School Culture,School Effectiveness and School Improvement

The relevance of the concept of culture to school effectiveness and school improvement is explored. Two typologies are developed. The first proposes four ‘ideal type’ school cultures, based on two underlying domains; the second, a more elaborate and dynamic model, proposes two ‘ideal type’ school cultures, based on five underlying structures. Each is discussed for its heuristic, conceptual, methodological and explanatory potential in research in the fields of school effectiveness and school improvement. In distinguishing collegial cultures from collaborative styles, the article advances recent writing on collaboration. From the theory hypotheses about the relationship between school culture and school effectiveness and improvement can be derived as well as techniques to test such hypotheses.     

Collaboration as a Predictor for Success in School Reform

Although school reform has captured the attention of this country, considerable controversy exists regarding the feasibility of reform, appropriate strategies for implementing reforms, and the adequacy of preparation of school professionals who will work in reformed schools. We propose that collaboration is the theme which unites the various dimensions of school reform and that the potential of school reform success can be analyzed by examining the extent to which the conditions needed for collaboration can be created in schools. We apply this notion to three key reform issues: (a) professionalism; (b) empowerment; and (c) restructured schools, specifically as recommended in special education. We conclude that educators should more carefully deliberate the conditions required for collaboration, should more directly address the preparation of school personnel for collaborative activities, and should call for realistically matching expectations for reform with implementation opportunities and constraints.     

Professional Development Schools: New Opportunities for Training School Counselors

The authors examine how counselor educators can become involved in professional development schools to create enhanced training opportunities for school counseling internship students. The benefits of collaboration between university and public school faculties are explored, and research opportunities are discussed. Counselor educators' expertise in research and program evaluation, combined with school counselors' pragmatic experience in dealing with real‐life issues, may promote best practices in the schools and improved training for school counselors and can set the stage for collaboration as an educational team at the preservice level.     

中小学教师职业嗓音负荷问题研究

课堂教学用嗓有不同于日常言语交流用嗓的特点。通过调查研究分析中小学教师职业嗓音负荷问题,提出从预防训练入手,采取高校与教育行政部门合作开展教师职前职后嗓音培训的方式,从技术对策和组织措施两个方面改善教师嗓音问题。     

Building a Bridge: Counselor Educator–School Counselor Collaboration

Despite calls for collaboration between counselor educators and school counselors, little is known about how collaboratives develop and what, if any, benefits are derived by the participants. In this article, the authors describe an 8‐year collaboration between a group of university‐based counselor educators and school counselors in 1 partnership community. Interviews with selected members of the collaborative were conducted to assess the participants' perceptions of the impact of this collaborative on their professional lives. A qualitative analysis of interviews revealed that renewal, professional development, and community are central to the experience of participants. Implications for future collaborations and research are discussed.     

School collaborations within the contemporary English education system: possibilities and constraints

This paper’s focus is on an alliance of schools in England that came together as part of the National Teaching Schools initiative. Drawing on interviews from Head Teachers within the alliance, the paper explores issues of school collaboration from a premise that such collaboration is paramount to school improvement within the current climate of increased school autonomy and increasingly rigid accountabilities. The Head Teachers highlight key factors that supported effective school-to-school collaborations associated with sharing their expertise and fostering active and cooperative connections. They also, however, highlight factors that undermined genuine collaboration associated with a prioritising of the performative demands and economic imperatives of the audit culture. The impact of this prioritising should, it is argued, be considered in any analysis of school collectives within the current English education system – particularly given their proliferation and the responsibility placed on them in terms of school improvement.     

论红色资源是优质的学校体育资源

红色体育资源是红色资源的重要组成部分,可以直接利用和开发利用;红色资源蕴含可供挖掘改造为学校体育资源的生产生活和军事活动元素;红色资源与学校体育资源存在育人功能的互补性。因此,红色资源转化为学校体育资源切实可行。红色资源转化为学校体育资源具有以下优势:有利于在学校体育中进行思想政治教育;有利于培养学生勇敢顽强、吃苦耐劳、团结协作等优良品质;简单易行,有利于弥补学校体育资源不足。     

Identical,Fraternal, or Separated at Birth: A Case Study of Educator Teams Within American-Israeli School Twinning

School-to-school collaboration has emerged as a key paradigm for fostering personal and institutional connections between Israeli and Diaspora youth, educators, and schools. Using the findings of a multi-year case study of a high school level twinning initiative, this article describes the challenges to this form of transnational collaboration and takes the first steps to articulating a theory of intervention of Israeli-Diaspora school twinning at the organizational level. The article suggests two processes, collaborative capacity and cultural competence, critical to development of positive and productive relationships in school partnerships. Institutional twinning is suggested as the goal of these interventions at the organizational level.     

