Search results

The purpose of this paper is to provide to First and non-First Nation educators, scholars, and policy makers alternative perspectives that can reshape research on educational leadership in First Nation education with new imaginings that question fundamentally the cultural-political-economic-space defined by Euro-centred notion of modernity.

The paper addresses two questions in dealing with issues of conceptions of educational leadership in a First Nations setting: first, in what socio-cultural paradigm and epistemic framework, should the paper ground the view of relations among persons and between them and their environment, in a way that opens up spaces for prospects for action of those located outside a Euro-centric epistemic and ontological field; second, how could this paradigm assist us in formulating a conception of educational leadership that increases the leverage of First Nations education in constructing alternative sociocultural and educational worlds not grounded in the Eurocentric modernity?

For non-First Nation educators, power brokers, and policy makers who want to create alliances with First Nation people, this paper outlines the necessity to consider cross-cultural dialogue about conceptions of educational leadership as an “opportunity to challenge conventional assumptions about knowledge, power, and a sense of place” (Marker, 2006, p. 21).

The originality of this paper resides in its presentation of alternative conceptual horizons for educational leadership, horizons that acknowledge power inequities between mainstream societies and institutions on the one hand and First Nations peoples and their institutions on the other.

The full ‘storytelling’ paper was written in 1978 and was influential in its time. It is reprinted here, introduced by an Author's reflection on it in 2014. The chapter describes the author’s early disenchantment with traditional approaches to educational research.

He regards educational research as, at best, a misnomer, since little of it is preceded by a search. Entitled educational researchers often fancy themselves as scientists at work. But those whom they attempt to describe are often artists at work. Statistical methodologies enable educational researchers to measure something, but their measurements can neither capture nor explain splendid teaching.

Since such a tiny fraction of what is published in educational research journals influences school practitioners, professional researchers should risk trying alternative approaches to uncovering what is going on in schools.

Story telling is posited as a possible key to producing insights that inform and ultimately improve educational practice. It advocates openness to broad inquiry into the culture of the educational setting.

This study aims to explore the perception of students from conflicted groups studying nursing together regarding the intergroup encounter. Specifically, this study focused on Jewish and Arab students in a nursing undergraduate program at an Israeli college. This study focused on the association between two factors [students’ cultural intelligence (CQ) level and their satisfaction with the support provided by the college] and the degree of closeness or social interaction Arab and Jewish students experience.

Accordingly, 362 students completed three anonymous questionnaires during December 2022, focused on (1) CQ (2) satisfaction with the academic setting and (3) experience of intergroup social interaction.

The results revealed that (1) Arab students (minority group) demonstrated higher CQ than Jewish students, especially regarding awareness of cultural differences and motivation for intercultural encounters. (2) Arab students experienced the intergroup encounter with Jewish students as closer and warmer than Jewish students did. (3) Despite being a minority group in Israel, Arab students’ satisfaction with the college’s support was higher than that of Jewish students. (4) Satisfaction with the support provided by the college was the main factor associated with the sense of social interaction, having a higher correlation with it than the degree of CQ.

Fostering CQ through curricula alone is insufficient in shaping intergroup experiences of students studying together in a divided society. To encourage social interaction between students in academia in divided societies, educational institutions need to ensure their students’ sense of support is high.

Identity exploration is a central mechanism for identity formation that has been found to be associated with intense engagement, positive coping, openness to change, flexible cognition, and meaningful learning. Moreover, identity exploration in school has been associated with adaptive motivation for learning the academic material. Particularly in the fast-changing environment of contemporary society, confidence and skills in identity exploration and self-construction seems to be increasingly important. Therefore, promoting students’ identity exploration in school within the curriculum and in relation to the academic content should be adopted as an important educational goal. The purpose of this paper is to describe a conceptual framework for interventions to promote students’ identity exploration within the curriculum. The framework involves the application of four interrelated principles: (1) promoting self-relevance; (2) triggering exploration; (3) facilitating a sense of safety; and (4) scaffolding exploratory actions.

We begin the paper with a conceptual review of identity exploration. We follow by specifying the conceptual framework for interventions. We then present a methodological-intervention approach for applying this framework and describe three such interventions in middle-school contexts, in the domains of environmental education, literature, and mathematics.

In each intervention, applying the principles contributed to students’ adaptive motivation and engagement in the academic material and also contributed to students’ identity exploration, though not among all students. The findings highlight the contextual, dynamic, and indeterminate nature of identity exploration among early adolescents in educational settings, and the utility of the conceptual framework and approach for conceptualizing and intervening to promote identity exploration among students.

This paper contributes to the conceptual understanding of identity exploration in educational settings, highlights the benefits and the challenges in intervening to promote identity exploration among students, and discusses the future directions in theory, research, and practice concerned with the promotion of identity exploration in educational settings.

