Dispositions as goals for teacher education

It is proposed that professional dispositions be added to professional knowledge and skills as goals for teacher education programs. Dispositions, which are defined as summaries of act frequencies or trends in behavior, are contrasted with habits, skills, attitudes, and traits. Professional dispositions are treated as “habits of mind” that give rise to the employment of skills and are ideally manifested by skillful behavior. Justifications for including dispositions in the goals of teacher education are also proposed.     

Professional learning community process in the United States: conceptualization of the process and district support for schools

Abstract

As the Professional Learning Community (PLC) process becomes embedded within schools, the level of district support has a direct impact on whether schools have the ability to re-culture and sustain highly effective collaborative practices. The purpose of this article is to share a professional learning community conceptual framework from the US, and to highlight recent findings relating to district level support for the PLC process in schools. The professional learning community conceptual model is organized around five dimensions: shared and supportive leadership, shared values and vision, collaborative learning and application, shared personal practice, and supportive conditions. The overarching question guiding this qualitative research study is: How do school district personnel (central office staff) support schools in the professional learning community process? Findings reveal the importance of transformative and proactive district involvement, and the use of transparency, trust, accountability, and autonomy in school re-culturing. It was also found that developing leadership capacity, embedding professional development, and focusing the culture on student success were critically important. As districts provide support for the PLC dimensions and themes, school leaders will have a foundation of curricular strategies, collaborative skills, and necessary resources to serve teachers and students through continuous school improvement.     

Progress at school and school effectiveness: non-cognitive dispositions and within-class markets

The New Zealand Progress at School project, designed to investigate school effects, found that individual progress at school is associated with a set of non-cognitive dispositions, most importantly, aspiration, self-concept, and acceptance of the institutional regime. The few schools identified as over-and under-performing were distinguished by the favourable and unfavourable dispositions of their students. School composition - or mix - effects proved in this study to be minor and relative to the output criterion, and some implications of that, including the selective effects of within-class markets, are discussed with particular reference to another contemporary New Zealand study, the Smithfield project. It is concluded that the study of school effectiveness might usefully include in its models the relationship between the properties of systems, the level of disposition, and the forms of practice they generate.     

TOWARDS A THEORY ON THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL INSPECTIONS

ABSTRACT:  This article describes a theory about the ambition of most Inspectorates to realise 'school improvement through inspection'. Literature about a number of direct and indirect interventions, such as reciprocity, communication and feedback is used to build a theoretical model stating the relations between working methods of school inspectors, reactions of schools and resulting effects and side effects. Finally two types of inspections strategies are described that can be used in different types of schools. We expect schools with a low innovation capacity and few external impulses to be helped best by a directive approach in which an inspector clearly points to the strong and weak points of the school, the probable causes of their level of functioning, and potential ways for improvement. The inspector should pressure the school to change by making written agreements on how to change and by asking the school to work out these agreements in an improvement plan. A school with a high innovation capacity and strong external impulses is expected to do better with a more reserved inspection approach. Inspectors only need to provide this school with some insight into their strong and weak points.     

The Introduction of Personal and Social Education in Secondary Schools in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong the secondary school curriculum has long been criticized for its heavy emphasis on academic performance and examination-oriented approaches to subject learning. As a consequence, pupils in Hong Kong only possess knowledge and skills that could carry them through examinations. They lack qualities and dispositions as well as related skills and understandings which will help them to make sense of this complicated society. It is noted that time has come for a reflection of the secondary curriculum and this article argues for the introduction of Personal and Social Education in secondary schools in Hong Kong which can bring relevance, breath, and balance to the curriculum from three aspects – aims of education, change in society, and nature of work.     

