An exploration of the validity and potential of adult ego development for enhancing understandings of school leadership

An adult ego development (AED) perspective accepts that the way adults interpret and interact in the social world can change during their life-span. This article seeks to analyse the validity and potential of AED for enhancing understandings of educational leadership practice and development. We analysed the AED literature and interviewed 16 individuals in senior leadership positions in the English school system. The interviews enabled them to explore the notion of AED and to reflect on their own sense-making capability and their experience of school leaders they considered to be in the different stages of AED. Educational leaders judged to be in the different AED stages were encountered by respondents to varying extents and were experienced and valued differently. Those considered to be in the later AED stages appeared to be more highly valued and their sense-making capabilities may have substantial value in the complex working environment of schools. The analyses showed that: AED has a considerable role in educational leadership practice; can inform the analysis of educational leadership practice and development; and has valuable explanatory power.     

On Drawing,Visual Language and the Pictorial Image: An Interview with John Willats

The editorial team of TRACEY, an online drawing journal hosted by Loughborough University School of Art & Design, was interested to learn more about John Willats’s current thinking on the subject of drawing and to put to him a number of specific questions to do with the functions of drawn marks, notions of pictorial syntax, the role of ambiguity and imprecision in drawing and future directions for drawing research. He kindly agreed to an interview, which took place in his Somerset studio on Thursday 6th December 2001. The following is an edited version of that interview.     

Raising levels of school student engagement and retention in rural,regional and disadvantaged areas: is it a lost cause?

This paper reports on the views of key members of the educational community about student engagement and retention in rural, regional and disadvantaged areas of the Australian state of Tasmania. It provides insights into the attributed reasons for the longstanding low levels of student retention in Tasmania, and the possible ways to militate against the widely censured problem of students leaving school too soon. The paper draws from principles of Bronfenbrenner’s model of ecology to situate the 25 participants who formed the sample of the study in the exosystem of the environment of the young people whose educational attainment and retention in schools is the focus of this work. Data analysis generated three major themes: families and the socio-cultural environment; teachers and teaching; and the school system. The study’s findings play an important role in prompting us to question when, and if, the dire situation of student dropout in the state and in similar contexts worldwide will begin to be reversed. Implications of the work include the need to develop and sustain a strong policy environment in which high-quality education and schooling success are contextualised as key features to which members across the systems and sections of society can contribute.     

INTERPRETING THE EXPERIENCES OF CHRISTIANS,MUSLIMS, AND JEWS ENGAGED IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE: A COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH STUDY

This article describes preliminary findings of a doctoral research project undertaken within the doctoral program in adult and continuing education at National-Louis University in Chicago. The project, inspired by the authors' own experiences of interreligious dialogue with each other as well as their encounter with the work of Boys and Lee (1996), investigates the experiences of particular Muslims, Christians, and Jews, who have engaged in interreligious dialogue for at least one year. The authors, a Muslim and a Jewish adult and religious educator, are two of the twenty participants in the study.     

Effective Schools for All

The study investigated the relation between district culture, student achievement, and student attitudes about their schools. Perceptions of students as expressed in more than 2,000 essays written about their schools were explored. Seven cultural categories were examined for differences across grade levels and districts. Statistical differences were found for 3 categories (Social/People, Education/Curriculum, and Extra-curricular Activities) for writing achievement, for whether the district culture were rated as positive or negative, and for whether student's comments revealed a positive or negative view of their schools. This study suggests that district culture has a noticeable effect on school culture and on student achievement.