Search results

The purpose of this essay is to honor, position and reflect on key themes related to high school reform within the careerlong scholarship of Karen Seashore Louis. It is presented in relation to my own and others' key studies and book-length arguments regarding educational change, knowledge utilization, professional communities and innovation, over the past 30 years and up to the present time.

The article examines and interprets major works by Karen Seashore Louis and other educational change theorists that address repeated systemic failures, and episodic outlier efforts, at transformational change in high schools.

High school change has only failed if it is judged by the overarching criterion of system-wide transformation. Fair assessments of high school change must also examine accumulated incremental innovations. In light of the need for transformational aspirations in schools to mesh with transformational directions in society, the global pandemic and its aftermath may provide five key opportunities for long-awaited transformation.

There are different levels and degrees of innovation. Incremental innovation is as important as wholesale transformation. The growing number of networked outliers of innovation raises questions about the false equation of whole system change with bureaucratic state reform. Although the influential literature on whole system change is rooted in a small number of English-speaking countries, transformational change on a system-wide basis already exists in Northern Europe and parts of the Global South. Last, the pandemic and other major disruptions to the global social order have produced conditions that are highly favorable to transformational change in the future.

This article revisits three classic findings from Dan Lortie's 1975 book Schoolteacher, in the context of the coronavirus pandemic and its possible aftermaths. These findings are that teachers and others base their ideas about teaching on the long apprenticeship of observation as students; they derive their satisfaction from the psychic rewards of teaching – the emotional satisfaction and feedback that teachers got from students; and they work in conservative cultures of individualism.

The article appraises Lortie's foundational text in relation to contemporary public domain surveys and op-ed articles about the impact of the pandemic on teaching and learning.

COVID-19 created conditions that undermined traditional psychic rewards, weakened the tenuous student–teacher relationship as more students found schooling less engaging, began to give parents distorted observations of teaching online and made teacher collaboration more difficult.

Due to the current nature of the pandemic and the shortage of just-in-time original data, the research relies on rapid responses and op-ed perceptions rather than on an established body of literature and database.

The postpandemic agenda holds out three ways to modernize Lortie's agenda in ways that advance the presence and impact of professional capital. These ways comprise new psychic rewards for students and not just teachers, a more open professionalism that is actively inclusive of parents and collaborative professionalism that has greater strength and depth.

Educational reform in the postpandemic age must be transformational and not seek to return to normal.

The paper gives new meaning to Lortie's original ideas on COVID-19 circumstances

The purpose of this paper is to cover a 10-year period in ten of Ontario’s 72 school districts on the nature, origins and importance of “leading from the middle” (LfM) within and across the districts.

The research uses a self-selected but also representative sample of ten Ontario school districts. It undertook three-day site visits in each of the districts, transcribed all the interviews and compiled an analysis into detailed case studies.

LfM is defined by a philosophy, structure and culture that promotes collaboration, initiative and responsiveness to the needs of each district along with collective responsibility for all students’ success.

To be sustainable in Ontario, LfM needs support and resourcing from the top. The current environment of economic austerity therefore threatens sustainability. Globally, examples of LfM are emerging in at least three other systems. The analysis does not have identical questions or respondents in phases 1 and 2. Ontario’s version of LfM may differ from others. The collaborative design may downplay criticisms of LfM.

LfM provides a clear design for leading in complex times. Compared to top-down leadership the whole system can address the whole of students’ learning and well-being. LfM is suited to systems and cultures that support local democracy, community responsiveness and professional empowerment and engagement.

LfM is an inclusive, democratic and professionally empowering and responsive process that differs from other middle level strategies which treat the middle merely as a way of connecting the top and bottom to get government policies implemented more efficiently and coherently.

This Commentary is a review and critique of arguments that oppose the desirability and impact of professional collaboration in education. The purpose of this paper is to analyze two recent high-profile reviews of professional development and collaboration. The analysis is informed by a historical typology of five phases of professional collaboration in theory and practice.

The Commentary reviews and summarizes selected key texts that represent different phases in the development of advocacy for and research concerning the emergence of professional collaboration. It then critiques the methodology, findings, and recommendations of two key critiques of professional collaboration and development that have been widely disseminated for educators and policymakers.

Contrary to the views of its opponents, professional collaboration as a whole has a record of indirect, long term, yet clear and positive effects on teachers and students. Particular kinds of professional collaboration can vary a great deal in quality and impact, however. Short-term collaborative interventions, such as data teams, are often dependent for their success on the prior existence of deeper cultures and processes. These processes and cultures characterize high-performing systems globally. Advocacy for competitive alternatives is based on insufficient evidence.

Although advocacy for more competition in public school systems is common, high-profile critiques of professional collaboration are relatively new. This paper engages with these critiques from a broader historical perspective, and finds they have serious flaws of reasoning and methodology. Thus far, the critiques provide insufficient warrant for moves toward more competitive systems of schooling and teaching.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast the approaches to improving teacher quality through initial teacher education (ITE) in the Canadian province of Alberta, a consistently high performing system on international comparisons, to the approach taken in the United States, which has consistently fared less well than the average country in these comparisons.

We draw on a case study of policies and practices related to teaching and teacher education in Alberta and on analyses of U.S. teaching and teacher education policy to compare a business capital approach with a professional capital approach to initial teacher education.

The decision by philanthropists, business and corporate interests, and the federal government in the United States to invest in the business capital approach has led to the growing privatization of public education. The U.S. would do well to learn from Alberta’s investment in the professional capital of teachers. Alberta’s system truly is a system that has decided to invest in building “the whole teacher”. The province supports education, including initial teacher education, pays its teachers competitive salaries, and provides access to high quality and teacher driven professional development.

