The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning

Based on a decade of foundation research and work in school leadership, identifies five key actions that effective school principals take, including shaping a vision of academic success for all students and cultivating leadership in others

Helping design educators foster collaborative learning amongst design students

This paper discusses the development of online teaching resources that enable design educators to foster collaborative learning amongst students in the design disciplines. These online teaching resources will be made available through the Design Collaboration website. This website was recently set up by Northumbria University, a UK based institution, to provide an online resource for design educators wishing to develop collaborative pedagogies in design education. It currently contains case studies of collaborative student projects but lacks practical teaching resources. As a result, a research project was set up to compliment the current case studies by creating a suite of design-specific tools and resources that will help foster team management and development. Although various institutions have addressed the subject of group work and collaborative learning, there has been no online resource dedicated to the development of practical teaching tools to help design students work and learn together. This paper focuses on showcasing the range of teaching tools and resources developed through classroom-based trials. These resources have been developed specifically in consultation with Northumbria University's design educators and trialled with undergraduate and postgraduate students from different design disciplines. In addition, issues surrounding the translation of these tools into a practical, easy to use and accessible in an online format is discussed. The Icograda World Design Congress 2009 Education Conference is the ideal international platform to share these tools with the wider design education community. More importantly, we hope to grow the website by encouraging other design educators to submit case studies to the website, using it not only as a means of sharing good practice but also as a tool for reflection. The research value is two-fold (a) translating implicit knowledge of collaborative learning into a practical teaching resource and, (b) helping tutors improve their teaching practice, by linking the teaching resource to real experiences through case studies and interviews

Academic reflections between Polynesian tattooing and reflective practice

In Polynesian culture stories which may be generations old are told via tattoo art: the Tahitian word ‘tatu’ or ‘ta-tu’ means to strike something and links directly to the ancient art of tattooing to preserve an ancestral lineage and/or record a particular event or story that has been handed down from generation to generation via the same method (Villequette, 1998). Some scholars such as Gell (1993), and Schrader (2000) and Jones (2000) in Schildkrout (2004), write of tattoos being associated with “subsidiary selves, spirits, ancestors, rulers and victims” that are resident within the tattooed individual, while some write of ethnographic work being inscribed on bodies (Sparkes, 2000, p. 21 and Schildkrout, 2004, p. 322). Auto-ethnographic study (the study of ourselves) is a relatively new field and is often associated with qualitative analysis; as such it has stimulated the author to introduce the term ‘internal’ reflection. I believe that this may describe a ‘personal’ or ‘internal’ reflection that is transmitted to the outside world in the form of a tattoo. Drawing on the work of Sparkes, an auto-ethnography is a narrative of self, although this research offers tattoos as a viable alternative to narrative and suggests that auto-ethnographic tattoos are not only commonplace but that they can also be very real transcripts of the narrative equivalent. Further, this research shows that different cultures reflect in different ways and that the tattoo is a popular and essential method of ethnographic captur

Distributed Leadership: challenging five generally held assumptions

This article reports on a study exploring a distributed perspective on school leadership through three head teacher case studies conducted in Scottish primary schools. Drawing from a sequence of in-depth, semi-structured and narrative style interviews conducted with each head teacher, as well as from a semi-structured questionnaire and sociometric analysis conducted with staff, the article analyses the experiences and the perceptions of head teachers. The paper finds that in practice, distributed leadership is more complex and challenging than often represented, challenging five generally held assumptions in the theoretical, policy and practice frames. Implications are drawn for educational leadership at both school and system levels

Underlying construct of empathy, optimism, and burnout in medical students.

OBJECTIVE: This study was designed to explore the underlying construct of measures of empathy, optimism, and burnout in medical students. METHODS: Three instruments for measuring empathy (Jefferson Scale of Empathy, JSE); Optimism (the Life Orientation Test-Revised, LOT-R); and burnout (the Maslach Burnout Inventory, MBI, which includes three scales of Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Personal Accomplishment) were administered to 265 third-year students at Sidney Kimmel (formerly Jefferson) Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. Data were subjected to factor analysis to examine relationships among measures of empathy, optimism, and burnout in a multivariate statistical model. RESULTS: Factor analysis (principal component with oblique rotation) resulted in two underlying constructs, each with an eigenvalue greater than one. The first factor involved positive personality attributes (factor coefficients greater than .58 for measures of empathy, optimism, and personal accomplishment). The second factor involved negative personality attributes (factor coefficients greater than .78 for measures of emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization). CONCLUSIONS: Results confirmed that an association exists between empathy in the context of patient care and personality characteristics that are conducive to relationship building, and considered to be positive personality attributes, as opposed to personality characteristics that are considered as negative personality attributes that are detrimental to interpersonal relationships. Implications for the professional development of physicians-in-training and in-practice are discussed

