School-Based Management: Reconceptualizing to Improve Learning Outcomes

This article examines educational decentralization efforts in both developed and developing countries, guided by two questions: (1) under what conditions does school-based management (SBM) produce best results and (2) what are the roles and relationships of the school/community and of the region/center. The authors summarize, from recent literature, reasons for the usual failure of SBM and identify the conditions under which SBM works, noting school/community relations and external infrastructure as important factors. In looking at research from developing countries, the authors highlight similarities and differences compared to Western research, focusing on projects with promising results. Finally, the article draws strategic implications for establishing the kind of school-based developments that will positively affect learning outcomes.     

Sharing the arena: Changing roles and negotiating power among teacher education participants

Abstract

This article describes and discusses the changes that took place when a group of university faculty members encouraged the participation of traditionally silent teacher education participants (supervising teachers and teacher education students) in the process of teacher education. The findings of this study include defining the delicate balance between inviting participation, negotiating roles, and sharing power in an arena traditionally reserved for only one group of participants. Participants (including university faculty) are often reluctant to give up the security of their traditional roles; therefore, they have difficulty taking on new roles. Furthermore, there is a continual tug of war between participants because of the constant negotiation and renegotiation of roles, relationships, and power. Traditional ways of interacting on the part of all participants are called into question. Understanding this balance proved to be the foremost difficulty for all participants involved.     

Centred knowing and its influence in emancipatory learning

This article reports on specific findings related to the knowing process of emancipatory learning that emerged from a qualitative study of change agents. The study involved 24 women who had a reflective awareness of consciousness‐raising leading to their commitment to social action. Data were gathered using a semi‐structured, open‐ended interview schedule. A comparative analysis of the data was done. To ensure credibility of the study's findings, peer debriefing and member checks were employed. While the study disclosed broader findings related to the nature of emancipatory learning and its facilitators, this article explicates three: (a) emancipatory learning manifested itself within these women's lives through a transformation from alienation to agency in knowing; (b) a knowing process centred in authenticity was an essential dynamic of their critical reflection; and (c) the knowledge constructed from this knowing in part motivated their action for the development of society.     

Special Education in a 4‐Year Response to Intervention (RtI) Environment: Characteristics of Students with Learning Disability and Grade of Identification

This 4‐year longitudinal research was designed to study special education determinations of students who participated in Tier 2 intervention in a Response to Intervention (RtI) model focused on reading across Grades 1–4. We compared identification rates for learning disabilities (LD) and student characteristics of 381 students the year prior to implementation with 377 students in the RtI environment. Across schools, 38–60 percent of students were English language learners (ELL). Key outcomes by Grade 4 for students with LD who had participated in a model of RtI were relatively greater reading impairment with effect sizes ranging from 0.64 to 0.82, and more equitable representation across ELL and native English speakers than in the cohort prior to RtI implementation. Notably, one‐third of the students identified for special services as LD in these schools were not identified until 4th grade.     

Texturing the narrative paradigm: Folklore and communication

Although communication theory is often informed by other disciplines, scholarly connections with folklore have been few. As communication scholars become increasingly interested in narrative as a topic of study for the future, it seems important to return to the past: To folklore, and to Walter Fisher's work in communication that yielded the narrative paradigm. This paper suggests ways in which complementary understandings of narrative in folklore and in Fisher's paradigm could coinform each other and thereby enrich both disciplines. Many ideas about communication and the narrative paradigm can be empirically strengthened by the work of folklore scholars. At the same time, communication scholarship informs folklore's attempts to merge aesthetic and social processes in folklore and encouraging the conversation between disciplines to continue.