How do school leaders respond to the growing intrusiveness of accountability policies? Evidence from Italy

ABSTRACT

The role of school principals is an evolving one, calling them to become agents of change, focusing on educational leadership as they take the schools forward. All this is happening in a context that is becoming more challenging and stressful as school leaders try to juggle the state-mandated accountability devices. In relation to the Italian context, this paper analyses the growing penetration of accountability systems in school management and the implications for leadership practices. The results of a research project conducted with school leaders show that accountability systems can provide an opportunity for school improvement if school leaders defuse their potential bureaucracy, consistently integrating them into their practices of leadership, respecting the organisational idea of the school as professional learning community. An authentic educational leadership is a fundamental condition for governing the risks and contradictions that accountability systems bring with them in the complex reality of schools.     

Interpretive investigation of the science‐related career decisions of three African‐American college students

Reports published since 1977 indicate that African Americans are underrepresented among Ph.D.‐holding scientists. Although researchers have identified numerous factors that correlate with career choice, they have failed to address students' reasons for choosing or not choosing science and science‐related careers. This study examines the career decisions of three African‐American college students. All three students began college aspiring toward science‐related careers. However, by the end of data collection only one student was working toward a science‐related career. Data were collected by means of eight, open‐ended, 1‐hour interviews conducted over a period of 6 months. Findings indicate that students' interest in a science‐related career is directly related to the degree to which they perceive that career as being supportive of deep‐seated life goals; and that a deeper view of the nature of science better enables students to perceive a science‐related career as supportive of life goals. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 599–621, 2001     

Dissection of a truth regime: the narrowing effects on the public good of neoliberal discourse in the Virginia performance-based funding policy

A major role of all public higher education institutions is to foster the public good. In democratic societies, the public good emphasizes the more collective activities and benefits and how resources are accessible to all in a society. Institutions of higher education create new knowledge, promote cultural tolerance, increase civic activity, and have lasting intergenerational effects among other things which all serve to enhance the collective activities of a polity. Since public higher education institutions promote the public good, and since public higher education institutions are governed by policy, educational policy becomes a crucial determiner of the public good. Moreover, policies are constructed with language or discourse. Thus, the discourse of policy, which has the power to structure the actions, speech, and thoughts of those affected by the policy, has a direct impact on the public good. In light of this importance, this paper critically examines the discourse of educational policy.     

Reinforcement expectancy and trial spacing effects in delayed matching-to-sample by pigeons

Four experiments assessed the role of reinforcement expectancies in the trial spacing effect obtained in delayed matching-to-sample by pigeons. In Experiment 1, a differential outcome (DO) group received reinforcement with a probability of 1.0 for correct comparison responses following one sample stimulus and a probability of 0.2 for correct comparison responses following the other sample stimulus. The nondifferential outcome (NDO) group received reinforcement with a probability of 0.6 for correct responses to either stimulus. While matching accuracy was higher for the DO group than for the NDO group, both groups showed an equivalent decline in accuracy as the intertriai interval (ITI) duration was decreased. However, within the DO group, ITI duration affected performance on low-probability-of-reinforcement trials but not on high-probability-of-reinforcement trials. In Experiment 2, delay interval (DI) duration was 5, 10, or 15 sec and accuracy was higher for the DO group than for the NDO group at all DI durations. In addition, accuracy decreased similarly on high- and low-probability-of-reinforcement trials for the DO group as DI was increased. In Experiment 3, all birds were studied under DO conditions and ITI duration was manipulated along with DI duration. At the short DI duration, decreasing ITI duration had a detrimental effect on low-probability-of-reinforcement trials but no effect on high-probability-of-reinforcement trials. At the long DI duration, decreasing ITI duration had detrimental effects on both types of trials. In Experiment 4, unsignaled ITI reinforcers disrupted accuracy when the DI was long and when the ITI was short. The applicability of scalar expectancy theory to these data is discussed.     

