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This article explores two related facets in the history of international teacher union organisations. First, a basic overview is provided of the history of a number of these networks, beginning in Europe well before 1900. Secondly, this exploration will then focus on one particular group ‐ the WCOTP (the World Confederation of Organisations of the Teacher Profession), and specifically its activities during the 1950s and 1960s. This organisation, like its counterparts, was actively involved over its entire history in discussing and promoting a wide variety of issues and activities relating to public education. However, it was also involved in more partisan political activities, in the context of its Cold War engagement with national teacher organisations globally. Drawing on the work of Claus Offe, Maria Elena Cook and Kim Scipes, the article explores these intra‐ and inter‐union affairs, relations with state apparatus, and raises questions about the overarching nature of teachers’ work.

The application of different models of organization to the study of schools is common in the literature on organizational theory. This literature distinguishes rational models, such as the bureaucratic ideal type, from natural systems models, such as the concept of schools as loose‐coupled systems and the image of schools as political arenas. This article examines the extent to which some specially selected schools in Australia and New Zealand can be viewed as resembling certain organizational models. The article concludes that there is no one model which is suitable for describing schools although many of the different models described by theorists seem to be relevant to the schools studied. The article also seeks to isolate some of the factors that result in schools resembling certain organizational models rather than others.

The aim of this article is to challenge the concept of “the learning organization” as unproblematic and inherently good.

The research looked at how teachers – as an example of public sector professionals in a work organization that claims to be a learning organization – view their conditions for learning.

By using this approach, the normative values surrounding the concept of the learning organization were discussed. This approach identifies power‐relations: i.e. who has the priority of interpretation to define what learning is desired and considered relevant as well as when, how and where one learns. In addition, it gives indications to how and why the implementations of management concepts are not always successful.

This article shows how the implementation of a governance concept (learning organization) in fact can be seen as bringing with it unintended consequences for the organization as a whole – and especially for the professionals. Even within a work organization claiming to be a learning organization, learning gaps can be identified.

The major purpose of this study is to test the applicability of an eight‐variable axiomatic theory of organizations to the secondary school. Three corollaries, derived from the seven major propositions of the theory, were tested with data from 36 secondary schools in Illinois. The methodological processes employed to obtain measures of complexity, adaptability, and job satisfaction are presented following explication of the larger theoretical framework. An extended discussion of the findings and their implications for the theory applied to schools concludes with suggestions for methodological changes and an expanded research approach.

The digitalization of society places new demands on education. It is apparent since most countries have introduced curricula requirements to digitalize teaching. This study examines the organizational support teachers need to digitalize teaching. The study is being conducted in Sweden because they have experienced challenges with the introduction of new national digitalization requirements. Thus, this study explores the following research question: What organizational support do Swedish teachers describe they need to meet the curriculum requirements for digitalization?

Cultural–historical activity theory and qualitative methods have been used to explore the research aim and answer the question.

The results show that teachers need organizational support to gain equal and easy access to digital tools. Moreover, digital tools in an organization must be relevantly related to the requirements. Teachers also need support to increase their knowledge as well as the knowledge of the students. Also, organizations must support teachers by distributing the work of digitalization clearly and reasonably. These results, thus, show that teachers cannot be solely responsible for meeting these curriculum requirements. They need organizational support in the process.

The study reveals teachers' recurring problems concerning digitalized education and their need for organizational support. Thereby, the knowledge can be used to avoid similar problems, in organizations on different society levels. This contribution is useful for organizations, politicians, school leaders, principals and teachers who are introducing 1:1 and new curriculum requirements for digitalization of education.

The principal focus of this study involved the changes in bureaucratic and professional orientations of beginning teachers as they encountered the formal organization of the public school during their first year of professional teaching experience. The basic assumptions underlying the research were that teachers will relate in a positive fashion to both the norms of the bureaucracy and the norms of the profession during their initial encounter with the school in a professional capacity and that they will assume a “mixed type” dual role orientation. Data were collected from prospective teachers during their student teaching experiences and again, near the conclusion of their first year of full‐time professional employment. Responses to the Bureaucartic Orientation Scale and the Professional Orientation Scale suggests that experience in the school organization for beginning teachers is related to increased bureaucratic orientation and decreased professional orientation.

This paper examines characteristics of three main education sub‐systems: the policy formation system, the management or control system and the implementation system. In the policy formation system the main features are: intangibility of some education goals; lack of means‐ends continuum; inconsistency of goals; external dominance; the role of management and of teachers in education policy formation; value judgements; lack of feedback; heuristic processes; and incrementalism. Characteristics of the management system include: internal and external constraints; flat hierarchy; bases of authority; conflicting role demands; lack of colleague control; bureaucratic rules; size of staff; feminization; and management self‐image. Implementation system features are: organization of small symmetric sub‐units; organizational implications of goal conflict; compulsory attendance of clients; cognitive vs. emotive functions; resulting tensions and conflicts; sub‐cultures; clients' vulnerability; differential treatment of clients; obstacles to output measurement; and implication of measurement difficulties. The last section points out some implications of the analysis which seem to indicate similar and increasingly important developments in other public service bureaucracies. These include: diffuse and intangible goals; value sensitivity; high cost and external dominance; client service and client dependence; obstacles to output measurements; professionalization and feminization.

Concern with the relationship between theory and practice in educational administration seems especially compatible with certain research strategics. Data were gathered i n a field study to focus attention on some of the main features of the school as a social organization and to facilitate hypothesis development. The hypothesis formulated had at least some empirical base, as well as a logical one. This eases the transition from theory and research to practice. The organizational world of the practitioner itself becomes an object of inquiry. Theory imposes its special kind of order on the practitioner's world; but, at the same time, data from that world create pressures for relevant conceptual analyses. The field study suggested the general importance of pupil control in public schools and the hypotheses formulated and tested dealt with the pupil control ideology of teachers. In addition, speculations on adaptivc structures in public school organizations were offered and some limitations of the work were noted.

States that research on school restructuring provides little evidence that teacher‐student‐principal relationships are changing. Staffs may be confusing structural thinking (adopting and implementing organization structures such as shared governance, co‐operative learning groups, teacher‐student advisories) with normative thinking (reconceptualizing how norms characterizing ideal relationships among teachers, principals, and students can be supported and developed through organization structures). Argues that normative thinking requires staffs to reflect critically about their schools as workplaces but that US schools have not been reflective workplaces. As a vehicle for this normative thinking, suggests school‐site constructed theories in practice, which have two steps: critical inquiry and monitoring the change progress. Makes three policy suggestions based on the need for staffs to theorize about their practice: an action research role for professors; a caveat about prescribing only measurable outcomes for administrator preparation programmes; and time for teacher‐leader and principal reflection on their practice.

Educational researchers have long been concerned with role stress among teachers. In education, research on the consequences of such role stress for teachers has largely concerned outcomes valued by individuals such as job satisfaction and reduced stress. Less research has focused on examining the effects of role stress on outcomes valued by the organization, such as employee commitment and employee retention. In examining the role stress‐outcome relationship, research suggests the importance of taking into consideration the work orientations of individuals as possible moderators of the role stress‐outcome relationship. Using a sample of elementary and secondary teachers, this study empirically examined, first whether three role stresses – role ambiguity, role conflict, and role overload – are related to two individually and two organizationally valued states and second, whether teachers’ higher‐order need strength moderates these role stress‐outcome relationships. The study found that role stresses relate to individually‐ and organizationally‐valued outcomes among both elementary and secondary teachers.