explore multiple experiences of teaching and learning. These modifications include: (a) prompting teacher candidates to see themselves as readers, writers, and inquirers; (b) modeling and experiencing inquiry in teacher education coursework; and (c) providing opportunities for teacher candidates to experience purposeful tensions within their teacher education classes.     

Who am I and where do I belong? The perception and evaluation of teacher leaders concerning teacher leadership practices and micropolitics in schools

The phenomenon of teachers taking on leadership tasks beyond their classroom duties has become widespread internationally. While presented as a catalyst for educational improvement, it blurs the traditional division between teaching and leading and therefore challenges the conventional professional relationships in schools as well as the professional self-understanding of teacher leaders. This article reports on an exploratory study of the perceptions of teacher leaders in Flemish primary and secondary schools. By conducting semi-structured interviews of 26 teacher leaders, we collected data concerning their tasks and the consequences for both their social–professional relations with teacher colleagues and school leaders and their professional self-understanding. From a micro-political perspective, the results demonstrate how teacher leadership introduces new structures of interactions in schools that makes teacher leaders find themselves continuously juggling between two different agendas of professional interests: obtaining recognition as a teacher leader by their colleagues as well as maintaining their social–professional relationships with their colleagues.     

Meeting Literacy Needs of Pre‐service Cohorts: Ethical dilemmas for socially just teacher educators

Australian teacher education, like the rest of the university sector in Australia, is under significant pressure and highly politicised. In this paper, we examine ethical dilemmas facing teacher educators who, in a context of difficult and eroding work conditions, grapple with literacy needs of pre‐service students. We focus particularly on building an analysis and a broad framework for improving university literacy work, encompassing ethical commitments to our students, our employing institutions and, most importantly, to children and youth from families less powerfully positioned in the social structure and in Australian schools. Our analysis is informed by the conceptual framework of Pierre Bourdieu and by critical literacy work, especially that of African‐American educator Lisa Delpit. The paper concludes with suggestions for framing literacy work within a teacher education programme designed explicitly around social justice ethics.     

A comparative study of GCE and international curricula in Singapore and Australia

This paper is a comparative analysis of global citizenship education (GCE) in two primary schools, an international school in Singapore and an independent school in Australia, focusing on the implementation of GCE practices through the adoption of international education models - the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) and the International Baccalaureate Programme (IB) respectively, to create hybrid curricula. The research findings indicate that the curriculum and resources, school culture, school leaders’ and teachers’ values, as well as the utilisation of human and financial resources all influence how the schools engage with GCE in their quest towards internationalisation. A key overarching finding of the research relates to the tensions between critical democratic and educational domains and neo-liberal market rationales, which had significantly affected the schools’ decisions in curricula and GCE enactment within both schools. Despite their commitment to GCE ideals, both schools were equally mindful about being distinctive and remaining competitive within their educational markets.     

Teacher Leadership in Practice: Mapping the Negotiation of the Position of the Special Educational Needs Coordinator in Schools

Special needs care has taken on a substantial evolution within education. Special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs) are no longer considered to provide individual guidance to students but to support and professionalize regular teachers in fulfilling special needs care in their classroom. In doing so, they act as teacher leaders. Many concerns are raised about how teacher leadership may interfere with the existing working relationships in schools. In this study, we use Positioning Theory as a theoretical approach to obtain an in-depth understanding of how the position of the SENCO and the responsibilities attached to this position are negotiated within the school. The findings illustrate that SENCOs received the legitimacy to act as teacher leaders when their expertise was recognized, when teachers perceived their task as first-line helpers, and when school principals were willing to release power.     

教师专业伦理实践困境与解困路径

根据对近年来国际教师专业伦理研究重要文献的梳理,本文首先分析教师专业伦理的实践渊源,进而分析教师在专业伦理实践中遭遇的几类困境:源于伦理价值间矛盾的伦理困境,教育活动中复杂的权力互动形成的伦理困境,以及学校内部的力量对比所推动的伦理困境.最后从规范伦理和德行伦理角度为教师走出伦理困境指出可能路径.     

应用现代信息技术促进教师教育信息化

教师教育信息化是教育信息化的一个重要内容,其核心目标是提高教师的信息素养.如何卓有成效的开展教师信息素养教育成为各级教育行政部门、学校和教师共同关注的课题,也是贯彻落实“以人为本”为核心的科学发展观的必然要求.本文从研究教师教育信息化内涵人手,通过对应用现代信息技术进行教师教育的现状分析,提出了培养教师教育信息化能力的思路与措施.     

Statement of Theme

The objective of this article is to examine the rhetoric of educational leadership within a Scandinavian context, as it occurs within the framework of New Public Management. The study asks questions about new demands on leadership expressed in policy documents.

Local culture and distinctive aspects of national life tend to modify external influences such as those inherent in the philosophy and practice of New Public Management. Scandinavian schools reflect key elements of Scandinavian life such as a commitment to collaboration, democracy, and individual enlightenment. These are themes in the curriculum of many of these countries and key values of the teachers who lead the learning processes. The range of tensions and dilemmas that teachers and their leaders are now facing are a direct result of the clash between generic public policy and the distinctive approach to support life and democratic culture in the Scandinavian countries. School leaders, it seems, are clearly in the middle of this clash and must mediate between these two trends. To remind us of the ultimate objectives of schooling, we outline a Scandinavian vision of democratic reflective leadership.     

“Don’t rock the boat”: conflicting mentor and pre-service teacher narratives of professional experience

This article examines conflicting mentor (school-based supervising teacher) and pre-service teacher narratives of professional experience in schools. It draws on a small narrative inquiry about the mentoring relationship in teacher education. Interview conversations were analysed using “writing as a method of inquiry”, allowing for a recursive understanding of the competing discourses that emerged, and highlighting the tensions in the mentoring relationship. While the pre-service teachers interviewed for this study expected professional experience to provide opportunities for innovation and collaboration, mentors tended to view the relationship as assimilation into the profession. Two points of challenge are identified where disruption to the tensions that arise from these competing narratives is needed if changes to educational equity are to occur.