Search results

Aims to develop an organizational model for understanding and managing effective curriculum change in school. Assumes that curriculum change and teacher competence development occur in a three‐level context of school organization: the individual level, the group/ programme level, and the whole school level. There exists mutual development and reinforcement between curriculum and teacher competence and also a hierarchy of influence across three levels. Congruence between curriculum change and teacher development and across levels is important for effectiveness of teaching and learning. Congruence represents conceptual consistency and operational consistency, reflecting the strength of school culture. Provides a comprehensive conceptual framework to plan and manage curriculum change and teacher competence development.

This study aims to examine the validation of both the model of direct effects and the model of indirect effects of principals' leadership on student academic achievement.

A longitudinal study was conducted in which 22 schools, 55 classes and 1,224 Cypriot primary students participated. Specifically, achievements in Greek Language and Mathematics were assessed at the beginning and at the end of the same school year. Moreover, leadership style of school principals and teachers as well as school and classroom culture was measured.

The findings provide some empirical support for the model of direct effects of principals' leadership on student academic achievement. Moreover, student achievement gains were found to be related with five factors at the school level: the principals' human resource leadership style and four dimensions of organizational culture. At the classroom level, three dimensions of learning culture significantly influence student achievement in each subject. Finally, relationships between effectiveness factors operating at different levels were identified.

The article presents an original empirical study which examined the relationship among school leadership, school culture and student achievement in order to validate both the model of direct effects and the model of indirect effects of school principals on student achievement.

The aim of this paper is to bring together for the first time three studies of middle‐level leaders in secondary schools in Victoria, Australia. The studies span more than a decade and allow consideration of the progress in developing middle‐level leadership roles.

All studies followed a consistent approach using multiple perspective interviews of middle‐level curriculum and subject leadership in government and Catholic secondary schools in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Principals, senior leaders, middle‐level leaders and teachers were interviewed to gain their perceptions on middle‐level leadership. Interviews were supplemented with school document analysis.

The work of middle‐level leaders is heavily dependent on how their roles are constructed and the capacities, abilities and attitudes of the leaders. Some are expected to be leaders that influence teaching and learning, and they may be developed and supported to do so. Too often, however, teachers in these key roles have few expectations or opportunities to exercise leadership. Whilst many have the capacity to be leaders of teaching and learning, others are not sure about their ability to influence teaching and learning. Suggestions are made for how leadership might be structured in schools to emphasise the importance of middle‐level leaders, and how these leaders can be better prepared and supported.

Observational studies, studies of primary school contexts and cross‐country comparisons would extend this research.

Middle‐level school leaders need to be seen as key personnel in improving teaching and learning, school structures need to reflect this, and developing leadership capacity needs to be prioritised.

This paper highlights continuing issues with how the work of middle‐level school leaders is conceptualised and supported, and makes suggestions for leadership structure and the preparation and development of school leaders.

The collection and dissemination of standardized performance information about students, teachers, schools and school systems offer potentially important tools for school accountability and resource allocation as well as school improvement in developing countries. However, performance monitoring systems in developing countries are in many cases copied from those in high-income countries without a clear understanding of their functioning in contexts of limited resources and capacity for change. The purpose of this paper is to examine the conditions under which and the mechanisms through which system-wide performance monitoring affects school-level organization and processes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

The review employs realist synthesis because of the complexity and dynamism of conditions in LMICs, the wide variability in available literature and the aim of explaining how particular organizational outcomes arise, given particular conditions. The authors draw on findings from a systematic review of 22 studies and reports, published since 2001, related to the implementation of performance monitoring.

The findings highlight key barriers to the use of data to inform school accountability and improvement. Capacity to collect, interpret and use data is an important condition to both effective external accountability as well as improvement of schools.

The review uses realist approaches to building middle-level theories to help scholars, educational advisers, policy makers and educational leaders understand the causal processes that result in certain outcomes from monitoring activities and to identify the conditions that are necessary for those processes to have the desired outcomes.

This study aims to present revised models and a reconceptualisation of successful school principalship for improved student outcomes.

The study's approach is qualitative and quantitative, culminating in model building and multi‐level statistical analyses.

Principals who promote both capacity building and systems of accountability and evaluation, to the extent that their teachers perceive these two factors as characterising their schools, advance student empowerment, social development and academic achievement. Other success factors include student home educational environment, the values and beliefs of teachers, and principals' years in a school and hours worked. It is demonstrated that the negative effects of socio‐economic disadvantage can be moderated.

Insights are provided into how schools and their principals can best achieve a broad range of student outcomes. For example, the most direct route for a school to achieve academic success is the indirect route through fostering student social development. For successful practice, the challenge is to create synergistic effects; the accumulation of a number of effects developed with others over time in the same direction.

