Improving teaching quality and the learning organisation

Abstract

This study applied a learning organisation framework to understand academic departments’ efforts to improve teaching quality. The theoretical framework was generated from literature on learning organisations, organisations devoted to continuous improvement through continuous learning. Research questions addressed relationships among departments’ vision, leadership, knowledge management, communication, learning culture, and teaching improvement. Using survey data collected from department chairs, this study found a positive association between learning organisation behaviours and the improvement of teaching.     

Student leadership in small group science inquiry

Background: Science educators have sought to structure collaborative inquiry learning through the assignment of static group roles. This structural approach to student grouping oversimplifies the complexities of peer collaboration and overlooks the highly dynamic nature of group activity.

Purpose: This study addresses this issue of oversimplification of group dynamics by examining the social leadership structures that emerge in small student groups during science inquiry.

Sample: Two small student groups investigating the burning of a candle under a jar participated in this study.

Design and method: We used a mixed-method research approach that combined computational discourse analysis (computational quantification of social aspects of small group discussions) with microethnography (qualitative, in-depth examination of group discussions).

Results: While in one group social leadership was decentralized (i.e., students shared control over topics and tasks), the second group was dominated by a male student (centralized social leadership). Further, decentralized social leadership was found to be paralleled by higher levels of student cognitive engagement.

Conclusions: It is argued that computational discourse analysis can provide science educators with a powerful means of developing pedagogical models of collaborative science learning that take into account the emergent nature of group structures and highly fluid nature of student collaboration.     

The school leader’s role in school-based development

ABSTRACT

Background: While the school leader’s role is undoubtedly instrumental in school effectiveness, the specific influence of formal leadership on pupil learning is indirect and can be difficult to determine. Research findings suggest that school leaders can influence school organisation and pupil learning by acting catalytically, thus unlocking their schools’ existing potential. In school-based development, school leaders and their staff undergo a workplace development process, using school resources to contribute to it.

Purpose: This article explores the concept of leadership in school-based development, focusing on leading teacher learning processes in relation to pupil learning. The research problem is formulated in the following question: How is the school leader’s role enacted and experienced when enhancing teachers’ learning in school-based development? The intent of the study was to further the understanding of leadership in school-based development.

Sources of information and method: A qualitative interview study was conducted with teachers and leaders from three lower secondary schools, roughly 2 years after the schools participated in a formal school-based development project which was initiated by the Norwegian education authority. To present the findings based on the collected data, narrative texts were constructed.

Findings: The findings draw attention to the importance of leaders’ participation in the teacher learning processes of school-based development. The study highlights the importance of leaders building trust in their schools: development processes must be collegium-rooted with common goals for the whole school. The interplay of culture, structure and content is found to be necessary for successful school-based development. Furthermore, school leaders need to balance internal and external accountability, moving school practices towards local goals, which are constructed within national overall aims.

Conclusions: The study suggests that leaders require an overview of developmental processes to manage to support and progress development; leadership needs to be distributed. Further research on leaders’ learning in relation to school-based development can generate knowledge that serves as a thinking tool, thereby informing leaders’ actions in support of school-based development.     

007 Spies,surveillance and pedagogical middle leadership: for the good of the empire of education

ABSTRACT

This research critically examines the role of pedagogical leadership as it is distributed amongst middle leaders. It seeks to better understand the playful utility of a popular culture metaphor as a frame for understanding empirical data about pedagogical leadership in two Australian schools during a period of imposed curriculum change. Utilising ‘the theory of practice architectures’ (Kemmis, Stephen, Jane Wilkinson, Christine Edwards-Groves, Ian Hardy, Peter Grootenboer, and Laurette Bristol. 2014. Changing Practices, Changing Education. Wagga Wagga: Springer), the paper explores a direct quotation as metaphor from several pedagogical middle leaders that ‘we’re spies’ – and from one participant, ‘in a good James Bond sort of way.’ This research plays with and interprets the politics of practice including collaborating or ‘licensed trouble shooting’, and empowerment or ‘interrogation’ in everyday pedagogical leadership practice where distributing leadership may create espionage, or compliance during reform. Educational reform is espoused for ‘the good of the empire’ of education through the enabling and constraining practices of pedagogical middle leaders.     

