Search results

Addressing preservice teachers’ beliefs about learning is a key task of initial teacher preparation. In this chapter, we describe and reflect on the use of action research as a learning activity/assessment to address those beliefs within a required course on learning theories. Through this activity, preservice teachers engage in a cycle of observation-reflection-planning-action-evaluation to change practices deemed ineffective. This use of action research has not been reported in the literature and we discuss our success as well as challenges in its implementation.

Superintendents’ agency in the US is shaped by governance systems within education systems. These Education Governance Systems have been in a state of flux and experienced turbulence for twenty years. The professional challenge this research addresses is how do 14 credentialed educational professional African American women superintendents with doctorates and track records of school improvement, navigate the turbulence to empower families, and Empower Young Societal Innovators for Equity, Renewal (EYSIER), Social Mobility, and Peace.

This chapter identifies three aspects of a theory of knowledge to action to emerge from the empirical evidence presented. First, African American women superintendents need to know how to access policy and legislation, how to stay up to date with policy and need to be empowered to challenge policy. Policy has the back of African American women fighting institutionalised racism. Second, African American women superintendents need role models, and mentors with wisdom who can create proactive and mobilising networks across the state and the nation to advocate for and to support the teachers’ and leaders’ professional learning to be the best teachers, leaders and superintendents they can be. Finally, the African American women superintendents who have been self-selecting, or identified as potential future superintendents by current superintendents and schoolboards, need to be part of succession planning that transcends the short elected lives of district school boards. Newly incumbent African American women superintendents need to be empowered by Education Governance Systems to enable them to deliver on their manifestos and track records of outstanding school improvement with the impact strategies they were employed to implement. The impact strategies include promoting high-quality home–school engagement and ensuring all students learn how to learn, are culturally sensitive, ask good questions and solve problems as Young Societal Innovators for Equity and Renewal. The chapter recommends a network of African American women superintendents implements this theory of knowledge to action and that their work is documented, and if successful in optimising students’ learning, and outcomes, disseminated to build capacity for EYSIER.

In this chapter, we present a critical engagement with the methodology that each research team presenting a case study in this book from England, Arab Israel, Northern Ireland, Trinidad and Tobago and the United States adopted.

Education is a cultural project that consists of history, narrative and faith. The Black, Asian Minority Ethnicity (BAME) and senior leaders representing marginalised groups that we talked to in this research all stated that their faith, and religion was central to their service as an educational leader. The faiths represented in our research are Islam, Christianity, Sikhism and no faith where a humanitarian approach is taken. The chapter presents the scientific significance of what values underpin these leaders’ behaviours, and to understand how their values align with legislation, education policy and the values found in Education Governance Systems.

A constructivist comparative analysis approach was adopted to address four research questions. First, how do the senior-level leaders describe and understand how school governance systems and school commissioners empower them to develop school communities as societal innovators for equity and renewal for peace in our time? Second, how do they describe and understand the role mentors, and/or advocates play to support their navigation through the governance systems? Third, to what extent do they believe a cultural change is required to empower them in school communities to Empower Young Societal Innovators for Equity and Renewal for peace in our time? Finally, how can the findings be theorised to generate a theory of knowledge to action through impact strategies within an international comparative analysis framework?

Each of the five international cases collected the narrative biographies of up to 15 superintendents, or chief executive officers of multi-academy trusts of colour. In the Northern Ireland case, eight religiously divided key agents of change were selected as an equivalence for the governance structures in the other five case studies. The total number of senior-level leaders participating in the five case studies was 40.

Each author read their findings through Gross’ (2014) Turbulence Theory and typology to categorise the level and the impact of the challenges the key agents of change need to navigate as they mediate between the governance systems. Gross (2014, p. 248) theory of turbulence is used as a metaphor and states that ‘turbulence can be described as “light” with little or no movement of the craft. “Moderate” with very noticeable waves. “Severe” with strong gusts that threaten control of the aircraft. “Extreme” with forces so great that control is lost and structure damage to the craft occurs’. The chapter identifies the findings were read through the theory of turbulence to reveal the state of the Education Governance Systems and their impact on empowering cosmopolitan citizens to participate fully and freely in societal interactions and cooperation between diverse groups. The authors’ chapters are subject to a comparative analysis that took place at the European Conference for Educational Research Annual Conference in two large seminars (Taysum et al., 2017) in Denmark, further developed by the editors and committed to peer-review.

The aim of this book is to set an agenda and address a gap in the literature regarding Turbulence, Empowerment and Marginalisation in International Education Governance Systems and its relationship with narrowing the global phenomena of a Black-White achievement gap.

