The influence of socio-cultural factors on leadership practices for instructional improvement in Indonesian schools

Empirical studies have shown that although leadership shares similar practices across East and West, some practices have inherently distinguished socio cultural characteristics. Understanding these characteristics is important in Asian contexts since socio-cultures are a major power in determining the success or failure of a change process. This study sought to explore and identify local leadership practices influenced by socio-cultural factors through in-depth interviews with principals and teachers from six different senior secondary schools in Malang Regency, Indonesia. Key local practices were identified: monitoring learning hours, improving the welfare of teachers, focusing on students’ character building, encouraging students’ participation in extracurricular programmes, increasing standards, and building partnership with stakeholders. Although some of the practices are similar to those recognised by empirical studies done in Western school context, others reflect local leadership practices influenced by school conditions, social practices, and economic factors. The findings imply that in Indonesian schools, practices of leadership are directly and indirectly dictated by the policies regulated by the government. This strong influence of government can be the impediment for school leaders to make necessary initiatives to promote instructional improvements in their schools.     

School principals and racism: responding to Aveling

This study responds to Nado Aveling's call in ‘Anti-racism in Schools: A question of leadership?’ (Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2007, 28(1), 69–85) for further investigation into racism in Australian schools. Aveling's interview study concluded that an overwhelming number of school principals denied the presence of racism in their schools, and that there were no discernible differences in how principals in different schools constructed racism. In contrast, our research found that school principals' constructions of cultural racism are strongly influenced by their school contexts. We elucidate these differences examining the various intersections between race, class and religion deployed by principals in different sites, and argue for the utility of examining and theorising cultural racism using an intersectional approach. By bringing context into our analysis we provide a more nuanced insight into the different ways in which racism is constituted and understood by Australian school principals.     

Leadership in High Achieving Schools in Singapore: The Influence of Societal Culture

‘Societal culture’ in Singapore can be understood as an evolving mix of ‘traditional’ and ‘modernizing’ cultural strands, complexly related to dominant political and economic processes and aligned in the pursuit of a wider national vision. Following the mid-80s economic slowdown, there was a major realignment in these cultural strands that resulted in a process of decentralization of the education system, and a rethinking of the principal's role. Though the immediate effect of this was the creation of independent and autonomous schools, a space for autonomous action was opened up generally for school principals who were willing and able to seize the opportunity. We draw on two case studies of improving Singapore secondary schools to explore the links between societal culture, school leadership and school improvement. We argue that although both of the case study principals appropriated aspects of societal culture as part of their improvement strategies, it was the nature of the appropriation that made the schools and leadership styles distinctive.     

Profiles of Organizational Culture and Effective Schools∗

This study intends to investigate how school organizational culture is related to important organizational characteristics and observe how the profiles of strong culture‐effective schools are different from those of weak culture‐ineffective schools in terms of organizational variables (such as principal's leadership, organizational structure, and teachers’ social interactions), teachers’ job attitudes, and school effectiveness criteria. It is a cross‐sectional survey research involving 54 randomly sampled Hong Kong secondary schools and 588 teachers. The unit of analysis is the school.

Organizational ideology index was found to be substantially correlated with schools’ perceived organizational effectiveness. Among the 10 measures of these organizational variables, teachers’ esprit and principal's charismatic leadership can contribute substantially to the prediction of school's strength of organizational culture. The organizational profile of perceived strong culture‐effective schools is contrastingly different from that of perceived weak culture‐ineffective schools. The findings suggest that difference in organizational culture can be reflected at least in three overt levels: 1. organizational level in terms of principal's leadership behaviors, organizational formalization and participation, and teachers’ social norms; 2. teachers’ attitudinal level in terms of organizational commitment, social job satisfaction, intrinsic job satisfaction, and influence job satisfaction; and 3. school effectiveness level in terms of perceived overall organizational effectiveness and academic achievements in public examinations.

The findings reinforce the importance of organizational culture to the ongoing effort and discussion of school improvement and school effectiveness.

     

the emergence of blissful thinking in the management of education

By the year 2000, the management of education in England had lost much of its capacity to ensure the commitment of headteachers and teachers. As market forces engendered competition among schools, the bureaucratic monitoring of schools by agencies of government increased on the grounds that objective and comparable data about schools should be made public so that parents could express a rational choice of school. Levels of stress increased; workloads intensified. Thereafter, a series of ‘softer’ approaches emerged in order to deal with this. They have coalesced around the concept of ‘leadership’, particularly distributed leadership and, more recently, emotional leadership and spiritual leadership. Distributed leadership draws on socio-cultural activity theory; emotional leadership is informed by positive psychology; spiritual leadership by eastern mysticism. Each has its advocates and its critics. At issue, however, is not so much their relative effectiveness but rather it is to relate them to the economic, cultural and political trends which have allowed them to emerge. These ‘soft’ normative leadership approaches have not supplanted a digitally-informed rational bureaucratic form in education; they are supplementing it. The theoretical stance taken falls within the field of critical theory.     