This study represents the culmination of a five‐year research journey on school principalship that improves student outcomes. It employs an in‐depth qualitative and quantitative methodology culminating in model building and powerful multi‐level statistical analyses. It is one of few studies available that examines most of the factors that may influence a school's success in three categories of student outcomes: academic achievement, social development, and student empowerment.

School‐based management (SBM) or school self‐management has been an important worldwide school restructuring movement since 1980s. This paper aims to map out how SBM in terms of self‐management at the school, group and individual levels is related to school performance at different levels. From a sample of 82 schools, the strength of multi‐level self‐management in school was found to be strongly related to the quality indicators of organizational performance, moderately correlated to the quality indicators of group social norms of teachers, and individual teacher job performances. The profiles of strong and weak self‐management schools were also found to be significantly different in most indicators of school performance at different levels. The findings provide preliminary evidence to support that the success of SBM implementation for achieving school quality depends on the involvement of the school, groups and individual teachers as a whole in continuous self‐management and self‐learning cycles.

Recent highly publicized acts of violence and shootings on campus have prompted numerous crime prevention suggestions including having an armed presence in the schools. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of protective measures, policies, and school/neighborhood characteristics on school violence.

The data used in this study were part of the School Survey on Crime and Safety collected in 2006. The dependent measures of school violence include reports of violence, threatened attack with a weapon, attack with weapon, and gun possession. The sample was divided into high schools and all other grades to consider differences in levels of school violence among grade levels in relation to various law enforcement security measures, school security measures, and school characteristics.

Findings revealed mixed and often counterproductive results for law enforcement and school security efforts to control school violence. School characteristics, such as reports of bullying, location, and gang activity yielded numerous statistically significant findings. Policy recommendations and suggestions for future research are provided.

This study differs from much of the previous literature, which typically examines student and administrator attitudes about victimization and crime prevention. The current study examines detailed information on the actual effects of school violence prevention efforts. Furthermore, this study moves beyond most other works (that typically focus on high schools) as it considers school safety approaches by different grade levels.

Shared understandings of curriculum reform within and between the levels of the educational system are suggested to be crucial for the reform to take root. The purpose of this paper is to explore variation in perceived curriculum coherence and school impact among state- and district-level stakeholders.

The participants (n=666) included state- and district-level stakeholders involved in a national curriculum reform in Finland. Latent profile analysis was employed to identify profiles based on participants’ perceptions of the core curriculum’s coherence and the reform’s impact on school development.

Two profiles were identified: high coherence and impact, and lower consistency of the intended direction and impact. State-level stakeholders had higher odds of belonging to the high coherence and impact profile than their district-level counterparts.

The results imply that more attention needs to be paid in developing a shared and coherent understanding particularly of the intended direction of the core curriculum as well as the reform’s effects on school-level development among state- and district-level stakeholders.

The study contributes to the literature on curriculum reform by shedding light on the variation in perceived curriculum coherence and school impact of those responsible for a large-scale national curriculum reform process at different levels of the educational system.

Recent highly publicized acts of violence and shootings on school campuses have prompted numerous crime prevention responses. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of protective measures such as law enforcement, security policies, and school/neighborhood characteristics on school violence within the context of the racial composition of the school and grade level.

The data used in this study were part of the School Survey on Crime and Safety collected in 2006. The dependent measures of school violence include reports of serious violence, physical attacks/fights, gun or knife possession, and threats and attacks with a weapon. The sample was divided by racial composition of the school (predominately white, and predominately minority schools) and by grade level (high schools, and all other grades). A negative binomial regression was conducted due the count-based dependent variables.

Findings revealed that minority schools often face higher levels of reported violence and had a heavier law enforcement presence, which often had mixed or counterproductive results for reducing school violence. School characteristics, such as reports of bullying, location, gang activity, and security measures yielded numerous statistically significant results.

Officials proposing school violence prevention efforts should strongly consider the importance of school and community characteristics, most notably grade level, and the unique context of a predominately white or minority school as there were different statistically significant results. Furthermore, officials should be cautious about relying on simple efforts such as more security personnel to address school violence. Violence and crime on school grounds should not be viewed as being isolated from violence and other forms of crime in the community. Policy recommendations and suggestions for future research are provided.

This study differs from much of the previous literature, which typically examines student and administrator attitudes about victimization and crime prevention. The current study examines detailed information on the effects of school violence prevention efforts and moves beyond most other works as it considers school safety approaches within the context of racial composition of the school and by different grade levels.

This paper aims to discuss multilevel modeling for longitudinal data, clarifying the circumstances in which they can be used.

The authors estimate three-level models with repeated measures, offering conditions for their correct interpretation.

From the concepts and techniques presented, the authors can propose models, in which it is possible to identify the fixed and random effects on the dependent variable, understand the variance decomposition of multilevel random effects, test alternative covariance structures to account for heteroskedasticity and calculate and interpret the intraclass correlations of each analysis level.

Understanding how nested data structures and data with repeated measures work enables researchers and managers to define several types of constructs from which multilevel models can be used.