Supporting children’s outdoor science learning with mobile computers: integrating learning on-the-move strategies with context-sensitive computing

ABSTRACT

Two cases of context-sensitive mobile computing curricula for children are shown to develop analytical understandings of how science-related sense-making talk can be supported through physical and digital environment interaction, which supports play and learning through movement. Our work investigates how proximity-based computing mediates children’s engagement in scientific sense-making conversations in a botanical garden. We draw upon sociocultural perspectives on sense-making talk as well as learning on-the-move to inform our study design. Data are from children in summer camp, including field notes, photographs, and video records (26 children in Case A, 24 in Case B) in an Arboretum. Our findings illustrate that children engaged in both playful and scientific sense-making talk in two distinct curricular tasks. We provide insights into science sense-making talk patterns and pedagogical practices of integrating learning on-the-move strategies into informal education with design principles related to augmenting gardens with digital content. Our results suggest that learning on-the-move strategies influence sense-making talk and that embodied interactions within the gardens support science sense-making and role-play. We posit that designs for learner-centered mobile computing can create digital-physical hybrid spaces where learners engage each other and natural objects as they walk through community spaces.     

Quality as sense-making

Sense-making is a process of engaging with complex and dynamic environments that provides organisations and their leaders with a flexible and agile model of the world. The seven key properties of sense-making describe a process that is social and that respects the range of different stakeholders in an organisation. It also addresses the need to account for the history and context of the organisation while also acting to change that context. This paper describes a conception of quality framed by sense-making. It explores the possible insights and guidance it can provide to leaders and others seeking a model aligning quality with forward-looking organisational change and capable of reflecting the complex relationships between educational organisations and their diverse stakeholders. Quality as sense-making flows from a recognition that education is too complex and too important to be defined by a small number of qualities relevant to a privileged group of stakeholders, or by limited performance indicators such as financial efficiency, instead it is experienced through an on-going conversation challenging complacency and the status quo.     

Teachers’ socio-spatial practice in innovative learning environments

ABSTRACT

Understanding the relationship between innovative learning spaces and teachers’ pedagogical and social practices is essential given the increasing investment in innovative learning spaces worldwide. This study examined the socio-spatial practices of a group of teachers at a secondary school in an innovative learning space. Interview responses from 21 teachers revealed that space and social practices co-became through the interplay of the school culture, the physical, social and curriculum structures, and individual teachers’ sense-making of the practice. The study found that the cultural and structural systems drove the initial becoming of social practices, and that the individual systems shaped the diversified nature of the becoming. The findings suggest the importance of supporting teachers’ sense-making in terms of conceptions of subject teaching, professional identity, the affordances and constraints of the space and confidence in and capacity of constructing and managing effective learning experience in the space, when effecting educational changes with space.     

Academic Mobbing in Relation to Leadership Practices: A New Perspective on an Old Issue

Abstract

Constant pressures emanating from internal and external environments of the academy have resulted in many changes, one of which is the workplace mobbing, an old issue for the broader field of organization science but a relatively new phenomenon in the academic context. This study investigated the relationship between workplace mobbing and academic leadership and the results indicated that the more positive leadership there is in an institution, the less mobbing behaviors are observed.     

Learning Organisationsreengineering schools for life long learning

It has taken some two decades for the concept of the learning organisation to achieve recognition as a powerful way of reengineering for life long learning. During this time, schools have been through a period of very rapid change but, paradoxically, many look less like learning organisations today than they may have before the introduction of the Education Reform Act. This paper examines some of the key ideas behind the learning organisation, explores why the concept is so powerful in contemporary contexts, identifies various types of learning organisations and suggests an analytical technique for relating styles of organisational learning to the environmental context. The paper concludes with an analysis of the implications of learning organisation concepts for schools and school leaders.     

Reformation of the Macedonian teacher education programme, 1999 – 2001

Background: In the last decade, much research attention has been paid to notions of leadership and the professional identity of school. It is widely agreed that school principals play a very important role in school improvement; international reports point to ‘school leadership’ as a key factor in education quality, and recent studies suggest that the leadership identity of principals is critical for achieving effective leadership in schools worldwide.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to conduct a thematic exploration of the literature relating to school principals and leadership identity.

