Systemic Change for School Improvement

Despite the nationwide emphasis on school improvement, the complexities of accomplishing desired systemic changes have been given short shrift in policy, research, training, and practice. This article focuses on the problem of expanding school improvement planning to better address how schools and districts intendto accomplish designated changes. Specifically, weframe and outline some basic considerations related to systemic change, and, to encourage a greater policy discussion of the complexities of implementing major school improvements on a large scale, we propose a set of policy actions.     

Systemic Change: Critically Reviewing the Literature

Systemic change has become a floating signifier for any broad-scale change that an author wishes to suggest is current and worthy of federal funding consideration. For whatever political reasons, the term systemic change has become misused and misunderstood. This study looks critically at the sort of literature being promulgated under the rubric of systemic change. After an exhaustive ERIC search, the data suggest that most studies are theoretical rather than field-based, conservative in their definition of change, and non-systemic in both theory and practice. Suggestions for those interested in pursuing research under the rubric of systemic change are provided. Résumé Le fait que le terme de «changement systémique» soit devenu un signifiant flou, utilisé pour des changements à n’importe quelle échelle est fréquent et mérite qu’on s’y arrête. Pour certaines raisons politiques, ce terme est devenu mécompris et utilisé à mauvais escient. Cette étude passe en revue de façon critique la littérature présentée sous la rubrique «changement systémique». Une recherche exhaustive dans la banque de données ERIC (recherche en éducation) laisse à penser que la plupart des études sont de type théorique plutôt qu’empirique, conservatrices dans leur définition du changement et non systémiques dans leur approche tant théorique que pratique. Des suggestions sont faites à ceux qui souhaiteraient utiliser la rubrique «changement systémique» dans leurs recherches. (Traduction: Catherine Cusin, CSRE, Aarau / Suisse)     

Systemic Change in Vocational Training Institutions in France

The Specialised Vocational Training Institutions (IMPro) in France have recently entered into a difficult, but important period of time. During the past few years, IMPro have faced increasing demand from the public and government to provide quality service to adolescents with intellectual disabilities. IMPro have been also faced with the challenge of being accountable for the low employment rate of adolescents with intellectual disability and their failure to obtain and/or maintain jobs due to lack of technical and social skills. The purpose of the present work was to respond to the increasing and urgent needs in IMPro by designing and developing a training system to enhance organisational productivity, increase employment rate, and eliminate the problems faced by workers with intellectual disabilities. This article describes the process of organisational changes in IMPro using systems thinking. It discusses the model, methods, tools, and techniques used in designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating the new system of training in IMPro in an attempt to improve the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of their training programs.     

语境对词义演变和词义运用的影 响

从语境与词义的定义入手,结合相关语料,剖析语境对词义演变和词义运用产生的影响。结果表明,语境不仅是导致词义演变的一个重要因素,而且还会影响到词义组合在语言中的具体运用。     

Exploding the Ivory Tower: Systemic Change for Higher Education

Higher education faces increasing pressures to change to better meet the needs of modern society. Systemic change applies systems thinking and systems theory to change a complex system to a new paradigm. This paper argues for the need for the systemic change of higher education and presents educational technologists as particularly well placed to lead this change.     

A Tap on the Shoulder: External Influences as Catalysts for Professional Change

Not all community college presidents begin their careers with the goal of becoming president, yet something causes them to alter their initial career paths to seek a presidency. Understanding how community college leaders make the decision to seek and subsequently prepare for a presidency can help identify candidates with the potential to fill anticipated vacancies, meet national needs, and lead innovation. This article explores one set of findings from a year-long study that reveals the importance of external influences as catalysts for changing a potential leader's career path.     

Designing a Responsive e-Learning Infrastructure: Systemic Change in Higher Education

As university administrators respond to increasing demands of the educational market to offer greater opportunities for online learning, their capacity to create an economically stable, sustainable, yet rich teaching and learning environment deserves immediate and continued attention. A university-wide study involving 130 participants examined the e-learning perceptions and needs of faculty, students, and staff as part of a needs assessment of the e-learning unit. Results suggest that faculty recognize the importance of e-learning, that students covet it for its convenience, and that real-time technology support was the top priority. Both the school and university resources, however, are not well aligned to meet these needs and remain largely separate and unintegrated. Implications suggest a need to increase the overall ease of use for the adoption of e-learning as a new technology for teaching and learning of both faculty and students and more closely aligned department and university resources.     