A Mothers Thoughts on Bullying,Failure and One Special Needs Child

In Hong Kong the secondary school curriculum has long been criticized for its heavy emphasis on academic performance and examination-oriented approaches to subject learning. As a consequence, pupils in Hong Kong only possess knowledge and skills that could carry them through examinations. They lack qualities and dispositions as well as related skills and understandings which will help them to make sense of this complicated society. It is noted that time has come for a reflection of the secondary curriculum and this article argues for the introduction of Personal and Social Education in secondary schools in Hong Kong which can bring relevance, breath, and balance to the curriculum from three aspects – aims of education, change in society, and nature of work.     

School leadership and professional learning community: case study of two senior high schools in Northeast China

Abstract

This article presents findings of a qualitative study on school leadership and professional learning community in two high achieving senior high schools in Northeast China. The findings show that teachers participated in school-based communities of professional learning, such as Teaching and Research Groups, Lesson Preparation Groups, and Grade Groups. While the term professional learning community (PLC) was not commonplace, the actual practices of PLC characterized by collective enquiry and collaborative learning became the norm in the two schools. School leaders demonstrated strong instructional leadership and visionary stewardship for school continuous improvement. They played a critical role in developing and communicating a shared vision, shaping a culture of trust, supporting and monitoring collegial learning. Teacher leadership was evident in collaborative teams and expertise leadership was acknowledged. Emotional bonds and shared responsibility in these teams strengthened professionalism. Concerted efforts were made to create aligned structures and processes that support collective enquiry, and to develop a culture of collaborative learning that builds collective capacities. Developing and sustaining the embedded PLC process within a school seems to provide a promising infrastructure for supporting school improvement in the Chinese school context.     

‘Wicked Problems’ and the Work of the School

As communities respond to challenges, threats and opportunities, organisations are changing in significant ways — new organisational designs, new communities of practice, new skills and new forms of human capital are sought. Yet K-12 school systems appear to be permanently failing organisations, not changing despite being shrouded by the rhetoric of change and entrapped in the competing expectations of different stakeholders. Using the idea of creative design and innovation as the cornerstone for learning and a focus on wicked problems for authentic audiences for the work of students and teachers, this article explores the opportunity of such a change and the barriers to enactment. Case examples are given of problem-based learning with design at the heart of the learning process and an analysis of schools as permanently failing organisations is provided. Since the human capital needs of the 21st century require different skills from those of the last century, this approach is seen as essential. It demands a transformation of our schools, not continuous improvement.     

Educational reforms and the practices of professional learning community in Hong Kong primary schools

Abstract

This study explored the characteristics of professional learning communities (PLCs) in Hong Kong primary schools. It investigated the profiles of the strengths of professional learning community in schools under study and particularly examined the practices in schools which were identified as strong PLCs. It extends research on PLCs in the Hong Kong context and formulates a quantitative perspective to compare and validate PLC variables across schools in Hong Kong. The Professional Learning Community Questionnaire (PLCQ) for Hong Kong schools was developed to assess the PLC practices in six different areas: leadership for teacher learning, collaborative learning capacity, student-focused orientation, a culture of sharing, mutual understanding and support, and continuous professional development. A composite construct, the Professional Learning Community Index (PLCI) expressed in quantitative terms was utilized to assess the strength of PLC in a school. The research findings show that within the schools which were identified as strong professional learning communities, both the school leaders and teachers had strong emphases on the six subscales of the PLC practices.     

Knowledge management implementation in the school context: case studies on knowledge leadership,storytelling, and taxonomy

Teachers and school administrators in Hong Kong have had to cope with more work and performance pressure as they strive to implement educational reforms aimed at deepening students’ life-long learning skills. Management systems, which save time and transfer ideas, experiences, and knowledge more efficiently could help schools meet reform goals and relieve the occupational stress that inevitably accompanies change and progress. This paper explores the effect of knowledge management (KM) for school development by reviewing three cases selected from a school improvement project entitled “Knowledge Management and Primary School Development”. The project was launched specifically to determine if KM practices can assist educators to cope with added pressures and rise to the challenges of education reforms. The case studies illustrate three separate approaches to incorporating KM systems. Problems faced by these case-schools included declining school competitiveness, time-consuming data storage and retrieval practices, and hierarchical communication structures that stunted feedback from the teachers who are on the front line of educational reform. Interviews were conducted with school principals, middle managers, and teachers. The results show that the core KM strategies of personalization and codification can be adopted to improve school development. Knowledge leadership, knowledge sharing culture, and knowledge management system support were identified as success factors for schools to implement KM.     