Design and methods: A scoping review was carried out. Two major databases were searched for papers published on this topic in the last decade. Once we had established an overview of research on this subject, we conducted a thematic analysis to identify the topical focus of research.

Results: We found that the literature reflected an increasing and intensified interest in the topic of school leadership as the decade progressed. Furthermore, a range of emerging subtopics was identified. These included the relationship between school culture and professional identity in school principals; the influence of ethical and personal factors on the professional development of principals; the dilemmas of balancing education policies and personal experiences; and the relationships between gender identity, racial identity, professional experience/career, training and leadership identity.

Conclusions: Several key issues emerged from the studies included in this review, such as the importance of external and internal influences in the construction of the professional identity of school principals. Some of the research suggested that school leaders felt the need to develop a new professional identity. Overall, the study indicates that school leadership and its relationship with school improvement should remain an important focus for educational research investigation.     

Internal branding in higher education: dialectical tensions underlying the discursive legitimation of a new brand of student diversity

ABSTRACT

Most studies on branding in higher education focus on external branding or image-building towards external stakeholders such as students. Internal branding is an underexplored topic, even though it should be considered as important as external branding. Internal branding is about achieving the necessary internal support for the external brand. Drawing on the theoretical concept of discursive legitimation, we explore the strategies that contribute to an internally supported new brand with student diversity as brand value. We conducted a case study of a Flemish university college that has (largely) succeeded in achieving internal support for its new external brand of student diversity. Analyzing the case from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis, we specifically zoomed in on the dialectical tensions underlying the discursive legitimation of this new brand. We identified three specific tensions, which illustrate the inherent complexity of the internal branding process: authorization as (dis)empowerment, normalization as (dis)empowerment and moralization as (dis)empowerment.     

On Marxist Bias

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe the current process of environmental scanning and how it is used to support strategic planning in a vocational education and training system. It outlines the environmental domains that can impact on the organisation. The paper focuses on how environmental scanning activities can be organised into external and internal analysis. Finally the paper presents a model that is simple to understand and use in order to anticipate changes and to improve the quality of the planning and decision making processes within a vocational education and training system.     

Total Quality Management,the Learning Organisation and Post‐compulsory Education

Abstract

The turbulence confronting educational Institutions In the United Kingdom has led to the suggestion that any attempt to respond using established management principles and processes is likely to be dysfunctional. Total quality management (TQM) has been advanced as a strategy that will enable educational institutions adapt to the greater market orientation and transform them into learning organisations. The paper identifies the key principles of TQM, critically reviewing the literature that examines their application in education and focusing on the post‐compulsory sector. Secondly, selected linkages between the key principles and other approaches to the study of organisational behaviour, including aspects of open systems theory, leadership, teamworking, training and staff development, and organisational culture, are examined. The concept of the learning organisation is outlined and its relationship with TQM examined. The paper concludes that TQM treats organisational change issues in educational institutions and the concept of the learning organisation as unproblematic, Ignoring Issues of power, authority, resistance to change and double‐loop learning.     

The worldwide spread of peace education: discursive patterns in publications and international organisations

ABSTRACT

To investigate the spread of peace education (PE), we examined 685 documents in SCOPUS between 1970 and 2018 in 70 countries and triangulated the information with 11369 news articles and 22 international organisation? founding dates. PE emerged in scientific databases in the 1970s, lost momentum in 1990 and then globalised after 2003. PE’s institutionalisation was furthered by: (a) the increasing search for discourses that highlighted individual agency of self-declared ‘peace educators’; (b) educational expansion that generated a greater demand for so-called best practices; and (c) the active role of professionals working on organisations such as UNESCO, UNICEF and the identified international organisations. We recognised five loosely coupled narratives: PE’s (a) philosophical foundations and relationship to critical pedagogy; (b) application to improve international relationships; c) solution to internal conflicts; (d) measurements of interventions; (e) linkages to religion. We reflect on the implications of PE as an educational discourse in curricular reforms.     

