From Professional Leader to CEO: The Changing Role of New Zealand College of Education Principals in the 1990s

Policy changes in higher education internationally have led to greater institutional competition and performativity and a shift from academic to business management for institutional leaders. Major changes to tertiary education management in New Zealand, legislated in 1990, had a particularly marked impact on teacher education institutions, previously subject to Department of Education control over curriculum, student numbers, and budgeting. The role of college leaders was to provide professional leadership and to lobby the Department for resources. Post 1990, College Councils became financially accountable, principals became employers; institutions competed for students and were free to devise new programmes. This paper examines the impact of these changes on the leadership roles of college principals as they grappled with the new deregulated environment. It examines the results of these changes from five perspectives: managing change and new directions; the role as employers; financial management; competition, compliance and accountability; and relationships with universities.     

Developing professionally: examining the value of an external agent to the professional growth of teachers experimenting with mobile digital technologies

This article presents and discusses findings related to the relationship between a university researcher acting as the external agent and three self-selected teachers involved in a professional learning and research project. The role of an external agent in supporting teachers’ professional development is of interest because it has not always been a role that has benefited teachers. The focus centres on how these three teachers viewed this role at the end of a two-year partnership. The wider project is centred on developing these teachers’ proficiency and knowledge of the value of iPads to both their own professional growth and classroom practices as well as their students’ learning. Some digital aspects of the project have already been addressed by Wright and colleagues, but not the perceptions of teachers regarding what value they put on the external agent role. Bevins and Price’s conception of school/university partnerships inspired this focus on wondering about the impact of the researcher acting as an external agent intersecting with teachers’ professional lives as we tracked their progress in using the iPads.     

Knowledge through a collaborative network: a cross‐cultural partnership

A recurring issue for researchers, policy‐makers and practitioners is how new knowledge can be disseminated, critiqued, assessed and incorporated into policy development and practice. Campbell and Fulford examined strategies in a Canadian Education Ministry which was striving to incorporate research findings into policy debate. They evolved a useful framework indentifying six forms and stages of knowledge development related to research use in this context: generation of new knowledge, mobilisation, contextualisation, adaptation, application and integration. This paper uses their framework to explore links between research and practice in a collaborative cross‐cultural partnership designed to develop greater capacity in teacher education in a Pacific country, and based on action, co‐construction and reflection. It argues that there are blurred boundaries between knowledge production and its practical implementation, use and testing, that contextualisation and relationship building are crucial to knowledge mobilisation, and that knowledge is generated across all stages in the process.     

The ‘critical friend’ role in fostering reflective practices and developing staff cohesion: A case study in a new secondary school,New Zealand

This exploratory case study, arising from a longitudinal project into the establishment of a new secondary school in New Zealand, examines reflective practice through critical friend roles among staff. The paper describes, through the lens of Bourdieu's logic of practice, the implementation of a critical friendship approach linked to the school leaders’ vision and aim regarding learning within open classroom spaces as part of a modern learning environment. Reflective practice involves critiquing, rethinking and reframing existing professional practices, often through a critical friendship approach among school staff within a fostered collaborative and open culture. The researchers interviewed six participants (four leaders and two teachers), observed how the teaching and learning took place in the new open classroom spaces, and reviewed blog posts and the school's website. Findings reveal that critical friendship, as a way to develop staff cohesion, is fostered and supported by the school leaders’ vision and actions, while the physical geography of the new classroom spaces, and the redesign of learning, also make this easier to enact. Staff cohesion, trust and openness to peer scrutiny are hallmark of this emerging school culture. These emerging findings provide some insights into how one new school culture develops cohesion with its stated vision and mission.     

A case for adapting and applying continuance theory to education: understanding the role of student feedback in motivating teachers to persist with including digital technologies in learning

In New Zealand schools, the adoption and persistent use of digital tools to aid learning is a growing but uneven, trend, often linked to the practices of early adopters and/or robust wifi infrastructure. The Technology Adoption Model is used internationally to gauge levels of uptake of technological tools, particularly in commerce and also in education. However, this model is inadequate when it is used to attribute reasons for teachers adopting technologies for learning. This article offers an alternative view to understanding why teachers continue using digital technologies for learning. It focuses on the role of student voice and teachers’ pedagogical purposes as motivators, even when teachers have technological hurdles to overcome. The article engages with continuance theory as a lens for understanding these motivations via a qualitative thematic analysis of Moodle postings made by a 2012 cohort of initial teacher education students. The intention is to signpost ideas that might better explain teachers’ continued use of digital technologies in classrooms even if conditions for use are not optimal.