Rethinking school effectiveness and improvement: a question of paradigms

The purpose of this article is to contribute to progressive school change by developing a more systematic critique of school effectiveness (SE) and school improvement (SI) as paradigms. Diverse examples of paradigms and paradigm change in non-educational fields are used to create a model of paradigms for application to SE and SI, and to explore the implications of their hegemony, their rootedness in a neoliberal policy environment, and their limitations as theories and methodologies of school evaluation and change. The article seeks to identify reasons for the inadequacy of orthodox SI in helping schools face contemporary challenges, including schools serving populations burdened by poverty, and finally identifies some alternative approaches to educational change. The article draws examples from an English context, but with international resonances.     

Developing the potential for sustainable improvement in underperforming schools: Capacity building in the socio-cultural dimension

This mixed-method study examines Arizona principals’ capacity-building skills and practices in Tier III schools aimed at developing potential for sustained improvements in student outcomes. Data sources included surveys (62 individuals) and semistructured interviews (29 individuals) of principals and staff (e.g. teachers, instructional coaches, assistant principals) who participated in grant-funded leadership training over an 18-month period. The theoretical framework consisted of leadership in the sociocultural dimension (Ylimaki et al. in Leadersh Policy Sch 11(2):168–193, 2012) and capacity building for sustainable improvement in high-capacity Schools (Mitchell and Sackney in Sustainable improvement: building learning communities that endure. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, 2009). Findings indicated that: (1) schools were not at high-levels of capacity building; (2) those schools in process of building capacity for sustainable improvement demonstrate a directive leadership approach; (3) school development towards high capacity focused on micro-level processes (e.g., professional learning communities); and (4) little attention was given to leadership in the socio-cultural dimension. Implications of the study suggest future research test a leadership development model for Tier III schools that links capacity building leadership and student achievement. The next generation of educational leaders must also have the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and analytical tools to lead schools in both the accountability culture and the macro socio-cultural dimension.     

The impact of primary school quality on learning in Egypt

In many industrialized societies it is suggested that school quality has less than the anticipated impact on student achievement once the influence of the family has been considered. Since schools are more easily amenable to government intervention, the ambiguous showing of schools has not augered well for a public philosophy which portrays schools as agents of social change.This report re-examines the relationships among home, school and achievement performance in the Egyptian context by assaying the relative impact of families and schools on student test performance. This re-examination is undertaken, in part, because in LDCs one of the strongest associations with level of per capita income is the proportion of school age population enrolled in primary classes. This link between primary school attendence and national development places importance on the need to improve the quality of numeracy/literacy skills in order to further increase the efficiency of the Egyptian economy.Similar to findings in other third world primary school systems, the impact of school quality on achievement performance explains more variance than does the influence of the home. Apparently, Egyptian primary schools do provide a learning milieu independent of home resources which affects pupil test performance on basic literacy skills.Given the impact of separate home and school inputs to achievement performance mentioned above, the last question raised in the paper asks whether school quality in Egypt affects the learning of socially disadvantaged children more than others. This can be checked by examining the interactive term between home and school when a regression is performed on student achievement. Findings reveal that indeed the incremental effects of school quality on the poor are greater than those found for children of advantaged backgrounds. Apparently, Egypt's longstanding egalitarian ideology espousing educational opportunity has paid some dividents to those children of the poor who have remained in school.     