The myth of The Phoenix: progressive education,migration and the shaping of the welfare state, 1985–2015

Abstract

Since the 1970s, many western welfare states have been subject both to increased migration and to a renewed interest in progressive education. The present article addresses the question of whether these two phenomena are related and how changing notions of the welfare state shape and are shaped by this relationship. To answer the question, we concentrate our attention on the case study of Ghent (Belgium), which from the 1970s onwards has been characterised not only by a growing ethnic diversity but also by a renewed interest in progressive educational initiatives. Drawing on oral history with key figures in the local educational field and research in school archives, this article indicates that progressive initiatives in the last few decades have indeed emerged as an answer to migration patterns. But whereas initial initiatives in the 1980s arose from an endeavour to cater for the migrant child, some recent initiatives arose from an attempt to exclude the same child.     

Revisiting size effects in higher education research productivity

The potential occurrence of variable returns to size in research activity is a factor to be considered in choices about the size of research organizations and also in the planning of national research assessment exercises, so as to avoid favoring those organizations that would benefit from such occurrence. The aim of the current work is to improve on weaknesses in past inquiries concerning returns to size through application of a research productivity measurement methodology that is more accurate and robust. The method involves field-standardized measurements that are free of the typical distortions of aggregate measurement by discipline or organization. The analysis is conducted for 183 hard science fields in all 77 Italian universities (time period 2004–2008) and allows detection of potential differences by field.     

Evaluating student perceptions of learning processes and intended learning outcomes under inquiry approaches

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is promoted as a teaching approach that can enhance student learning outcomes. IBL can be categorised according to scale (e.g. tasks, course/module/paper, degree), mode (structured, guided, open) and framing (information or discovery-oriented). Our research used a survey instrument to determine how student perceptions of learning processes and intended learning outcomes (ILOs) varied in response to courses with different modes and framing of IBL. The survey was completed by 940 students in 15 IBL courses across a range of disciplines and levels. All types of IBL courses were well rated by students for encouraging learning processes and ILOs congruent with a well-designed inquiry experience. Regarding modes of IBL, there was a clear hierarchy from open (most highly rated) to guided and then structured inquiry. For the framing of IBL, courses using discovery-oriented IBL were more highly rated than information-oriented IBL. Overall, the most highly rated course design was open, discovery-oriented IBL, but other types of IBL remained important in terms of developing research and inquiry skills. To determine whether all types of IBL courses are promoting enhanced ILOs compared to more traditionally taught courses, a comparative study should be undertaken.     

A sensitivity analysis of research institutions’ productivity rankings to the time of citation observation

One of the critical issues in bibliometric research assessments is the time required to achieve maturity in citations. Citation counts can be considered a reliable proxy of the real impact of a work only if they are observed after sufficient time has passed from publication date. In the present work the authors investigate the effect of varying the time of citation observation on accuracy of productivity rankings for research institutions. Research productivity measures are calculated for all Italian universities active in the hard sciences in the 2001–2003 period, by individual field and discipline, with the time of the citation observation varying from 2004 to 2008. The objective is to support policy-makers in choosing a citation window that optimizes the tradeoff between accuracy of rankings and timeliness of the exercise.     

A sensitivity analysis of researchers’ productivity rankings to the time of citation observation

In this work we investigate the sensitivity of individual researchers’ productivity rankings to the time of citation observation. The analysis is based on observation of research products for the 2001–2003 triennium for all research staff of Italian universities in the hard sciences, with the year of citation observation varying from 2004 to 2008. The 2008 rankings list is assumed the most accurate, as citations have had the longest time to accumulate and thus represent the best possible proxy of impact. By comparing the rankings lists from each year against the 2008 benchmark we provide policy-makers and research organization managers a measure of trade-off between timeliness of evaluation execution and accuracy of performance rankings. The results show that with variation in the evaluation citation window there are variable rates of inaccuracy across the disciplines of researchers. The inaccuracy results negligible for Physics, Biology and Medicine.     

How important is choice of the scaling factor in standardizing citations?

Because of the variations in citation behavior across research fields, appropriate standardization must be applied as part of any bibliometric analysis of the productivity of individual scientists and research organizations. Such standardization involves scaling by some factor that characterizes the distribution of the citations of articles from the same year and subject category. In this work we conduct an analysis of the sensitivity of researchers’ productivity rankings to the scaling factor chosen to standardize their citations. To do this we first prepare the productivity rankings for all researchers (more than 30,000) operating in the hard sciences in Italy, over the period 2004–2008. We then measure the shifts in rankings caused by adopting scaling factors other than the particular factor that seems more effective for comparing the impact of publications in different fields: the citation average of the distribution of cited-only publications.