The aims are met by addressing the following quesitions. First, how do senior leaders of Educational Governance Systems who are from and represent marginalised groups in society, describe and understand how School Governance Systems empower or disempower them to develop school communities as societal innovators for equity, and renewal? Second, how do these senior-level leaders within Education Governance Systems describe and understand the role mentors and/or advocates play to support their navigation through the turbulence? Third, to what extent, do these senior-level leaders of Education Governance Systems believe a cultural change is required to empower them in school and college communities including staff, families, students and community partnerships to Empower Young Societal Innovators for Equity and Renewal (EYSIER)? Finally, what theories of knowledge to action emerge regarding how these senior-level leaders might successfully navigate turbulence to empower marginalised groups for equity and renewal for all in Public Corporate Education Governance Systems?

We identified in Chapter 1 that the context is one of colonisation between different groups. In Chapter 2, The review of literature focused on turbulence in Education Governance Systems and identified the global distribution of knowledge concerning education from cash-rich countries has had a tremendous impact on what is taught and tested in schools. Nation states that are not cash rich are marginalised in a global politics. International Testing Industries examine the output of national education systems through a global lens. These studies do not shed light on: the socio-economic, or political context that shape the values, primary moral virtues and secondary intellectual virtues and acts of particular legislation; the fair funding formulas that underpin the allocation of funds to the construction of infrastructure; the Education Governance Systems structures and agencies; and the organisation of processes and practices of the education system within the international community. Intellectual and cultural colonisation that may lack what Adler calls moral and ethical frameworks may accelerate the commodification of education. Chapter 3 critically discussed how we implemented the same research design in each case taking a humanistic approach and identified that the research adopts a shared world view and seeks to recognise scientific, intellectual knowledge, and metaphysical moral and empirical knowledge. Chapters 4 through 9 presented the English, Northern Irish, Arab-Israeli, Trinidad and Tobago and the United States cases, and each case identified a clash of values between the professional educational credentialed senior-level leaders with track records for outstanding school improvement, and those in Educational Governance Systems with: no professional credentials; no track record of school improvement; a tendency to promote competition rather than cooperation; a desire for internal succession planning, rather than succession planning to achieve national education goals. The clash of cultures put senior-level leaders into a mode of protectionism with a focus on keeping their post and ‘watching their backs’, rather than building capacity for sustainable instruction within the Education Governance Systems they lead manage and administrate to optimise students’ learning, students’ outcomes and social mobility.

These senior-level leaders with Professional Credentials, and outstanding track records of school improvement need Education Governance Systems to empower them to do their job and create realistic opportunities to develop networks of professional experts in partnership with the academy to support them navigate any clash of world views. Funding is required for professional learning to ensure ‘old opinion is handed down among them by ancient tradition’ that is rationalised with logic, compared and contrasted with empirical evidence, and synthesised with innovations guided by a moral compass within an ethical infrastructure. These senior-level leaders need to be empowered to empower their staff as autonomous professionals to empower the parents and the students to gain the thinking tools they need to be lifelong learners with the capability to be self-legislating. This requires a culture change that prioritises the moral virtues of learning how to learn as moral citizens in becoming, above the secondary intellectual virtues demonstrated through success in high stakes tests.

Knowledge to action reveals young people need Education Governance Systems that EYSIER and underpin success in student outcomes for social mobility. Success in both these spheres will enable them to break their chains that have kept them dependent on the guidance of others who may seek to exploit them (De Gruy, 2008).

Further research is recommended to implement the knowledge to action impact strategies that emerge from all five cases.

The work of George Santayana belongs simultaneously to North American and European traditions of social thought. Although an important figure of the Western tradition, Santayana is not well known among sociologists. The main purpose of this chapter is to introduce Santayana's social thought to sociologists, and especially to those interested in interactionist and interpretivist theory. I pay particular attention to the concepts of psyche, domination, and dramatic sympathy. I also analyze how some of Santayana's concepts fare when compared to those by Mead and radical interactionism.

States that current pricing strategies used in the service industries are often too simplistic and ineffective in the face of complex environmental conditions. Introduces the Pricing Differentiation Premium Model, which includes in the firm′s pricing strategy its ability to differentiate itself from competitors. Discusses possible strategies for influencing differentiation premiums which can improve the pricing discretion of the service provider.

Considers some of the issues involved in staff and curriculum development with respect to science and technology. Some consideration is given to elements of in‐service training that could give teachers the necessary support to carry through new knowledge and skills to the classroom. Making a start in science and technology, aspects of classroom management and the organisation and provision of resources are considered within the context of teachers′ personal and professional development.

A review of publications in teaching and teacher education over 10 years (2000–2010) on teacher professional development is the subject of this chapter. The first part synthesises production referred to learning, facilitation and collaboration, factors influencing professional development, effectiveness of professional development and issues around the themes. The second part selects from the production nine articles for closer examination. The chapter concludes by noting how the production brings out the complexities of teacher professional learning and how research and development have taken cognizance of these factors and provided food for optimism about their effects, although not yet about their sustainability in time.