At school with the avant-garde: European architects and the modernist project in England

‘New people create new buildings, but new buildings also create New people’, so wrote the German art critic Fritz Wichhert in The New Building: Art as Educator in 1928. The social and psychological legacy of the First World War was deeply profound and affected how people thought about the future. Children were seen to symbolise a new and better future and Modernist architects saw their role as helping to build a new society, a society where the design of schools was seen as an agent of social change. The focus of this article is on the role of the avant-garde in this reforming social project and its impact on school design. It is organised into four sections. The first section introduces the terms modernism and avant-garde in relation to (school) architecture, particularly British modernism. The second section focuses in on the experiences of émigré architects in conservative 1930s England, and in particular the support they received from refugee organisations and their treatment by the state as war in Europe became a reality. The third section discusses the role of these architects in the construction of modernist schools in England. In the fourth and final section the impact of émigré architects on modernist schools in England is discussed along with the concepts of transnational history and cultural transfer.     

Successful components of school improvement in culturally diverse schools

Contemporary phenomena, including modernization, globalization, and migration, have altered the sociopolitical and cultural conditions of schooling. Schools are called upon to respond to such change through improvement efforts fostering intercultural education. To this end, this research examines school actors’ perceptions of the successful components of school improvement in culturally diverse schools. For the purposes of this research, we used the Cypriot education system as our case study to carry out observations and interviews with head teachers, teachers, immigrant and native students, and their parents. In identifying the inputs for the improvement of culturally diverse schools, as perceived by school actors, various components emerged, including listening to student voice, socioemotional and culturally responsive teaching, and increased parental involvement. Arguably, these contributing factors bear implications for school-based leadership, building successful professional communities, and enhancing intercultural competence in schools.     

Epistemological beliefs and leadership approaches among South African school principals

Studies on school restructuring and the leadership role of the principal in this process suggest that what has been the traditional leadership approach of the principal appears to be changing in relation to the substantial changes and school-wide reforms that are continually taking place in schools today. These school reform initiatives necessitate new and creative ways of thinking about our concept of educational leadership and its various approaches. It also became clear from the literature on leadership that a person’s assumption of various types of knowledge influence his or her leadership approach. The purpose of this study, based on a quantitative empirical study in selected South African schools, is to identify this impact of principals’ assumptions of knowledge on their leadership approaches. A total of 100 questionnaires with open-ended questions were sent electronically to school principals of randomly selected schools to assess the link between principals’ assumptions about the nature of knowledge and principal leadership. The t-test, Lambda test and an Analysis of Variances test were used to analyse the data. The findings confirm the relationship between core epistemological beliefs (EBs) and beliefs about leadership practices among South African school principals and provide substantial justification for using EBs in the study of school leadership.     

‘You want the best for your kids’: improving educational outcomes for children living in poverty through parental engagement

Background: Existing evidence suggests a relationship between family social contexts, family relationships and interactions, children’s social and cognitive development and educational outcomes. Interventions that assist families in relation to parenting and supporting children’s development can have positive effects on both parents’ skills and the educational progress of their children.

Purpose: This article reports on a study conducted in an area with high levels of social and economic deprivation in Scotland, which aimed to investigate the nature and effectiveness of the services in place to support poor families. The project focused on capturing the experiences of parents and what they perceived as effective support from the nursery and school staff in terms of getting them more involved in their children’s learning.

Sample: There was a particular focus on the four-to-seven-year age group, thus covering the crucial transition from pre-school (or non-school) provision to primary school. A sample of three Early Education & Childcare Centres (EECCs) and three schools were selected. The schools and EECCs were all from areas of high social deprivation and had a high proportion of children on free school meals.

Design and methods: The study was qualitative in design and included in-depth semi-structured interviews with 19 service managers and practitioners, six focus groups with parents and six activity groups with children. Data were analysed using both pre-determined and emerging codes.

Results: While all parents recognised the value of education for their children’s social mobility and opportunities and were keen to engage in activities, they remained aware of the limited resources they could draw upon, mainly in terms of their restricted academic competencies, specialist knowledge and qualifications. The desire to help their children overcome their families’ economic circumstances was also hampered by the absence of strong social and kinship networks that they could draw upon.

