Paying the price for being inclusive: the story of Marshlands

This article illustrates, through the story of one mainstream primary school, the tensions between the inclusion agenda and the standards agenda. The school is situated in an area of social deprivation and nearly half of the school population have been identified as having special educational needs. The story presented in this article illustrates powerfully the inherent injustice of the performative culture which pervades education and the effects of this discourse for children with special educational needs and their teachers. I argue that a policy change is needed to create a more equitable education system and that, in the absence of such a change, schools such as the one presented here will risk being categorised as failing schools. This will have disastrous consequences for the teachers' careers, children's self‐concepts and the inclusion agenda itself.     

Governmentality and My School: School Principals in Societies of Control

Abstract

The introduction of new accountabilities and techniques of government for the purposes of educational reform have created new complexities and tensions for school leadership. Policies such as the publishing of league tables in the UK, high stakes testing in the US and the introduction of the My School website in Australia are particularly significant for school principals. In this article I appeal to the work of Foucault and Deleuze to provide an alternate approach to understanding how principals are constituted as subjects through a range of practices and discourses associated with the introduction of the My School website. I specifically draw upon Foucault’s notion of governmentality and Deleuze’s notion of societies of control to provoke new lines of thought into these government practices. I argue that it is through the performative in the education system that school principals are becoming perpetually assessable subjects.     

Inclusion: the role of special and mainstream schools

For children with special educational needs, seeds were sown for the move away from segregated settings to inclusion in mainstream settings following the 1978 Warnock Report. However, the ‘special versus mainstream school’ debate was re‐ignited in 2005 when Warnock recommended a more significant role for special schools than previously envisaged. Furthermore, an increase in special school placement has been reported, prompting this investigation of the role of special schools in the current climate of inclusion. Literature from Britain, Europe and New Zealand, including research that listens to ‘the voice of the child’, which compares experiences of children with special educational needs in special and mainstream schools, is reviewed. The findings give no clear indication that either setting leads to better outcomes. Tensions between the inclusion agenda and standards agenda are highlighted. It is concluded that special schools in reduced numbers are likely to remain a feature of the inclusive education system, with recommendations for the development of special–mainstream school partnership links. The quality of the setting, regardless of the type of setting, is emphasised, highlighting implications for staff training in special and mainstream schools. Further research comparing outcomes for children educated in different types of provision is recommended.     

Transforming administration to support science in the schoolhouse for students with disabilities

I examine the role that administrators play in facilitating the development, adoption, use, and evaluation of scientifically based interventions within the school culture to support the educational outcomes of students with learning disabilities (LD). Two ways of transforming the administrative role to support science in the schoolhouse are presented; one considers the importance of including language in future legislation that acknowledges the role of administrators in school reform, and the other focuses on establishing a national research agenda addressing issues of leadership and special education. I argue that these 2 venues should serve to identify and to stimulate the use of evidence-based administrative practices that ultimately increase educational outcomes for students with LD, improve teacher instruction, and transform the leadership mission.     

Parent–School Partnership Formation through the School Council in Korea

Official involvement of parents in school education has been very limited until recently within the highly centralized educational administration and school management system in Korea. But, the educational reform in 1995 has brought fundamental changes in educational administration and school management system of Korea. The main approach of the reform is decentralization, which tries to turn over the power of the central government in educational administration and school management to the hands of regional education offices and site schools. According to the reform, the school council was introduced to enforce autonomous and responsible school-based management through broad participation of various stakeholders of education. In this article, I examined the background, roles, and characteristics of the school council, focusing on the new pattern of parent–school participation formation. And based on the findings, I discussed the issues of parents participation and future prospects of the school council and suggested policy implications for better implementation of parent–school partnership through the school council.     

Institutions and organizational change: reforming New York City’s public school system

This paper reviews New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s education reform agenda, ‘Children first’, in the light of organizational theory. I argue that this reform agenda reflects both coercive and mimetic isomorphism, as Bloomberg uses mayoral control to apply business concepts and practices to New York City’s public school system. Through participant observation in a New York City classroom and the use of secondary data, I highlight those elements of school life that thwart the standardization so essential to the mayor’s reform effort, specifically the dominant myths and fictions held by teachers.     