Moving on and Moving up: Confronting the Complexities of School Improvement in the Improving Schools Project

Despite recent advances, the research literature on school effectiveness, school improvement and educational change has relatively little to say about how schools become effective over time, and what strategies or combination of strategies work best to improve schools at different levels of effectiveness. A recent British research study – ‘The Improving Schools’ project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council – has been designed to explore these (and other) issues. This article describes the rationale for the fieldwork aspect of the project, which includes 13 secondary schools from 3 English local education authorities and presents 4 themes that have emerged from the first phase of the research that cast some light on the phenomena of the ‘improving school’. These themes – multiple starting points, the complex interactive and intuitive nature of school improvement strategies, the missing instructional level, and the importance of context – are described. The article concludes that given the non-linear and unpredictable nature of improvement seen in the case studies, schools need to become more skilled in ‘change agentry’ in order to continue to improve.     

In the Web: Internal and External Influences Affecting School Improvement

ABSTRACT

A more theoretical approach to effective schools research is needed, and a political systems model is an appropriate starting‐point since it directs attention to power issues, which are critical to school improvement. The model suggests that both internal and external influences on schools are important. There are four main classes of external influence: administrative; professional; societal; and familial. Each has the potential for strengthening or weakening school effectiveness. Studies of family influence on student learning and attitudes emphasize the potential of collaborative arrangements in which families and schools work together.

We argue that classroom and school improvement cannot be attained without changing the relationships between the three central figures ‐ teacher, student, and parent; this triad model is an ‘inside out’ version of school improvement, in which classroom and school improvement occurs as fundamental relationships between the triad members become more collaborative.

Our web metaphor suggests that those interested in research on effective schools should be sensitive to the impact of external influences; and that effective schools link participants together into a collaborative and responsive mutual influence system, the integrated school environment, the school level version of a political systems model, in which all gain.     

Match: The Report of the School

Schools are currently suffering from considerable ‘innovation overload’ with multiple changes being demanded by the Education Reform Act and other sources. Tom Peters (1988) has argued that a similar turbulent situation exists in US business and industry and suggests that the most successful companies are those which are able to ‘Thrive on Chaos’. LEAs and schools need knowledge and skills about school improvement and this article attempts to provide research‐based information to help them cope with innovation and improve teaching and learning.

School improvement is seen as a combination of previous research on the management of change and school effectiveness. Eight factors which seem to be related to effective schools are listed and knowledge about the change process is used to consider how a school could be improved. In order to offer practical help to LEAs and schools a set of guidelines is provided and recent research findings are discussed under each heading. The article concludes with an outline of a possible LEA school improvement project, involving a set of stages.     

Urban Schools Rethink Themselves: Developing Instructional Skills in the Process of Change

The Urban Review - Educational reform challenges teachers to change both their schools and their craft. Can skills learned in the process of school improvement transfer to teaching? The Accelerated...     

Ethos,Habitus and Situation for Learning: An ecology

It is argued that the concept of ethos connects with Bourdieu's 'habitus' and the notion of situated learning. It can be argued that ethos can be defined as an organisation's habitus. An ecological perspective suggests that habituses external to the school provide dispositions that continuously construct and re-construct school ethos, and the evolving ethos itself provides developing dispositions and contexts for situated co-learning and participation in communities of practice; for example, shared learning about how to learn. Some implications for school improvement and leadership in schools are discussed.     

日本专门学校办学特色与思考

日本专门学校大都由个人或私营企业出资兴办,日本政府给予了举办者积极的政策支持。学校以培养学生掌握一门实用的技能为办学宗旨,毕业生深受企业欢迎。在学校的招生和就业指导机构,学生享受到了“入学-教育-毕业-继续教育”的一条龙服务。从多种渠道挖掘兼职教师的做法以及极强的市场观念,使日本专门学校获得了长足的发展。围绕某一服务领域,培育强势专业,实施跨地区办学、连锁式设校,已成为目前日本专门学校的一种办学趋势。