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A study of the published statements of Australian school administrators revealed that two distinctive configurations of power and service relationships are projected in their publically presented images of state school administration as it relates to government and the public. A previous Traditional Centralist‐Unity configuration is now being replaced by an Emergent Devolution‐Diversity conformation. Analysis was directed to (a) understanding the significance of the two images in terms of their function as public communications, and (b) accounting for the shift in the imagery in the light of pressures for change, the way administrators are interpreting change as turbulence, and the projection of counter images incorporating critiques of government school systems. To help organise analysis, it was assumed that images of system administration have the potential to communicate: 1. information, 2. explanation, 3. judgements and value positions, 4. statements designed to advance sectional interests, and 5. themes and persuasive symbols. It was also assumed that the shift in the public images of administrators may be studied in the way their images relate to three basic sources of administrative tension: tensions which arise from problems of meaning, problems of aspiration, and problems of practice.

Despite the widespread use of teams and extensive research regarding school‐based teams, there is a paucity of research regarding team‐theory applied to high school administrations. This paper aims to explore the team structures and conditions of a public high school administration that has demonstrated success with a heterogeneous student population.

This is a case study employing multiple approaches within a qualitative particularistic case study methodology. The participants were the members of a public high school administration, plus the employees of the school. The study used surveys, semi‐structured interviews, and coded observations to examine the structures and conditions of the administration as a team.

The findings suggest practical strategies of value to school leaders seeking to increase the likelihood for administrative team success. A qualitative case study of a public high school administration revealed the presence of five enabling conditions and structures of high performance teams (HPT): real team, compelling direction, proper work structure, supportive context, and expert coaching.

This case study is limited to one participant school and the size limits the findings and may not be representative of the population of all public high schools. In addition, the findings warrant additional research that includes a broader, more extensive, and diverse population.

The findings in this research are of practical value to school leaders seeking to increase the likelihood for administrative team success.

This paper extends a model examined in other industries to education, and has both practical and theoretical value. The exploration of critical structures within a high school administrative team is new and its practical applicability increases its value.

Concerned with the need to scrutinize the rhetoric of current blueprints for schooling reform to ensure that in their implementation there results a power redistribution which is in the interests of improved educational outcomes for more students, particularly for those who are currently the least advantaged. It is argued that with the implementation of decentralization and devolution policies for public education, there is a need to ensure that the principle of equity is maintained as an end to be achieved through democratic and efficient means which are in harmony with the spirit of public schooling in a liberal democracy. Questions related to the motives for reform and who benefits are pivotal.

The purpose of this paper is to promote governance quality by presenting a school of government model.

To this end, seven schools were selected from among 25 outstanding existing schools of government by purposive sampling. Subsequently, these schools were carefully examined and categorized into primary and support processes through a comparative study and the categorical content analysis approach.

The resulting four primary processes of education, research and agenda-setting, discourse-making and networking, and training and cadre-building, and the five sub-systems of schools of government were extracted. The outputs of the school of government model were classified into the three categories of training cadres experienced in public policy and administration, discourse-making and influencing the environment and theorizing. Finally, the extracted categories were approved by the relevant experts through the fuzzy Delphi method.

This paper can contribute to the training of policymakers and policy researchers, as well as to the establishment, and more effective management, of schools of government.

Is public administration neutral? Scholarship does not interpret public administration as neutral, even though, on moral–ethical grounds, it frequently advises neutrality for practitioners. Five main schools of thought are surveyed. Neutrality and alternative expressions of it, such as nonpartisanship, expertise, impartiality or facilitation, are role prescriptions for practicing public administrators, and are typically offered as appropriate comportments in interacting with citizens and groups. At the same time, public administration is undeniably a political institution having political purposes and constitutive impacts. Indeed, the very existence of the administrative state is politically contestable. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Critical reflection, political philosophy, political theory.

Scholars across the various schools of thought in public administration do not presuppose the presence of a neutral public administrator. However, there is sometimes an admonition to practitioners to behave as if they were politically neutral.

Advising practitioners that their practices are neutral masks the fact that public administration is an inherently political institution.

Neutral public administration is revealed as empty cant.

The current classifications for public school costs are provided by the National Center for Educational Statistics. To improve comparability between school districts, we provided an alternative classification with fewer numbers of expenditure categories, distinctions between school-based and non-school based administration costs, and school levels. The new classification was then applied to five comparable urban school districts. We found (1) that teacher salaries per student are affected by school level disaggregation; (2) that separating administrative costs into school-based and nonschool- based provides for an observable cost relationship; and (3) that curriculum and instructional support per student differ by school level disaggregation. The alternative classification may assist auditors and investigators whose role is to assess the costs performance of urban school districts by providing comparable school level and cost type.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt a learning-based approach to portray the impact of Covid-19 on state school services in Italy, with a specific focus on the role of street-level bureaucrats and the triggering of co-creative processes.