中国教育技术学科建设的回顾与反思

我国的教育技术学经历了从领域到学科的发展过程。媒体中心、系统过程、五领域和两层次、四个理论体系框架的形成或引进,使我国教育技术学科建设的着眼点几经转移:一开始强调资源,后来强调教学,再后来强调学习,现在又开始向绩效方向发展。当前我国教育技术学科建设主要应该解决好三个方面的问题:探寻教育技术学的逻辑起点,把握学科建设的发展方向;形成自己的研究范式,提高学科建设的研究层次;理论与实践联盟,为教育改革提供优质服务。     

能动者的思索——香港学校改进协作模式的再造与更新

教育改革是以一系列行动改变教育制度的"结构"、过程和行为习惯的过程.香港中文大学的成员利用教改的机会,在香港的学校内进行改进工作,让一系列学校改进计划成功地开展.本文试图总结大学与学校协作的经验,并分析大学成员如何面对学校教育庞大而牢固的"结构"而试图改变之.文章以"结构化"理论为探讨脉络,展现大学成员如何与政府和学校教师结为伙伴,让学校改进的协作模式得以更新.     

The regulation of teaching as symbolic politics: rituals of order,blame and redemption

This article explores the school inspection as a political ritual for the management of tensions between competition and equality inherent in neo-liberal educational regulatory regimes. At the centre of the article is a case study of how teachers in an allegedly failing working-class English primary school coped with issues of social class, educational success-and-failure and an Office of Standards in Education (OFSTED) inspection and related accountability measures. National educational policy – relative performance data and inspection – generated a crisis within the school, and intervened in teacher discourse about the role of social class in pupil attainment. Whereas previous scholarship on OFSTED and inspections has emphasised their harmful effects on teachers and teaching practice, the current article broadens the focus from regulatory to political issues, from specific schools to the stability of the educational order more generally. Based on this case study, situated within a broader analysis of shifting discourses about social class and education in English educational policy, I argue that (1) the current regulatory regime makes ‘failure’ inevitable, thereby posing a symbolic problem for policy-makers and politicians; (2) by identifying failure and allocating blame, the inspection ritual fulfils an important symbolic function; which (3) serves to buttress the legitimacy of the neo-liberal educational order.     

Privatising educational leadership through technology in the Trumpian era

This article focuses on the changes that the election of Donald Trump enables in education policy domestically and in education discourse internationally. I argue that Trump’s own charismatic leadership style is a distraction from the privatisation that it is facilitating through Betsy DeVos, Trump’s appointment as US Education Secretary. I draw on two contemporary examples of technology-enabled privatisation in education – cyber charters and predictive analytics using big data – to argue that in the Trumpian era, educational leadership may be shifting from corporatised forms, where professionals understood as ‘school leaders’ fulfil corporate objectives through corporatised means. Instead, Trumpian-era privatised educational leadership retreats fully behind the technology boardroom door, where it renders superfluous lead professionals in education institutions, and where its objectives are to generate profit through re-conceptualising learners as data providers. This analysis highlights the need for new tools and methods to describe and explain what is happening, and to help develop understandings of what educational leadership in this new landscape might be, do or achieve.     

学校教育改革中的反思能力建设

学校教育改革中,需要通过反思来纠正可能出现的方向性错误、过程管理不足或配套评判标准缺失的问题。一般来说,学校的反思能力主要包括鉴别能力、评议能力和评判能力三个维度。在当前的学校改革情境中,反思能力建设应该主要聚焦于三个方面:以理论学习和具体观察培养鉴别能力;以多元对话和研修制度建设培养评议能力;以有效反馈和标准建设培养评判能力。     

Autonomy and religious education: lessons from a six-year evaluation of an educational reform in an Israeli school network

This study investigated the tension that exists between promoting an educational agenda and practising an educational approach which emphasises autonomy within the framework of religious education. Our main thesis is that every educational deed contains a dialectical tension between endorsing an educational agenda and the promotion of autonomy. Moreover, this tension is not restricted to religious education. The intensity of such a conflict varies in accordance with the flexibility (or inflexibility) of the dogma, the conceptual cohesion of the educational agenda and the perceived importance of granting autonomy to students. The more cohesive and inflexible the educational agenda is, the greater the danger that autonomy will be discarded. The present research examined an educational reform implemented in the National-Religious School Network in Israel, which included the promotion of autonomy among principals, teachers and students. Conducted over a six-year period (2006–2012), the research employed both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and involved various stakeholders in the school network. The multifaceted picture that emerged of the relationship between educational autonomy and religious agenda is presented.     

Dilemmas in crossing the boundaries: From K-12 to higher education and back again

For the purpose of reflective analysis, this article, which employs narrative inquiry as a research methodology, combines two “crossing the boundaries” dilemmas I experienced over the course of a decade. While the dilemmas relate to different issues that emerged in my career (standardized testing as a K-12 teacher and the formal evaluation of a reform program as a tenured, full professor), I trace the roots of the dilemmas to the same source: the hegemonic relationship between theory and practice which, despite the passage of time, continues to persist in the field of education and to shape the professional experiences of educators, some of which are miseducative. I argue that until the relationship between educational practices in schools and educational practices in universities are addressed, school reform that benefits children cannot be fully realized.     