学校符号化结构与领袖教师的沟通行为——以院校协作式学校改进为背景

在院校协作式的学校改进中,负责协作计划的校内领袖教师起着重要作用。在推动学校改进计划的过程中,领袖教师需要与相关人员开展大量的沟通活动,而这些沟通行为又与学校的符号化结构也即沟通规则系统密切相关。学校的沟通规则系统分为正式沟通规则以及非正式沟通规则,领袖教师的沟通行为要建基于学校已有的各类沟通规则;同时在学校改进的契机下,领袖教师又会重新构建学校的沟通规则系统。     

Parent Resource Centers: An Innovative Mechanism for Parental Involvement in School Choice Decisions

This qualitative investigation reports on the use of Parent Resource Centers (PRCs) as a mechanism for parental involvement in public school choice decisions. Interviews with parents and staff at seven PRCs in Florida revealed that PRCs employ multiple strategies to communicate choice information to parents: community-, school- and media-based outreach; outreach to hard-to-reach parents; and collaboration with other agencies. Personalized assistance and provision of choice materials are also highlighted as useful strategies. Results indicate that there is low level of awareness about school choice options among parents and thus clear and consistent communication of choice information is needed. While PRCs hold promise for increasing parental engagement in school choice, structural and systemic barriers to exercising choice decisions such as transportation and collaboration between schools and PRCs should be addressed. Methodologically, this study illustrates the power of triangulating data from parents and PRCs to illuminate our understanding of how parents make choice decisions.     

The Nature of Social Practice Among School Professionals: Consequences of the Academic Pressure Exerted by Teachers in Their Teaching

The purpose of this study was to measure teachers' views about trust between teachers, trust between the principal and teachers, peer collaboration, positive attitudes towards the school and how these antecedents influence the academic pressure teachers put on pupils with respect to learning and learning intensity and performance. The methodology involved was a cross-sectional survey of 234 teachers from 11 Norwegian schools. The structural equation analysis indicated that principal-teacher trust has a moderately high impact on such constructs as “teacher-teacher trust” and “academic pressure” and that “teacher-teacher trust” has a moderately high impact on teachers' “peer collaboration”. “Peer collaboration” has a lower impact on “academic pressure”, while the impact of “positive attitudes towards the school” was moderately high. The article concludes with a discussion of the knowledge basis for understanding how social practice among teachers and school leaders in school communities is mobilised for a sustained focus on pupil learning. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.     

School leaders’ practices for innovative use of digital technologies in schools

School leaders’ practices to support the innovative use of digital technologies for teaching and learning and the conditions for technology-enhanced learning were studied in a 1:1 laptop initiative in two schools over a period of 3 years in Umeå, Sweden. The aim of this paper is to explore, analyze and discuss the possibilities and challenges in the final phase of this 1:1 initiative from the perspective of the school leader. The school leaders saw possibilities in new methods of working, sharing and collaboration, and created a beneficial environment for the use of digital technologies in teaching. The challenges were technical problems, supporting teachers in their work, and finding time to prioritize leadership for the use of digital technologies. How school organizers support school leaders’ practices in creating beneficial conditions for technology-enhanced learning will be important for how school leaders’ practices support, promote, and advance innovative and sustainable teaching and learning environments through the use of digital technologies.     

高等师范学校特殊教育专业课程设置的现状与思考

文章对高等师范学校特殊教育专业课程设置的现状进行了分析,阐明现行课程设置中存在三大问题,即课程内容的体系缺乏整体优化,课程计划的制定缺乏认知心理学基础,校际间缺乏合作;并结合国外的经验和特殊学校正在进行的课改的需要,提出一些建议和改革措施,以供同仁们参考。     

Collaboration between Faculty Members and School Counselors: An Experience from a Case-based Course

This article describes the experience in Spain of a specific collaboration between university teachers and school counselors, which used case-based approaches in a teacher training program. The collaboration ran for four years and involved 300 graduate students, two university teachers, and six school counselors. Three basic features enabled this collaboration: a) horizontal relationships, b) a spirit of mutual help and confidence, and c) autonomy. The outcome of the experience can be evaluated in terms of both the case-based teaching process itself and its impact on student learning and the professional development of teachers and counselors involved.     

