Organizational learning facilitated by instructional leadership,tight coupling and boundary spanning practices

Three organizational learning mediation processes are proposed as mechanisms for organizational change in this article. These include instructional leadership, tight coupling and boundary spanning. Whilst each of these processes has received attention in the research literature, we propose that their power arises from their particular combination rather than the occurrence of each in isolation. We illustrate the ways in which these processes might combine to create an organizational learning environment required for the kind of changes needed to raise student achievement. We do this with reference to a case study of a New Zealand school that dramatically improved the learning outcomes of students in reading. We describe the practices of a new principal, who was relatively inexperienced in school management but experienced in curriculum leadership. The case study illustrates how through her instructional leadership the principal was able to span the boundaries of her organization so that within a relatively short space of time the school became a more tightly coupled system that learnt to improve the learning outcomes of its students.     

Destination,Imagination and the Fires Within: Design Thinking in a Middle School Classroom

The purpose of the Taking Design Thinking to Schools Research Project was to extend the knowledge base that contributes to an improved understanding of the role of design thinking in K‐12 classrooms. The ethnographic qualitative study focused on the implementation of an interdisciplinary design curriculum by a team of university instructors in a public charter school. Three questions framed the study. How did students express their understanding of design thinking classroom activities? How did affective elements impact design thinking in the classroom environment? How is design thinking connected to academic standards and content learning in the classroom?     

A new generation of grey literature: The impact of advanced information technologies

A basic challenge of the Weinberg Report addressed the question of information overload. The Weinberg Panel was extremely concerned with the proliferation of scientific literature and the specific issue of how to sift through reams of data to find the “gems” of wisdom, or that which is truly new and useful. In the early 1960s when the report was being written, computers were not part of the information access and retrieval infrastructure. Writing twenty-five years later, in 1988, Dr. Weinberg recognized that the panel had not adequately taken into account the impact of the computer and the growth of the information industry. Today we have a new world of microcomputers and networked information which is fundamentally shifting the paradigm of scientific communication. We have new capabilities, including electronic publishing, visualization techniques, even virtual reality. Without getting into a great debate about the definition of “grey literature,” the main characteristics have traditionally been described as: rapid publication, wariable formats, no public peer review, and no commercial source of general availability. With networked information and multi-media technology, the new world of grey literature is emerging with an interesting set of new and revived challenges. This article looks at the most interesting characteristics, and based on them, presents the thesis that in the 1990s we are facing a new generation of “grey literature”.     

A Typology of Parental Involvement in Education Centring on Children and Young People: Negotiating familialisation,institutionalisation and individualisation

This article explores the widespread emphasis on parental involvement in education from the perspectives of children and young people. In contrast to the conceptualisation of children as variable social actors, policy initiatives to link home and school more effectively, and research-generated typologies of parental involvement, unthinkingly familialise and institutionalise children by ignoring any part they may play in parental involvement in their education. Drawing on data from our study of children's understandings of home-school relations, we develop and elaborate a typology that centres on the complex ways that children and young people talk about creating, acceding to, and resisting their parents' involvement in their education. The socially patterned differences between the children and young people's understandings and experiences demonstrate how the broad social processes of familialisation, institutionalisation and individualisation are, in fact, concretely lived and negotiated in variable ways. Nevertheless, there are also some commonalities in children and young people's resistance around notions of privacy.     

A Study of Truck Drivers and their Job Performance Regarding Highway Safety

Limited research has addressed the issue of truckdrivers and their performance regarding highway safety in terms of reduced number of crashes per driver. The primary purpose of this study was to determine how tractor trailer truck drivers' job performance could be improved while at the same time ensuring increased revenue for the transportation companies employing them. The target population for this study comprised of tractor‐trailer truck drivers employed by a leading transportation company in the United States. The data used in the study included demographic, human capital, compensation and workplace variables. The results of this study should be useful to several individuals, organizations and the entire U. S. economy. The transportation companies should benefit by knowing the factors that predict good job performance for the drivers. This should assist management in designing work conditions or other activities that promote good performance in terms of reduced crashes and improved productivity of the drivers.     

"Beyond the pale of ordinary criticism": eccentricity and the fossil books of Thomas Hawkins

Thomas Hawkins wrote two books about his extraordinary collection of fossil reptiles: Memoirs of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri (1834) and The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons (1840). When contemporary readers explicitly labeled these books "eccentric," they were making use of a new discourse that aimed to make sense of phenomena that appeared to transgress the boundaries of an increasingly ordered and structured world. Some modern-day commentators have dismissed Hawkins's books because of their perceived eccentricities. This essay, by contrast, uses techniques of close reading and reception analysis to investigate them precisely as specimens of "eccentric" literature. It argues that, like other eccentric phenomena, the books were perceived to be liminal--they were felt to undermine the generic boundaries that governed the production and interpretation of the different kinds of literary work. Eccentricity as a social and cultural phenomenon has received surprisingly little attention from scholars until very recently. Through analyzing and contextualizing Hawkins's books, and the varied responses they provoked, this essay aims to contribute to our understanding both of eccentricity and of the generic conventions shaping varieties of scientific writing in the nineteenth century and beyond.