Severed Heads and Compliant Bodies? A speculation about principal identities

When I had to reapply for my own position as principal I felt as if I was facing the prospect of losing a part of myself. Conversations with other women colleagues confirmed that I was not alone in this response. Taking this as my cue, I explore the notion of principal “identification” practices—that is the continuing process of forming a “principal identity”—through personal narrative, a Cartesian metaphor and emerging research evidence. In particular, I focus on how conditions of entrepreneurial governance change a continuing policy commitment to heroic leadership, and how principal and school identities are conflated through accountability regimes, marketing requirements and work intensification. I propose that a study of changing principal identities might fruitfully add to critical leadership and management scholarship, complementing the emergent corpus on emotions in leadership.

I am telling you stories. Trust me. (Winterson, 1988 Winterson J (1988) Passion London: Vintage  [Google Scholar], p. 160)     

Metaphorical images of schooling: beliefs about teaching and learning among prospective teachers from the United States displaying different motivational profiles

This study focused on investigating the types of schooling beliefs (teaching and learning) expressed through metaphorical images by prospective teachers (PTs) from the United States. Participants (N = 215) rated 10 schooling metaphors illustrating the student–school–teacher relationships (i.e. Passenger–Bus–Driver; Student is a passenger, School is a bus and Teacher is a driver). Two main factors, a student-centred and a teacher-centred approach described the key schooling beliefs of PTs. Additionally, differences in PTs’ schooling beliefs across typologies/clusters of PTs were found. Further, qualitative data from interviews illustrated how each cluster specifically expressed their instructional views.     

A Pilot Study of a Self-Administered Parent Training Intervention for Building Preschoolers’ Social–Emotional Competence

Social–emotional skills are equally as crucial for school success as cognitive and academic skills (Webster-Stratton and Reid in Infants Young Child 17:96–113, 2004), yet many young children lack these skills (Lavigne et al. in J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 35:204–214, 1996). Therefore, it is essential to invest in the development of social–emotional competence at an early age—a task that necessitates active parent involvement (Webster-Stratton and Reid 2004). This pilot study explored the effectiveness, integrity, and acceptability of a self-administered parent training intervention [Devereux Early Childhood Assessment—Second Edition (DECA-P2) family guide (Mackrain and Cairone in Promoting resilience for now and forever: a family guide for supporting the social and emotional development of preschool children, 2nd edn. Kaplan Early Learning Company, Lewisville, 2013)] targeting the promotion of social–emotional competence in young children (N = 12). Pre- and post-test parent reports revealed that children’s social–emotional competence increased and behavior problems decreased following program completion. Parent ratings indicated the intervention was carried out as intended (i.e., integrity) and that it was helpful (i.e., acceptability). These exploratory findings suggest that this self-administered parent intervention shows promise as an alternative to face-to-face early childhood prevention services.     

The City of Richgate: A/r/tographic Cartography as Public Pedagogy

The City of Richgate project worked with eight intergenerational immigrant families and examined immigrant experiences and narratives through a community‐engaged process that employed a/r/tography as a methodology. As such, the research also investigated the extent to which a/r/tographical research could visually and narratively portray the analysis of data collected by the co‐a/r/tographers. After interviewing and collecting images from each family, large artistic gates (banners) were created. This first phase of the project revealed the power of images in situ, and thus the power of a/r/tography in situ. For the community members and co‐a/r/tographers meanings were constructed within ongoing a/r/tographic inquiries described as collective artistic and educational praxis. The second phase involved the identification of important places by each family within the City of Richmond. After analysing all of the data, several works of art were created with each family in mind: bus shelter images juxtaposing close‐up and far away geographical images; side‐by‐side images portraying historical and contemporary images of family ideals and/or issues; banners illustrating families in meaningful poses; and archival collections portraying the importance of identity and memory in the transformation of culture. This phase culminated in a citywide exhibition of the artwork performing public pedagogy. The exhibition questioned the idea of a City of Richmond having a community centre, and instead exhibited many Richgates, or conceptions of Richmond. Rather than having a city centre, there are many centres, a Network of Cities of Richgates, where centres are constantly changing and shifting to reflect the narratives of individuals living in a psycho‐geographical region of a city.     

The centrality of teachers’ judgement practice in assessment: a study of standards in moderation

There is a strong quest in several countries including Australia for greater national consistency in education and intensifying interest in standards for reporting. Given this, it is important to make explicit the intended and unintended consequences of assessment reform strategies and the pressures to pervert and conform. In a policy context that values standardisation, the great danger is that the technical, rationalist approaches that generalise and make superficial assessment practices, will emerge. In this article, the authors contend that the centrality and complexity of teacher judgement practice in such a policy context need to be understood. To this end, we discuss and analyse recorded talk in teacher moderation meetings showing the processes that teachers use as they work with stated standards to award grades (A to E). We show how they move to and fro between (1) supplied textual artefacts, including stated standards and samples of student responses, (2) tacit knowledge of different types, drawing into the moderation, and (3) social processes of dialogue and negotiation. While the stated standards play a part in judgement processes, in and of themselves they are shown to be insufficient to account for how the teachers ascribe value and award a grade to student work in moderation. At issue is the nature of judgement as cognitive and social practice in moderation and the legitimacy (or otherwise) of the mix of factors that shape how judgement occurs.     

The determinants of school district salary incentives: An empirical analysis of,where and why

Most public school districts in the United States use a salary schedule to determine compensation for teachers within the district. However, some school districts have implemented incentive pay schemes that allow flexibility at the school or even individual teacher level. These compensation schemes in some ways may more closely approximate a competitive labor market. This study examines the factors that influence a district's decision to offer incentive pay using districts from the 1999 to 2000 Schools and Staffing Survey. The results suggest that school districts that face barriers to recruitment or retention and districts that face competition from non-sectarian private schools are more likely to offer incentive pay.     

Life on Mars: headteachers before the National College

In the hit BBC TV drama Life on Mars Sam Tyler had an accident and woke up in 1973. Is he mad, in a coma or actually back in time? As the drama unfolds he experiences a world without performance audits but also one without the safeguards for arrest, detention and the interviewing of suspects mandated by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984). The acclaimed series has led to flights of nostalgia, not least for a world in which police could get on with ‘real policing’ without ‘unnecessary’ paperwork. In this article, we will metaphorically go back in time to contemporary and historical practices of headship in English schools. If a headteacher from 2009 were to wake up in 1973 what would they understand about their work, what would be the same, what would be different? What taken‐for‐granted current practices might get them into trouble, what might frustrate them – and what might delight them that they would bring back to the current job if they could? Mobilising Bourdieu’s thinking tools, we will examine these questions through an analysis of published and unpublished texts produced by heads about their work.     

From External Regulation to Self-Regulation: Early Parenting Precursors of Young Children's Executive Functioning

In keeping with proposals emphasizing the role of early experience in infant brain development, this study investigated the prospective links between quality of parent–infant interactions and subsequent child executive functioning (EF), including working memory, impulse control, and set shifting. Maternal sensitivity, mind-mindedness and autonomy support were assessed when children were 12 to 15 months old ( N  =   80). Child EF was assessed at 18 and 26 months. All three parenting dimensions were found to relate to child EF. Autonomy support was the strongest predictor of EF at each age, independent of general cognitive ability and maternal education. These findings add to previous results on child stress-response systems in suggesting that parent–child relationships may play an important role in children's developing self-regulatory capacities.