人机协同支持下的小学英语写作教学研究

人工智能和大数据挖掘技术的快速发展,为精准化教学的有效开展提供了技术支撑。但在实际教学过程中,仍存在缺乏学生学情数据驱动教学的问题,故探索一种教师与计算机合理协同的工作模式意义重大。文章基于"人机协同"理念,以某小学英语写作教学的实际情况为切入点,构建小学英语写作评价指标体系,提出基于人机协同的小学英语写作教学模型,最后开展作文教学实践。研究表明,此模型能够精准定位写作的薄弱点,为教师开展精准化教学和学生个性化补救提供了数据支持,从而促进了小学生英语写作能力的提升。     

论高校产学合作的长效机制构建

产学合作是推动产业创新与教育发展的有效手段之一。目前,我国高校的产学合作已经有了基本路向和初步成果,但深度合作及长效机制构建仍需不断实践与深入研究,只有促进产学合作政策机制、运行机制和评价机制互相渗透、互相支持,最终才能构成完备的产—学合作生态系统,促进其持续、健康发展。     

School climate,principal support and collaboration among Portuguese teachers

This article analyses the relationship between school principal support and teacher collaboration among Portuguese teachers. Data were collected from a random sample of 234 teachers in middle and secondary schools. The use of a combined approach using linear and multiple regression tests concluded that the school principal support, through the influence of the variables ‘emotional and informational support’ and ‘support for professional development’, can predict teacher’s involvement in collaboration. This global data is discussed in light of a theoretical framework and compared to data from previous research. The implications of the main findings are discussed and some recommendations are made.     

英国特色学校发展的绩效与启示

英国特色学校在发展过程中逐步形成了"以科带校"的发展模式和个性化的课程设置;特色学校在与其他学校分享经验和与社区的合作中实现了双赢,提高了教育质量。分析和借鉴英国特色学校的认定标准和成功经验,有助于从学校办学模式、课程设置和绩效评估等方面为我国普通高中的多样化发展提供现实指导。     

Teacher Collaboration in Curriculum Change: The Implementation of Technology Education in the Primary School

The problem which stimulated this research is that in Australia, primary school teachers are expected to teach a new subject, Technology, but have had little training consistent with the newly adopted technology curriculum. Using case studies from two Western Australian schools, the paper documents the ways in which one teacher from each school has established successful classroom strategies for incorporating technology into her classroom, and how she has had a significant effect on the practice of other teachers in her school. The relationship between one pair of teachers in each school is used to explore the nature of their collaboration. One pair used joint work, with shared responsibility for the work of teaching, an example of deep collaboration. The other pairing was more one-sided, a collaborative relationship better described as one of aid and assistance. Both relationships were based on mutual respect, and demonstrate how teachers choose to work together towards a common purpose, the implementation of technology education. Implications from the study are discussed in terms of leadership and collaboration, time and integration, and teachers' knowledge.     

School Climate,School Improvement and Site-based Management

This article examines the relationship between school organisational climate and the school's preparedness to undertake restructuring and improvement. Over the last two decades, much research into school improvement and effectiveness has indicated the importance of school climate for a school's efforts to change. For school-level personnel, an understanding of the nature of the prevailing climate would seem valuable in determining the school's willingness and capacity to embark on school improvement initiatives and to evaluate the impact that such initiatives have on the nature of the school's climate. The research reported here was conducted in three phases. The first phase involved the assessment of the prevailing organisational climate in 30 secondary schools drawn from three State education systems in Australia. The second phase involved analysing and documenting the principles and school-level process associated with the establishment of site-based management in the three State education systems. The third phase sought teachers' perceptions about the impact of site-based management on school improvement planning, collaboration and curriculum leadership, and classroom practices. The research indicated the existence of an important relationship between organisational climate and the school's capacity to implement and sustain authentic site-based management. Where the prevailing organisational climate is negative, tailored ‘front-end’ strategies designed to improve the climate might be undertaken prior to the school embarking on substantial school improvement initiatives. Finally, assessing organisational climate can provide information about a school's preparedness to undertake change, and a re-assessment of climate following a change initiative can provide evaluative data about the extent of change within the school. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.