Conclusions: We draw on concepts of social and cultural capital to examine parents’ positioning in relation to their children’s education. The conclusion highlights parents’ strategic orientation to school/nurseries, often seen as a resource of cultural capital, and calls for a more positive discourse of parental engagement in relation to disadvantaged groups.     

A Comparative Sociology of School Knowledge

Despite a recently renewed theoretical interest in both North America and in Britain in the sociology of school knowledge, we still have little, if any, comparative empirical material from these two continents. This paper reports the findings of a sociological study, designed to replicate the previous English empirical work by Vulliamy, into music teaching in Ontario high schools. Unlike in England, no overt culture clash was found in Ontario schools between ‘school’ music and ‘students’ ‘ music, both because of the wider scope of ‘what counts as school music’ in Canada and because music is not a compulsory school subject there. However, by focusing upon the deep structure of the pedagogical process, as opposed to surface features of classroom interaction, it is argued that particular ideologies of the dominant musical culture are transmitted in very similar ways in both contexts. What is shared is a conception of music as equatable with musical notation. The ideological significance of this is pinpointed in an analysis of the structurally homological relationship between different musical languages and the social/‐cultural contexts of their creation. The processes of school music teaching not only contribute to the legitimation of a dominant musical ideology, but also to much more pervasive ideological assumptions underpinning capitalist societies.     

School leadership for equity: lessons from the literature

Responding to Thrupp's [2003. “The School Leadership Literature in Managerialist Times: Exploring the Problem of Textual Apologism.” School Leadership & Management: Formerly School Organisation 23 (2): 169] call for writers on school leadership to offer ‘analyses which provide more critical messages about social inequality and neoliberal and managerialist policies’ we use Foucault's [2000. “The Subject and Power.” In Michel Foucault: Power, edited by J. D. Faubion, 326–348. London: Penguin Books] theory of power to ask what lessons we might learn from the literature on school leadership for equity. We begin by offering a definition of neoliberalism; new managerialism; leadership and equity, with the aim of revealing the relationship between the macropolitical discourse of neoliberalism and the actions of school leaders in the micropolitical arena of schools. In so doing, we examine some of the literature on school leadership for equity that post-dates Thrupp's [2003. “The School Leadership Literature in Managerialist Times: Exploring the Problem of Textual Apologism.” School Leadership & Management: Formerly School Organisation 23 (2): 149–172] analysis, seeking evidence of critical engagement with/resistance to neoliberal policy. We identify three approaches to leadership for equity that have been used to enhance equity in schools internationally: (i) critical reflection; (ii) the cultivation of a ‘common vision’ of equity and (iii) ‘transforming dialogue’. We consider if such initiatives avoid the hegemonic trap of neoliberalism, which captures and disarms would be opponents of new managerial policy. We conclude by arguing that, in spite of the dominance of neoliberalism, head teachers have the power to speak up, and speak out, against social injustice.     

“External” Organizations and the Politics of Urban Educational Leadership: The Case of New Small Autonomous Schools Initiatives

Members of organizations traditionally outside public school systems have begun to take on central, and in some cases internal, leadership roles and responsibilities in the implementation of ambitious educational improvement initiatives. How are these arrangements playing out in practice? This article explores that question with a 3-year qualitative investigation of the participation of two such organizations—a school reform support organization and a consortium of foundations—in the implementation of new small autonomous schools initiatives in Oakland (California) and Chicago. Using Malen's politics of implementation framework, this article reveals how external organizations influenced the implementation of district initiatives with significant consequences for both the reform strategy and their own ability to sustain their involvement in implementation over time. The article concludes with implications for the research and practice of educational leadership.     

Educational Justice and Occupational Mobility: The Role of Civic Commitment and of Imagination

In Italy, the exploration of, and debate on, problems of educational rights and justice are not subsumed under the comprehensive rubric of “Urban Education”. They are rather studied from disciplinary realms and approaches such as social education or intercultural education that aim to understand and respond to issues of pressing social, political and educational concerns relative to migration, educational inclusion of immigrants’ and minorities’ children, recognition of cultural diversities as teaching and learning resources, among others. In this article the intercultural perspective is focused on the Italian occupational minority of the fairground and circus people, whose intensely mobile way of life impacts on their children’s school attendance and learning, and on the schools’ capacity to elaborate effective educational paths also able to valorize those people’s cultural diversity. Three relevant “bottom up” projects are here presented that mean to positively answer the mismatch between the mobility of the attractionist students and the schooling curricula, the annual teaching schedule and the attendance requirements.     

