The District Superintendent and School Improvement: A Western Australian Perspective

ABSTRACT

The contribution district superintendents can make to school effectiveness and improvement is a neglected area of research in Australia. Research in the US suggests four ways in which superintendents impact on school improvement: the evaluation of principals and auditing of schools; the matching of school and district goals; the provision of informal support for principals; and the appointment and positioning of principals. Within an Australian setting of devolution to school‐based management, evaluation assumes major importance at school level and at district superintendent level in the pursuit of school effectiveness and improvement. An evaluation of the performance of two superintendents in Western Australia took place in 1990. It focused on superintendent performance within one key accountability area, the provision of principals’ professional development. The evaluation procedures and results are described and analysed, and implications are drawn for improving district superintendent evaluation as a means of enhancing school effectiveness and improvement.     

Primary teachers’ self‐perceptions concerning implementation of the National Curriculum for science in the UK

This paper reports on selected aspects of data, with special reference to science, derived from a survey of primary school teachers as part of the Leverhulme Primary Project at the University of Exeter.

A national sample of teachers (N = 901) across 152 schools was surveyed in order to ascertain teachers’ perceptions of competence and needs with respect to the new National Curriculum in the UK. Initially, data were collected in relation to ten subject areas and generic teaching skills, with provision made for free‐form responses concerning National Curriculum implementation.

Selected aspects of these data, principally related to the National Curriculum core area of science, were subjected to detailed further analysis and are reported. Variables identified from the survey findings, and of concern to science educators, included early subject specialism, years of teaching and gender. These were probed for relationships and significance. The tension between competing National Curriculum requirements for specialist subject knowledge and generalist teaching skills was explored.

Findings have implications for innovation in approaches to staff development to cater for perceived needs, teacher educators and curriculum alignment.     

An Australian Looks at the ICEF

A few years ago Dr. Lefranc, in a stimulating survey of the impact of picture materials on modern education, used the pungent metaphor that audio-visual specialists had possibly achieved a scratching of the carapace of the pedagogical tortoise. Many centuries ago the sacred tortoise of Chinese mythology emerged from the devastating floods of the Yellow River to teach the people there the arts of levee building, to control the annual tragedy of the waters and hence to survive to live in harmony with their fertile farmlands. Perchance a link does exist between the teaching and the tortoise.     

Beyond centre and periphery: transnationalism in two teacher/suffragettes' work

Oliveira Salazar’s accession to the government followed the military coup of 1926, which put an end to the period of democratic republican life. The Constitution approved in 1933 defined the new regime, which came to be known as ‘Estado Novo’. Ideologically sustained by an anti‐liberal concept of Catholicism, this political regime would grant Portuguese women not only the right to vote – never obtained during the First Republic, despite feminist claims – and would also ensure them a seat in the National Assembly. Bearing in mind the interventions of women deputies throughout three legislations (1935–1945), we propose to draw a framework of feminine participation in the political sphere by examining their speeches on education and teaching with regard to gender categories. We must admit that those women to whom the Chief granted power to act assumed that power and became protagonists of the construction of the ‘Estado Novo’ woman.     

Willingness to Pay for Submerged Maritime Cultural Resources

Many consider salvage value and tourism expenditures as the only economic values of a historic shipwreck. This paper looks at one alternative, the non-market value generated by management of shipwrecks as submerged maritime cultural resources. We consider the question: How much are people willing to pay to maintain shipwrecks in their pristine state? The contingent valuation method was implemented during summer 2001 as part of a telephone survey to households in eastern North Carolina. We find that households are willing to pay about $35 in a one-time increase in state taxes. Willingness to payis internally validated by expected relationships with prices and income but fails to pass the scope test. We speculate that we inadvertently succumbed to the well-known “birds” problem. The double-bounded willingness to pay questions are not incentive compatible and are subject to starting point bias, despite efforts to minimize these effects.     

Log‐linear Model Analysis of Responses to Economics Attitude Scale Items

Attitude scales are normally treated as unidimensional, but if this assumption is inadmissible, the use of log‐linear model analysis enables treatment effects to be isolated for individual scale items. This article suggests appropriate procedures and applies them to a particular economics attitude scale.