Principals as Literacy Leaders with Indigenous Communities (PALLIC) building relationships: one school’s quest to raise Indigenous learners’ literacy

In 2011 to 2012, 48 schools in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland participated in the Principals as Literacy Leaders with Indigenous Communities (PALLIC) project. Central to this project was the establishment of positive working relationships between school principals and Indigenous community leaders in order to improve Indigenous literacy rates. Professional development in leadership skills and effective literacy instruction was provided through five professional learning modules. Participants worked together to create an action plan to support the literacy achievement of Indigenous students in their schools and communities. This article presents a case study of one participating school in Northern Queensland that successfully utilised the PALLIC framework to facilitate leadership actions and activities between Indigenous community and school leaders in order to form productive partnerships for the teaching of reading. In particular, the case study highlights the way that school leaders and Indigenous leaders established shared leadership and shared ways of learning in the school for reading outcomes of Indigenous students.     

校长领导力是如何影响学生成绩的?--基于国外校长领导力实证研究五大理论模型的分析

校长领导力是如何影响学生成绩的?为什么说一个好校长就是一所好学校?对于这些问题,国外关于校长领导力与学生成绩关系的大量实证研究已经初步形成了五个具有影响力和说服力的理论模型:校长领导力三元理论模型、学校氛围中介效应模型、校长领导行为涟漪效应模型、以学习为中心的校长领导力模型和成功校长领导模型,可以很好地解释校长领导力影响学生成绩的方式与关系,对于校长如何提高学校办学质量以及如何提高学生成绩具有实践的指导价值。其中学校发展的政策背景、校长的专业培训、学生的家庭背景、利益相关者的需要等都会对校长领导力产生影响,而校长领导力与这些变量的相互作用又会对学校条件、教室条件以及教师质量产生影响,进而影响学生成绩。     

The career paths of primary school principals in Ireland

The key purpose of this paper is to offer an exploration of the career paths of a number of Irish school principals. The information presented is part of a comparative study in the area, involving three island states: Cyprus, Malta and Ireland. The study provides an insight into how individuals become principals and how they perceive themselves in the role. The information is sourced through personal narrative. Qualitative in-depth interviewing is employed as the primary method of data gathering. Participants are posed a range of open-ended questions about their personal lives and about their initiation into their professional responsibilities. The results show that participants offer a variety of reasons for becoming teachers initially and a variety of reasons for seeking and achieving promotion to the post of school principal after a time. Family members and family experiences have an important function in influencing the lives of prospective leaders. With no formal training to prepare newly appointed principals for their roles, most report significant difficulties initially, particularly with managerial tasks and bureaucracy. In spite of these difficulties nonetheless, all participating principals report that they enjoy their roles. The results of the study demonstrate that the Irish principals interviewed in this research, experience similar challenges and rewards to those interviewed in earlier and concurrent studies internationally.     

An Examination of the Relationship Between Academic Discipline and Cognitive Complexity in Academic Deans’ Administrative Behavior

This study investigates Braxton and Hargens’ (1996, Variations among academic disciplines: Analytical frameworks and research. Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research. Vol. XI, pp. 1–45) assertion of the profound and extensive effects of academic discipline as it might pertain to administrative work. Academic deans in research and doctoral institutions nationwide were surveyed to investigate the relationship between academic discipline and cognitive complexity in their administrative behavior. A bivariate regression showed that being from an applied field was a significant predictor while the influence of consensus was not significant. Discipline effects waned when other predictors were added, suggesting that when other factors are considered, the extent to which one is exposed to their particular disciplinary paradigms becomes more important than mere affiliation with a discipline. Split sample analyses demonstrated variable influence structures. Findings indicate that the effects of discipline cannot be discounted in framing studies of administrators’ perceptions of their leadership context and the behavior which necessarily flows from those perceptions.     