On Change and Diversity: The Role of Governmental Policy and Environmental Influences

This article addresses the issue of change in the government‐university relationship. As has become increasingly clear for both analysts of higher education policy and for administrators in higher education institutions, a fundamental shift in the relationship between national governments and higher education institutions is taking place in many western European countries. In some countries, these changes are occurring at greater speed than in others, but the movement to what has been labelled “state supervision” is quite dominant. The first part of the article analyzes the rationale for this change at system level by tracing its historical imperatives; after which it discusses the concept of the supervisory governance model. The second part focuses in particular on one of the key objectives of higher education policy, namely diversity, and addresses the question of the extent to which a supervisory governance strategy can contribute to the attainment of this objective and what doing so implies for the role and function of higher education institutions. By focussing on the specific issue of diversity, the authors intend to demonstrate the dynamic relationship between governments and higher education institutions that is implied in the supervisory model.     

Addressing Special Education Inequity Through Systemic Change: Contributions of Ecologically Based Organizational Consultation

Since the inception of special education, scholars and practitioners have been concerned about the disproportionate representation of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds among students identified with disabilities. Professional efforts to address this disproportionality have encompassed a range of targets, but scholars increasingly view disproportionality as a complex, multiply-determined problem that requires systemic change to ameliorate disparities. In this article, we describe a framework for systemic change to foster equity in special education identification and placement. We discuss the use of ecologically oriented organizational consultation as a means of facilitating systemic change, emphasizing the role of stakeholders, and the implications for school psychology practice and training.     

Managing Systemic Curriculum Change: A Critical Analysis of Hong Kong's Target-Oriented Curriculum Initiative

Educational innovations have rarely lived up to the expectations of their proponents and have often been reshaped, adopted half-heartedly, ignored or rejected. The difficulty of successfully implementing innovations and the complexity of the change process are now widely acknowledged. Curriculum renewal attempts in the Hong Kong context have also been problematic, with classroom practitioners often not implementing reforms disseminated by centralised government agencies. This paper focuses on Hong Kong's Target-Oriented Curriculum (TOC), a major curriculum renewal initiative designed to improve the quality of learning in local primary schools. The paper describes the innovation, the context into which it is being introduced, and a number of factors that proved problematic in the management of change. The discussion focuses on five elements in the change process, namely practicality, ownership, teacher attitudes, teacher training and resources. From this analysis, some of the implications for curriculum implementation, both in Hong Kong and elsewhere, are identified and discussed.     

A Systemic Change Model for Leadership, Inclusion, and Mentoring (SLIM)

The Systemic Change Model for Leadership, Inclusion, and Mentoring (SLIM) concentrates on systemic changes occurring in child care organizations where the director builds caring, consistent relationships with the total system and empowers the staff and others through leadership. The model recognizes the importance of focusing on system changes by the organization's director. Leadership qualities related to concepts used in business organizations are included in the training. A mentoring program will help the director focus on his or her leadership capabilities in moving the organization to change. An important collaboration component of the model is working with inclusion of children with special needs. Included in the model are: collaboration components, systemic change, director leadership role, business model related to child care, mentoring, and inclusion of children with special needs.     

Undergraduate Understanding of Climate Change: The Influences of College Major and Environmental Group Membership on Survey Knowledge Scores

A survey covering the scientific and social aspects of climate change was administered to examine U.S. undergraduate student mental models, and compare knowledge between groups based on major and environmental group membership. A Knowledge Score (scale 0–35, mean score = 17.84) was generated for respondents at two, central East Coast, U.S. universities (n = 465). Elements of student mental models examined include environmental issue confusion, skepticism, and self-reported understanding. This study finds that students frequently confuse climate change with other environmental issues, and that a substantial majority of students do not have an understanding of climate change that closely matches the scientific model. These misconceptions extend to their understanding of mitigation actions. Environmental group membership is shown to be a greater determinant of climate change knowledge than enrollment in a science major.     

Social Influences on Interest

Where does enduring individual interest come from? One answer is, through social experience that derives from a need for belongingness. Because of this need, students seek social links that influence the development of individual interest. This may occur through experiences with parents, friends, passionate affinity groups, competition, public performance, and culture. School is a social experience that can influence interest development. School-prompted interest and transformative experience should be goals of schooling, yet research suggests that they occur at a lower-than-optimal rate. Research on interest could expand its methods to include techniques such as social network analysis, cell phone data collection, and day reconstruction. Research should attend to the fact that the manifestation of interest is more dynamic and complex than sometimes represented, and real-time experience and remembered experience can be quite different.     

浅谈文化差异对翻译的影响

英汉民族思维方式和文化背景有很大不同,翻译工作必须加强对文化差异的敏感度。只有重视文化内涵,才能克服翻译过程中语言的障碍,真正达到文化交流的目的。文章重点探讨了词义联想与意象、理解和思维、习语、宗教信仰和历史典故等四个方面的文化差异对翻译的影响。     

民族主义对中日两国关系的影响

民族主义对一个国家的独立、自强有着一定的积极作用,但在经济全球化的今天,民族主义却成为阻碍国家之间交流的主要因素。特别是对中日两国关系的发展具有重大影响。