While comparative analyses of education systems are not new, this comparative analysis of initial teacher education in Alberta and the U.S. using a theoretical framework based on Hargreaves and Fullan’s (2012, 2013) discussion of business and professional capital should give pause to the current U.S. trajectory of disinvesting from university and college based initial teacher preparation in favor of early-entry programs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the concept of ' inspiring teaching' based on case studies of exemplary practitioners in England to inform professional development and collaborative learning and support school improvement.

The study adopted a mixed methods design involving multiple perspectives. Data sources included interviews with teachers, two systematic classroom observation schedules and qualitative field notes from classroom observations. Quantitative and qualitative findings were integrated to allow for triangulation and synthesis.

The ‘inspiring’ sample of teachers exhibited many strengths in terms of the characteristics of more effective teaching identified in previous literature. However, the integration and synthesis of evidence also reveals core features of inspiring practice and highlighted the strong emotional and reflective components that distinguish inspiring practice, including: positive relationships; good classroom/behaviour management; positive and supportive climate; formative feedback; high quality learning experiences; enjoyment, and high levels of student engagement and motivation.

This small-scale study was based on a purposive sample of 17 teachers in England therefore results cannot necessarily be generalised to other contexts.

The research findings and approaches can be used to support teachers' professional development and provide resources to promote collaboration in developing professional learning communities.

The investigation provides new evidence on the characteristics, practices and views of inspiring teachers. The use of multiple perspectives and integration of findings provides new evidence to inform and support the development of professional learning communities.

As digital devices (e.g., laptops, tablets) have become increasingly ubiquitous, so too has students’ potential for digital distraction. It is yet unknown how teachers and schools might effectively handle such challenges. Accordingly, this study explores educators’ encounters with digital distraction among students, including their work toward addressing the problem.

This mixed-methods case study drew upon interview and survey data. Data were analyzed to describe educators’ encounters with and problem solving around digital distraction. This included the use of social network analysis. Specifically, a core-periphery model helped illuminate patterns in collaborative problem solving.

Students’ distractions included online entertainment and sending messages. This added to an overall atmosphere of distractedness in classrooms. Rather than collaborate around digital distraction, teachers tended to handle these issues on their own. If teachers did talk to others, these instances were more likely complaints to leaders than peer-to-peer collaborations.

This study provides a descriptive account of one school and its problem solving around digital distraction. Building upon this study, future research might address the effectiveness of approaches for handling distraction, the influence of network structures on problem solving, and the factors influencing educators’ collaboration around technology.

Digital distraction is a new challenge in schools and in society. This study lays groundwork for understanding and addressing this issue. It also demonstrates one way to apply core-periphery analyses toward understanding problem solving.

This paper draws on the findings of a program of research, which, over many years, has explored ways of promoting greater equity in schools and education systems. Using examples from the field, the paper provides an explanation of what this involves. In so doing it identifies potential barriers that have to be addressed and suggestions as to how these might be overcome.

The paper refelects on a series of studies what uses a ‘development and research’ approach This is one of a family of methodologies referred to by as ‘design-based implementation research’. These aim to transcend traditional research/practice barriers to facilitate the design of educational interventions that are ‘effective, sustainable, and scalable’. They are seen as occurring when researcher and practitioner knowledge meet in particular sites, aimed at producing new knowledge about ways in which broad values might better be realized in future practice.

The experiences described in this article suggest a way forward that policy makers could use to ensure that the impetus that comes from greater school autonomy will lead to improvements that will benefit all children and young people. This is based on an assumption that education systems have further potential to improve themselves, provided policy makers allow the space for practitioners to make use of the expertise and creativity that lies trapped within individual classrooms. The aim must be to ‘move knowledge around’ and the best way to do this is through strengthening collaboration within schools, between schools and beyond schools.

In thinking about how the approach described might be used more widely it is essential to recognize that it does not offer a simple recipe that can be lifted and transferred between contexts. Rather, it defines an approach to improvement that uses processes of contextual analysis in order to create strategies that fit particular circumstances.

The experiences described in this article suggest a way forward that policy makers could use to ensure that the impetus that comes from greater school autonomy will lead to improvements that will benefit all children and young people. This is based on an assumption that education systems have further potential to improve themselves, provided policy makers allow the space for practitioners to make use of the expertise and creativity that lies trapped within individual classrooms.

The article draws together findings from an extensive programme of research in order to develop new thinking regarding ways of promoting equity in education.

A crucial aspect of a school's capacity to promote and sustain change and improvement in student learning is the depth, breadth and endurance of both its formal and informal leadership. Shortages of willing leaders, however, have forced governments around the world to expend a considerable amount of time, effort, and money to fill up the leadership “pipeline” with qualified candidates for leadership positions. This paper aims to address these issues.

This paper uses the examples of school districts in Ontario, Canada, in England and in the eastern United States to look beyond the common practice of merely filling up “pipelines” with credentialed leaders to an examination of the development of leadership “pools” and “reservoirs” of leadership capacity through distributed forms of leadership.

It is found that there has been a subtle but important shift in thinking over the past few years. Where once money spent on leadership recruitment and development was considered a cost, it is now viewed as an investment and as a result some school authorities have shifted focus from “replacement planning” in which specific people are identified to fill certain jobs, to a “succession management” approach which involves building an organization's leadership capacity by identifying, recruiting, and developing a “pool” of high‐potential individuals for both current and future roles.

The paper shows that developing this pool depends in large measure on the “reservoir” of leadership capacity in an organization and perhaps most importantly, the willingness of potential leaders to come forward.