The study proposes a qualitative system dynamics (or SD) approach describing the implementation of Covid-related educational policies in Italy. An insight model, made of causal loop diagrams, integrates the selected multi-disciplinary literature and institutional sources, secondary data from national and local reports (about Palermo, the fifth largest metropolitan city in Italy) and insights from a panel of school street–level bureaucrats.

The study provides an insight into the impacts of governmental decisions (school closures and the subsequent need to activate distance learning during the first wave of Covid-19) at a local level. Specifically, it portrays the influences of managerial and professional discretion, infrastructural equipment and socio-economic factors favouring/deterring co-creative educational processes.

The SD model highlights vicious/virtuous circles in policy implementation and suggests new managerial paths for education, more routed towards public value creation and less attached to bureaucratic procedures and the unquestioning application of performance culture.

The paper proposes an original and holistic approach to dealing with policy making in education and its managerial features. The research findings are considered important, not only to face the current emergency, but also to pro-actively think about the post-Covid era.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the global, historic context of public administration and the specific British context of teaching and research for public administration. Also, it asks the question, “is twenty-first century public administration still ‘fit for purpose?’”.

The paper is a personal reflection on the changes to public administration and management during the twentieth and early part of the twenty-first century, in particular how the UK Learned Society has responded to a number of global, policy and cultural changes.

The findings demonstrate how the UK Joint University Council (JUC), representing public administration, has responded to changes, in particular to recent forces impacting on HE and training providers. It includes the outcomes of a series of recent UK debates as JUC approaches its 100-year centenary in 2018. It concludes by showing that public administration research, teaching and scholarship are as necessary, if not more so, in 2018. In particular, issues such as accountability, legality, integrity and responsiveness, the overall ethical guidelines are vital for both public and private educational curricula. For either theory building or empirical descriptions, public administration research can still positively contribute to the wider economy

As a personal reflection, the findings are offered to add to a debate on the future of public administration scholarship in the UK, and much wider afield.

The contents should be of benefit to academics, policy and practitioners in the field of public administration and management.

This study has wider societal implications, as all states are facing growing social problems and a need to seek novel ways of delivering public services.

Though the paper is a personal reflection, and may therefore be challenged, it is based on wider literature to support the claims being made.

Bidhya Bowornwathana is associate professor at the Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. His research interests are on governance and administrative reform. His writings appear in journals such as Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, Public Administration and Development, Australian Journal of Public Administration, Asian Survey, Public Administration Quarterly, Public Administration: An International Quarterly, Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, Asian Review of Public Administration, and Asian Journal of Political Science. He has written several books in Thai on administrative reform and public administration. He co-edited a book with John P. Burns on Civil Services Systems in Asia (Edward Elgar, 2001). He also has chapters in recent books such as in Christopher Pollitt and Colin Talbot, eds., Unbundled Government (Taylor and Francis, 2004), Ron Hodges, ed., Governance and the Public Sector (Edward Elgar, 2005), Eric E. Otenyo and Nancy S. Lind, eds., Comparative Public Administration: The Essential Readings (Elsevier, 2006), and Kuno Schedler and Isabella Proeller, eds., Cultural Aspects of Public Management Reform (Elsevier, 2007). He was Chairman of Department of Pubic Administration, Chulalongkorn University. He has served several times as member and secretary of the national administrative reform commissions appointed by Thai governments.

The purpose of this paper is to address dimensions of crisis as applied to the profession of librarianship from a public administration frame of reference. For librarians to retain professional status, the human element of librarianship must be promoted through an emphasis on their educational mission, inspired by public administration's professional code of ethics. Within this process, librarians must promote themselves as educators, embracing the concept of information literacy as their field of jurisdiction.

Reflecting an interdisciplinary approach, literature from public administration and library science is used to support these points.

A robust professional education and affiliation with professional associations reinforces the informational asymmetries of professionals through specialized instruction and knowledge sharing, which will lead to not only a strengthened profession, but also to opportunities for leadership.

To reinforce professionalism, the human element of librarianship must be promoted through an enhanced emphasis on the educational mission of librarians within the ethical framework of the profession. The place for this to occur is within schools of graduate education and professional associations.

This discussion addresses dimensions of crisis as applied to the profession of librarianship from a public administration frame of reference. The rationale for this approach is that library and information science can benefit from elements of the public administration school of thought regarding professionalism, in general, and ethical codes, in particular.