Distributed leadership and organizational change: Reviewing the evidence

This article explores the relationship between distributed leadership and organizational change. It draws upon the existing literature to consider whether distributed forms of leadership influence development and change in schools. The article examines the research base relating to distributed leadership and organizational outcomes. It focuses on how different patterns or configurations of distributed leadership contribute to organizational development. The article concludes by highlighting issues that require further study and more empirical confirmation. This article is based on a literature review commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills as part of a research project currently being undertaken by Leithwood, K., Day, C., Sammons, P., Harris, A., and Hopkins, D. (2006) ‘Leadership and student outcomes’ and Leithwood, K., Day, C., Sammons, P., Harris, A., and Hopkins, D. (2006) ‘Successful school leadership: What it is and how it influences pupil learning’. London, DFES.     

Located in the thin of it: Young children’s use of thin moral concepts

One important socio-cultural medium through which young children’s moral understanding is cultivated is parent/child discourse. Of particular interest to us was young children’s use of basic (‘thin’) evaluative concepts (good, bad, right and wrong), which are ubiquitous in everyday discourse and serve as a potential bridge from the non-moral to the moral domain. We investigated 14 2–5-year-old children’s (and their parents’) use of thin evaluative concepts and found that while they frequently used good and bad to morally evaluate other people’s and their own psychological/dispositional states and behaviors—as well as, less frequently, to highlight relevant standards, expectations and rules—they did not use right and wrong. In contrast, a sample of US written and spoken public conversation revealed that adults did. Reasons for this are discussed, along with the frequency of different types of moral evaluations, differences between children and their parents, and age-related trends.     

1. Three-Element Energy Field and Leadership

心、身、能量,即元极理论中的三元(能量),对培育个人领导能力及组织机构整体的学习环境都是个深奥而又重要的概念和实践。在一个组织机构和共同体中,开发交感和谐的集体三元场是建立健康、有创造性、能赋予生命以意义和价值的环境的微妙而又实际的基础工作,对缓解紧张压力和保健医疗十分重要。而启动这样一个富有挑战性的集体学习、康复和成长的过程,集体的认识和共同体领导的实际投入都是必要的先决条件。文中引述了能量医学、认识科学、理论物理学、管理学、学习与知识创新理论近年来的研究成果,并分析了中国鄂州元极医院应用三元能量系统治疗晚期癌症等与紧张压力有关的疑难病症的成果。     

领导管理学和卫生保健医疗中的能量场:元极三元模型

心、身、能量,即元极理论中的三元(能量),对培育个人领导能力及组织机构整体的学习环境都是个深奥而又重要的概念和实践.在一个组织机构和共同体中,开发交感和谐的集体三元场是建立健康、有创造性、能赋予生命以意义和价值的环境的微妙而又实际的基础工作,对缓解紧张压力和保健医疗十分重要.而启动这样一个富有挑战性的集体学习、康复和成长的过程,集体的认识和共同体领导的实际投入都是必要的先决条件.文中引述了能量医学、认识科学、理论物理学、管理学、学习与知识创新理论近年来的研究成果,并分析了中国鄂州元极医院应用三元能量系统治疗晚期癌症等与紧张压力有关的疑难病症的成果.     

An Evaluation of Foreign HR Consulting Company Effectiveness in China

With vast amounts of foreign capital entering China yearly, there is a strong need to build its human capital to Western accepted levels. A plethora of external vendors offering training and consulting interventions to develop this labor force have quickly followed this investment. An evaluation of what these vendors are actually offering based on Donald Kirkpatrick's widely accepted “Four Levels of T&D Evaluation” is put forward. The findings are that while Chinese management does acknowledge the strong knowledge pool these companies can offer, they find that the high ethnocentric delivery of the skills content is an impediment to learning. They are also unhappy with the high costs, over usage of part‐time consultants, and a lingering perception of vendors using “outdated” training and consulting methods. The researcher proposes communication and delivery of a polycentric training mechanism, where stakeholders (local Chinese) directly contribute to what they are learning under a rubric of Chinese cultural and societal norms in order to incorporate more soft measures in the learning evaluation.     

Pupils with Severe Learning Difficulties as Personal Target Setters

Richard Rose, Senior Lecturer at University College, Northampton, and Will Fletcher and Gaynor Goodwin, Watling View School, St Albans, argue that although many schools have attempted to enable pupils with special educational needs to play an active part in their own planning procedures and assessment, few have identified and analysed the skills required by both pupils and teachers. Theydescribe a one-year small-scale action-research project, in a school for children with severe learning difficulties, which resulted in the development of procedures for the assessment of 'pupil readiness' for full involvement in the target-setting process.     

A Survey of Current and Future Perceived Multi‐National Corporation Manufacturing Training Needs in Tianjin,China (T.E.D.A.)

The purpose of this study was to survey current and perceived future employer‐provided training practices among MNC [multi‐national corporations] manufacturing companies in the Tianjin Economic Development Area (T.E.D.A.) of China. The study bifurcated the data into two areas: all firms and only firms with a structured formal training program in place. A face‐to‐face interview was administered to HR personnel and trainers in the “top eighty” manufacturing MNCs in T.E.D.A. as designated by the T.E.D.A. administrative government in March 2000. A total of 56 interviews were obtained for a sampling margin of error of +/‐ 5. Data analysis revealed that overall the workforces in T.E.D.A employed 350 people or less, were largely youthful, and growing slowly. All employees had 11 to 15 years of formal education. A majority of firms conducted training needs assessments, gave skilled workers more training than unskilled, and earmarked 60% of the training budget for outsourcing. The quality perception of outsource training available in T.E.D.A. was mediocre. Management, technical skills, QC [quality control], and sales training accounted for 67% of the current training need. In three years, they were still perceived to be accounting for the same amounts, but among well‐correlated training departments, QC training was expected to decrease 2%, while in firms without a structured training program, sales training was expected to increase 2%. Trainers did not perceive employee turnover as a training problem. ROI [return on investment] perception on training was greater than 6%.     

Negotiating textual talk: Conversation analysis,pedagogy and the organisation of online asynchronous discourse

This paper uses Conversation Analysis to investigate the ways in which participants in an online asynchronous postgraduate reading group managed and negotiated their contributions within the discussion. Using the conversation analytic concerns with sequential organisation, adjacency pairs and topicality, this article shows the analytic insights that this perspective can bring to the examination of written asynchronous discourse. The paper shows that in the section of the discussion analysed here, the discourse displayed remarkable similarities to the ways in which face-to-face conversation has been seen to operate in terms of the organisation of conversational turns, the application of specific interactional rights, the lineal development of topics of conversation and the structural use of question-answer turn pairs. The paper concludes by showing how this form of analysis can relate to the formation of reflexive pedagogy in which course design can be created to take account of such findings. It shows how a detailed understanding of how pedagogy is played out in interaction is fundamental for reflecting on the relationship between pedagogic aims and educational practice.     

The development of knowledge for teaching physical education in secondary schools over the course of a PGCE year

There has been a considerable amount of work on what knowledge student teachers need to develop to become effective teachers. The purpose of this study was to look at the development of knowledge of student physical education teachers in England. Six secondary student physical education teachers completed a journal on a monthly basis throughout their one‐year course. The student teachers and their mentors were interviewed in school towards the end of their course in June. Responses were analysed inductively. Results showed that knowledge important to develop, knowledge developed and knowledge which still needs to be developed at the end of the course was all related to content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge which they could apply in the immediate practical teaching situation. The results are discussed in relation to the development of student physical education teachers knowledge for teaching.