The sociology of policy change within international organisations: beyond coercive and normative perspectives – towards circuits of power

ABSTRACT

For international organisations in the global education policy field, legitimacy is based in large part on the supposed techno-rational basis of these organisations and their ability to credibly produce knowledge and policy expertise. However, as the present article demonstrates, there are clearly a range of macro–micro organisational dynamics driving the production of knowledge and the policy ideas that are advanced. By revealing the way that a particular policy emerged and was promoted within the World Bank, this article seeks to expose the way that policy innovation is produced by the iterative interplay of agentic activity and particular organisational circumstances – and how this process is used to maintain and extend the influence of international organisations and the individuals who represent them. By drawing on Stewart Clegg’s ‘circuits of power’ approach, we seek to theorise the internal dynamics of international organisations, and, in so doing, to move beyond the dominant coercive and normative perspectives.     

From a Very Peculiar Department to a Very Successful School: Transference issues arising out of a study of an improving school

Survey data from an achieved sample of 1818 teachers and 6490 students in one large Canadian school district were used to explore the relative effects of principal and teacher leadership on student engagement with school. Results demonstrated greater effects on student engagement of principal as compared with teacher sources of leadership. The effects of principal leadership were weak but significant, whereas the effects of teacher leadership were not significant. Both forms of leadership were mediated by many of the same elements of the school organisation.     

Implementing Peer Learning Across Organisations: The development of a model

Peer learning can be implemented by individual teachers within an organisation or can be implemented across an organisation by a central implementer. In this article, it is argued that the types of approach required in these two forms of implementation are very different and whilst the former is dealt with in the literature on peer learning, the latter has been largely unconsidered. The article reports how a review of the literature on organisational change was used to develop a model of how to implement peer learning across organisations. It describes how this model was used to guide the implementation of peer learning across a UK further education college. The results of a pilot study into the model's effectiveness in this context are reported. These results suggest that the model appeared to be a useful guide to the implementation of peer learning across an organisation and, as such, is worthy of further investigation in other contexts.     

Young people's comparisons of cross-gender and same-gender bullying in British secondary schools

Background: Data-based decision-making in education often focuses on the use of summative assessment data in order to bring about improvements in student achievement. However, many other sources of evidence are available across a wide range of indicators. There is potential for school leaders, teachers and students to use these diverse sources more fully to support their work on a range of school improvement goals.

Purpose and sources of evidence: To explore data-based decision-making for school improvement, this theoretical paper discusses recent research and literature from different areas of data use in education. These areas include the use of formative assessment data, educational research study findings and ‘big data’. In particular, the discussion focuses on how school leaders and teachers can use different sources of data to improve the quality of education.

Main argument: Based on the literature reviewed, an iterative model of data use for school improvement is described, consisting of defining goals for data use, collecting different types of data or evidence (e.g. formal data, informal data, research evidence and ‘big data’), sense-making, taking improvement actions and evaluation. Drawing on the literature, research insights are discussed for each of these components, as well as identification of the research gaps that still exist. It is noted that the process of data use does not happen in isolation: data use is influenced by system, organisation and team/individual level factors.

Conclusions: When it comes to using data to improve the quality of teaching and learning, it is evident that some of the most important enablers and barriers include data literacy and leadership. However, what is less well understood is how we can promote the enablers and remove the barriers to unlock, more fully, the potential of data use. Only then can data use lead to sustainable school improvement.     

‘Culture of Religion’ – a controversial secular school subject

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the context, emergence, organisation and curriculum of the school subject known as ‘Culture of Religions’ (Kultura religija), which is given as an example of good practice in the Toledo Guiding Principles of the OSCE. It was designed, piloted and to a certain extent introduced in state schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina by a collaboration of international organisations and institutions, together with representatives from various local organisations. This paper addresses the challenges and opportunities that render this school subject not only highly relevant but also a controversial issue of education policy today.     

Comparing forms of new higher education organisations at start‐up

Abstract

In this article, we investigate three recently established entrepreneurial organisations created to deliver education and training to new audiences of learners at a distance. Each of the organisations ‐ the University of Michigan's Academic Outreach Program, the University Center at Northwestern Michigan College, and the Michigan Virtual Automotive College — is involved in multiple complex partnerships with internal and external entities, including government, industry, and education. Paying particular attention to the structures, strategies, and processes of these organisations, we argue that their emergence signals the evolution of a postsecondary knowledge industry in which permeable boundaries, new competitors, and market sensibilities are converging to challenge the fundamental nature of postsecondary education.