216 Jewish Hospital of St. Louis

https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/bjc_216/1165/thumbnail.jp

Partnering with Districts in Principal Preparation: Key Program Features in Strengthening Aspiring Principals’ Understanding of Issues of Equity and Excellence

The need for increased numbers of students of all ethnic groups to access and succeed in postsecondary education is a 21st century reality (Swail, Cabrera, & Lee, 2004). As Swail, Cabreraet al. (2004) reported, The act of going to college and earning a degree is more important than ever to today’s youth and our society. . . . Unfortunately, access to a postsecondary education is not equal in America. Students historically underrepresented at the postsecondary level – students of color, those from low-income backgrounds, and first-generation students- are still less likely to prepare for, apply for, enroll in, and persist through postsecondary education. (p. iv) For example, Latinos are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups, but only 19% of Latinos have completed an associate’s or higher degree (Excelencia in Education, 2010). While the number of Latinos accessing college is growing, a disparity still exists between minority group enrollment in college and white student enrollment (Swail et al., 2004). The principal has a key role in schools of creating the conditions wherein all students can be successful and access the next step of postsecondary education whether through a community college, a technical program, the military, or a university (Kaser & Halbert, 2009). As Kaser and Halbert (2009) stated, “Leadership creates the conditions in schools where all learners grow, progress, graduate, go on to some form of postsecondary learning and lead productive lives” (p. 20). Educational leaders can play key roles in advocacy for student success, recognizing inequities where they exist and working to overcome the inequities (Anderson, 2009; Papa & English, 2011)

Virtual Collaboration in the Online Educational Setting: A Concept Analysis

This study was designed to explore the concept of virtual collaboration within the context of an online learning environment in an academic setting. Rodgers’ method of evolutionary concept analysis was used to provide a contextual view of the concept to identify attributes, antecedents, and consequences of virtual collaboration. Commonly used terms to describe virtual collaboration are collaborative and cooperative learning, group work, group interaction, group learning and teamwork. A constructivist pedagogy, group-based process with a shared purpose, support and web-based technology are required for virtual collaboration to take place. Consequences of virtual collaboration are higher order thinking and learning to work with others. A comprehensive definition of virtual collaboration is offered as an outcome of this analysis. Clarification of virtual collaboration prior to using it as a pedagogic tool in the online learning environment will enhance nursing education with the changes in nursing curriculum being implemented today. Further research is recommended to describe the developmental stages of the collaborative process among nursing students in online education and how virtual collaboration facilitates collaboration in practice

Multilingual Education and Interference: Written Ungrammatical Tag-switching Among Pre-service Teachers of English Language

This research aims to: (1) show the ungrammaticality of pre-service teachers\u27 (Bachelor III students\u27) written tag-switching models and this is disapproving since these subjects are English teachers-to-be. (2) It also tracks tokens of interference of Kirundi, French, Kiswahili and English languages in the Bachelor III students\u27 written tag-switching examples as a result of the Burundian multilingual education system.The study refers to the observation and Testing as suggested respectively by Cohen et al. (2006) and Hughes (2003). The researcher\u27s unstructured observation participated in his review of observational data before suggesting any explanation for the phenomena being observed. The test given helped measure on the one hand those pre-service teachers\u27 achievements of the course objectives and diagnose their strengths and weaknesses on the other hand. The subjects of the study consisted of thirty-six (36) students whose preference was tag-switching in an Exam of Sociolinguistics with the question framed as follows: “Among the different code switching types, choose one and exemplify it with three examples.” The Kuder- Richardson formula 20 (KR-20) and Standard Error Measure (SEM), provided helpful information when having to take decisions about individuals on the basis of their performance in a test such as the one given during this research, (Hughes, ibid:224). The research findings reveal a mismatching between the subjects\u27 level of study and the written tag-switching examples that they gave: after correction done diligently and skilfully, ungrammaticality is a case and it includes the subjects\u27 wrong tense use at the tag level and the occurrence of wrong choice of tenses, aspects and mood (either in Kirundi, French and Kiswahili) in the part before tag level. The cause of these erroneous tag- switching examples is revealed to take source in the multilingual education system operational in Burundi. Keywords: Educational multilingualism, interference, tag-switching and ungrammaticalit