Leadership that Transforms and Transacts: A Case of More Inspiration and Less Charisma

Bass' (1985) model of transformational leadership was largely confirmed in this study of school-level leaders in Singapore. However, instead of three factors of transformational leadership only two were obtained. Charismatic Leadership failed to emerge. It was replaced by an Inspirational Leadership factor that also included Bass' Intellectual Stimulation factor. The two transactional leadership factors of Contingent Reward and “passive” Management-by-Exception were obtained, but not the more recent addition, the “active” Management-by-Exception factor. Contrary to expectation, no gender difference was obtained with regard to the four factors.     

Situational leadership applied to the dissertation process

For more than 40 years, concern has been expressed over the attrition rate of students in Ph.D. programs in American universities. Although there are a number of significant factors at work, attrition of doctoral students in sciences such as anatomy may lead to a dearth of trained teaching anatomists as well as research scientists in the anatomical sciences. Failure to complete the Ph.D. process including the dissertation carries a high cost, not only to the students who fail to complete their programs, but also to society at large due to the expenditure of scarce education resources. A variety of factors have been examined in the various studies, but two stands out of major interest for this article: student personality factors such as perseverance and the level of faculty mentoring/support to the students during the graduate education process. A new approach to providing faculty support based on the needs of the individual student is presented in this article. Situational Leadership® has been developed over the past 40 years by Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard and their associates. This leadership model is unique in that when it is applied to the dissertation process, it requires the faculty member to determine the readiness level of the graduate student. Because each student is a unique individual, the faculty mentor assesses each student based on the specific task at hand in order to provide the appropriate style of mentorship each student requires. Anat Sci Ed 1:194–198, 2008. © 2008 American Association of Anatomists.     

抓好党建工作是构建和谐校园的关键

构建和谐校园,高校党建工作是关键。为此,我们首先要理清学校与社会、教师与学生、干部与群众以及教师间的关系;同时从推进党的固本强基工程、建设基层党组织和党的干部队伍、加强党的执政能力建设三方面开展高校党建工作,为和谐校园的构建开创新局面。     

道德领导的目标与策略

学校文化能否成为学校发展的本源,关键在于学校文化建设中道德领导的实施。因此,明确再造道德领导的目标与策略,为学校的改善觅得高的杠杆点,以促成名校的持续发展,具有重要的现实意义。     

Multicultural leadership, sustainable total school environment

Banks (2002) stated that to implement multicultural education successfully, we must think of the school as a social system. Therefore, if educational equity and excellence are to be provided to all students, a systemic Total School Environment [Banks (2001) Cultural diversity and education: Foundations curriculum and teaching, 4th ed. Allyn and Boston p.51] has to be structured and permeate every aspect of the schooling enterprise, i.e. (1) content integration, (2) the knowledge construction process, (3) prejudice reduction, (4) equity pedagogy, and (5) an empowering school culture and social structure. The Total School Environment is consistent with the educational change literatures discussed by Senge [(1990) The fifth discipline. Currency doubleday, NY]. This article is framed conceptually on a review of literature and the discussion is drawn from the case studies of innovative pedagogical practices using technology collected in the two research projects of the Center for Information Technology in Education (CITE), The University of Hong Kong during 2004–2006. With referencing to multiple school leadership literature and practices, the readers have an opportunity to explore the possible formation of the “total school environment” from one of the cases, but why not in another school? At the end of this article, it is concluded that school innovation requires a moral, systemic, integrative and emergent distributed leadership to build a scalable, sustainable learning community in a multicultural school environment.     

Breaking Free from the Needs Paradigm: A Collaborative Analysis of Inclusion

ABSTRACT

This self-study, based on research, conducted over five years, focuses on my leadership role employing an inclusion model of education in a school in Iceland serving students from ages 6 to 16. In this article, we examine how Edda’s practice helped support inclusion for the students, their families, and the teachers who engage with them. This multilayered self-study research project included feedback and insights from others in order to inform my understanding of my practice within the context of inclusion. Findings reveal Edda’s focus on the discourse of diagnosis as a dominant structural issue within her practice. The resulting themes on perceptions of inclusion, coordination of support, deployment of people, and collaboration across different entities have informed my understanding about my practice and my perspective on the meaning of a support system within inclusive education and improved student performance.