论新课改语境中民族学校特色的建构

在新课程改革的推动下,探讨民族学校特色创建对于发展民族地区教育、提高民族地区教育质量具有重要意义。运用形而上学与存在主义的思维方式,可以把“学校特色”理解为学校的精神理念与办学哲学以及学校中存在的“人-人”结构与“人-物”结构,把“民族学校特色”理解为这些因素所具有的民族地区特征。建构民族学校特色具有三类重要的教育伦理价值,即形成文化多元共生;促进社会和谐发展;创新学校教育途径。建构民族学校特色可以采取复杂适应模式,基本环节包括：通过需求分析来确定民族学校的变革愿景;通过系统诊断来明晰民族学校的现存问题;通过结构优化来提升民族学校的系统效能;通过成效审议来调整民族学校的变革过程。     

转型期我国中小学类型的多样化及其制度安排

社会转型引发公共教育权力的转移,政府职能转变和市场机制的发展成为影响我国中小学学校制度变迁的关键性因素。在教育领域,政府职能转变和市场机制的发展也促使中小学类型的多样化。当前,应该把学校分类管理作为学校制度安排的基本选择,通过建立以完善的学校法人制度为核心的现代学校制度,实施对各种类型学校的有效的分类管理。     

Designing and using an organisational culture inquiry tool to glimpse the relational nature of leadership and organisational culture within a South Australian primary school

This case study research found that the relational leadership and organisational culture at a public primary school situated in a high poverty location in South Australia was built upon the strength of the inter-relationships between the teachers, teachers and leadership, and between teachers and students. Supported by what we called ‘dynamic inter-relationships’ and a ‘commitment to ongoing growth’ manifesting as key themes across the qualitative survey data generated by the school’s participants, we found the individual strengths of staff served the ‘on-going formation of organisational life’. Cognisant of these disclosed relational underpinnings, the research provided recommendations to the school’s leadership team about how they could best progress their educational reform agenda. The findings affirmed an Appreciative Inquiry inspired approach designed for the research was ‘fit for purpose’ as it generated extensive qualitative data from the teachers and leaders, offering opportunity for deep interpretive analysis using hermeneutic methodology of the school’s relational leadership and organisational culture. The research findings were subsequently confirmed by the teachers and leaders through a dialogic presentation of the research findings as an accurate representation of the culture of their school.     

多元智能理论与学校教育改革

“智商式思维”对学校造成的破坏有 :学校教育目的的窄化 ;教育功能的异化 ;教育方式的“一统化”。多元智能学校“以个人为中心” ,并引入三种新角色 :评估专家 ;学生课程代理人 ;学校———社区代理人     

Powerful Learning, Powerful Teaching and Powerful Schools

This paper is a personal reflection on the purpose and scope of school improvement. In explaining why in education the more things change the more they stay the same, I clarify the focus of educational reform as being powerful learning on the part of students, and then demonstrate that this occurs in contexts where content is conceptual rather than particular, where learning is constructive inquiry not passive reception, and where the social climate is expansive instead of restrictive. Such classrooms exist in schools whose organisational conditions and cultures are characterised by high expectations, collaboration and innovation. Finally I argue that equity and high standards require a coherent policy framework that emphasises process as well as substance.     

高等院校师范专业人才培养模式探究

教育改革的进一步深化和新一轮基础教育课程改革的全面推进,给我国高等院校师范专业人才培养提出了新的要求.改革师范院校人才培养模式,积极适应基础教育课程改革和发展的需要,成为人们关注的热点问题.本文拟从历史和现实的角度,反现我国师范院校人才培养的形成、发展和现状,发现和探究其存在的主要问题,借鉴发达国家高等院校师范专业人才培养方面的有益经验,探索我国高等院校师范专业人才培养的新模式.     

政府与学校变革关系的类型研究

政府与学校变革关系是现阶段教育管理体制改革的重要议题。从凸显政府与学校双方主体性的角度可以把学校变革划分政府主导型学校变革、学校主导型变革和多元交互型学校变革三种类型。基于对它们的内涵透视和理论分析能够看出,这三种类型不能随意归类到优劣中差之等,要想处理好政府与学校变革关系,必须妥善处理好"外塑"和"内生"的内在紧张。