Inter‐professional work and expertise: New roles at the boundaries of schools

The findings discussed here are based on five case studies and a small survey (n = 46) of how secondary schools are responding to demands that they collaborate with other services to intervene to prevent the social exclusion of children and young people. The case studies revealed a new space of action opening up around schools where practices were being shaped by ‘welfare managers’ who were employed by schools and were undertaking responsive work with vulnerable children and young people and the other services who were also supporting them. At the same time heads of year and/or heads of school and form tutors were increasingly focusing on children's achievement in school. The changes in roles and responsibilities were encouraged by workforce remodelling and changes in criteria for teachers’ salaries. However, focusing primarily on the work undertaken by the welfare managers, the article draws on cultural‐historical activity theory analyses of relational agency and distributed expertise to question whether welfare managers can undertake the work required in the new space of action without attention to the development of their core expertise.     

Where policy meets the pavement: Stages of public involvement in the prevention of school violence

Based on qualitative research on school and city violence, this article examines three forms of partnerships between community organizations and schools, including youth interventions by social services; community activism; and school liaisons with the police. The article examines how violence-prevention strategies are conceived within a context that includes the formation of policy directed at communities, youths, and schools; social science theories of delinquency; public rhetoric about youth and families; and efforts on the part of community residents, city departments, and social services. The underlying theory-base behind the research can be associated with cultural studies, since it combines cultural and structural interpretations of the topic and analyzes policies according to their processes, in light of their constructions, and in connection with the theories that guide them. It becomes obvious by the end of the article that community-based violence-prevention organizations collaborating with schools are sometimes blocked from doing good work by poor funding, power struggles, and a deficit model of youth. While the partnerships can, at times, help to initiate positive involvement of disenfranchised people, they can also become instruments of city power structures. For their positive and productive work to come out, the interagency and school collaborations must solve the problems that are discussed in the article.     

Binding Forces and Teachers’ School Life: A Recursive Model

Attempts were made to formulate a theoretical framework of binding forces in school organizations and to examine their effects on teachers’ feelings about school life. After a series of tests with factor analyses, 4 major scales of organizational binding forces were confirmed, that is, bureaucratic linkage, cultural linkage, tight coupling, and loose coupling. An implication of the study is that school administrators should make full use of the 4 binding forces to bind people together in schools and resort more to cultural linkage, loose coupling, and tight coupling to enhance school effectiveness and to give people meanings in their work.     

Learning from children’s voice in schools: Experiences from Ireland

In Ireland there is progressive legislation on children’s participation in the education system. The Education Act 1998 advocates that school boards should involve students in the school and establish student councils in second-level schools. Since the publication of this legislation progress on realising students’ participation in schools has been slow. In 2006 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that Ireland strengthen its efforts to enable children to express their views in schools and other educational institutions. The National Strategy on Children and Young People’s Participation in Decision-making (2015), the first to be produced internationally, commits to facilitating children and young people’s voice in the development of education policy, the running of schools and in other areas of school policy. This paper presents and discusses the results of qualitative participatory research with children and young people aged between 7 and 17 years, teachers and school principals, and parents, on their attitudes towards and opportunities for participation by students in schools in Ireland. The data reveal that students are keen to participate in school but recognise that their opportunities to do so are inadequate, that teachers understand participation very differently from students, and that parents have little knowledge of their children’s participatory experiences in school. It concludes that effective participation in schools requires policy, practical and cultural change.     

Raising aspirations within school communities: the Learning Catalysts project

This article accounts for a project that rests on a collaboration between the Leadership for Learning group at the Faculty of Education and the county council in King's Lynn and West Norfolk to address a concern regarding the low aspirations in the community. At the heart of the project was the development of a cadre of ‘Learning Catalysts’ who work with schools and with parents to raise aspirations. The project pursued questions such as: What do we really understand about the way aspirations are shaped and play out in the interface of school and community? How can we gain a deeper insight into the cultures of families and how aspirations about occupational and social identities affect children's performance in school? Of central interest too was the way in which people without formal status in their institutions were able to assume leadership roles. The tension between leadership activity in the community setting and leadership within the formal hierarchies of schools was to prove both a source of data and a continuing challenge.     

重叠影响视域下的课程实施

重叠影响理论认为,家庭、学校和社区这三个背景对学生以及三者之间的关系发生了重叠影响,这种影响有助于学生在学校里和未来的生活中取得成功。从布迪厄的社会学理论视角来看,基于重叠影响视域的课程实施具有可能性,因为家庭的文化资本是影响学生成长的重要因素,社区是蕴含着丰富社会资本的场域。重叠影响视域下课程实施的基本路径是:成立学校、家庭和社区伙伴关系行动小组;创建家庭式学校和学校式家庭;建立社区学校。