“Rational planning models” emerged in the early 1970's as a means by which to plan more effectively and efficiently in educational organizations. One of the most well known and widely distributed of these models was developed by Phi Delta Kappa, the educational fraternity. This paper describes a field study conducted in five Vermont schools that were “early users” of the Phi Delta Kappa material. The outcomes reveal many discrepancies between the theory and the reality of planning in public schools. In addition to the Vermont research, other research is cited that supports many of the findings and relates them to planning in schools in general. The article concludes by linking the study outcomes to recent works by other authors on the emerging concepts of loosely coupled systems, garbage can organizations, and organized anarchies and implications these concepts hold for alternative approaches to planning in educational settings.

This paper discusses the importance of the Six Sigma selection process, describes a Six Sigma project in a higher educational institution and presents a weighted scorecard approach for project selection.

A case study of the Six Sigma approach being used to improve student support at a university computer help desk was used. An error related to the timeliness of service was defined and improved over the course of the project.

The Six Sigma approach was useful for improving timely service, but a methodology for selecting the project was needed by the project leader. Using such a methodology would have ensured higher probability of project success.

This framework provides directions for selecting a Six Sigma project in a higher educational setting. The weighted scorecard method is presented and may be used for selecting a project which would likely be the most efficient use of time and resources.

While project selection methodologies have been published with regard to Six Sigma projects in business, this paper fills the need for selection criteria as they relate to higher educational settings.

Notes that, while there have been periodic calls for comparative work in educational administration, few empirical studies have been designed specifically to compare principal leadership practices between contextual and cultural settings. Suggests that conducting such studies raises several conceptual and methodological problems with respect to underlying assumptions about knowledge, appropriate conceptualizations of principal leadership, and methods of inquiry. Proposes first to identify some of the salient conceptual and methodological issues involved in cross‐cultural research, and then to explore and elaborate on these issues in greater detail by investigating principal leadership across two cultural settings.

This study aims to meta-analytically investigate the impact of educational technology interventions on the development of creative thinking in educational settings. In recent years, the debate among researchers has persisted regarding the impact of various educational technologies, including interactive learning environments, digital instruction and platforms, and educational games and robotics, on students' creative thinking in diverse educational settings due to inconsistent findings.

This study, conducting a meta-analysis by synthesizing 35 relevant empirical studies with 2,776 participants, aims to investigate the association between educational technology interventions and the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) and its subscales (fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration).

No evident publication bias was found. From a general perspective, the results demonstrate a moderate level of influence of educational technology on the overall TTCT scale, with high heterogeneity attributed to the adopted instruments, mixed methods and target outcomes. Additionally, the results indicate that only three of the TTCT subscales (fluency, flexibility and originality) are influenced by educational technologies. Among the interventions, interactive learning environments yielded medium to the largest mean effect size. Furthermore, moderator analyses suggest that the effects of interventions on two subscales of TTCT (flexibility and originality) are moderated by school types, research design and the duration of intervention. The conclusion drawn is that interventions promoting students' creative thinking in different educational settings are efficacious.

Despite the low homogeneity of the results, which might have influenced the findings, the large fail-safe N suggests that these findings are robust. The study examined potential causes of heterogeneity and emphasized the importance of further research in this area.

Recent accreditation standards have changed for all US and Canadian medical schools and residency programs. Newly mandated knowledge, skills, behavior, and attitudes required of the learner to become a medical professional are permeated with professionalism and associated curricular themes. The art of medicine now emphasizes humanistic skills, ethical precepts, and principle-based values. To this end, this chapter calls for enhanced learner collaboration with educators, as well as a required longitudinal ethics curriculum and medical apprenticeship for all phases of medical education. These efforts can thereby result in greater moral reflection on professionalism and its successful assimilation into clinical practice.

This chapter aims to provide a critical analysis of special needs education within the United Kingdom today. Central to such an analysis is an understanding of the rapidly changing social and political milieu within which special needs education is embedded, including the rapidly changing demographics of schooling, and the devolution of political power into four separate but linked countries – England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Following a discussion of such wider social, political and educational issues, the authors explore the convergences and divergences in policy and practice across the four devolved administrations. The authors describe a plethora of contemporary policy developments within each of the four administrations that speak to the need for special needs education to change in response to 21st century concerns about the problems of access to, and equity in, education for all children. Despite this, the authors remain extremely circumspect about the potential of many of these developments to lead to successful inclusive practices and developments on the ground – and explain why. The analysis in the concluding section focuses on the issue of teacher education for inclusion and some very innovate UK research and development projects that have been reported to successfully engage teachers with new paradigm thinking and practice in the field of inclusive special needs education.