Improving School Improvement

PREFACEIn opening this volume, you might be thinking:Is another book on school improvement really needed?Clearly our answer is yes. Our analyses of prevailing school improvement legislation, planning, and literature indicates fundamental deficiencies, especially with respect to enhancing equity of opportunity and closing the achievement gap.Here is what our work uniquely brings to policy and planning tables:(1) An expanded framework for school improvement – We highlight that moving from a two- to a three-component policy and practice framework is essential for closing the opportunity and achievement gaps. (That is, expanding from focusing primarily on instruction and management/government concerns by establishing a third primary component to improve how schools address barriers to learning and teaching.)(2) An emphasis on integrating a deep understanding of motivation – We underscore that concerns about engagement, management of behavior, school climate, equity of opportunity, and student outcomes require an up-to-date grasp of motivation and especially intrinsic motivation.(3) Clarification of the nature and scope of personalized teaching – We define personalization as the process of matching learner motivation and capabilities and stress that it is the learner's perception that determines whether the match is a good one.(4) A reframing of remediation and special education – We formulate these processes as personalized special assistance that is applied in and out of classrooms and practiced in a sequential and hierarchical manner.(5) A prototype for transforming student and learning supports – We provide a framework for a unified, comprehensive, and equitable system designed to address barriers to learning and teaching and re-engage disconnected students and families.(6) A reworking of the leadership structure for whole school improvement --We outline how the operational infrastructure can and must be realigned in keeping with a three component school improvement framework.(7) A systemic approach to enhancing school-community collaboration – We delineate a leadership role for schools in outreaching to communities in order to work on shared concerns through a formal collaborative operational infrastructure that enables weaving together resources to advance the work.(8) An expanded framework for school accountability – We reframe school accountability to ensure a balanced approach that accounts for a shift to a three component school improvement policy.(9) Guidance for substantive, scalable, and sustainable systemic changes –We frame mechanisms and discuss lessons learned related to facilitating fundamental systemic changes and replicating and sustaining them across a district.The frameworks and practices presented are based on our many years of work in schools and from efforts to enhance school-community collaboration. We incorporate insights from various theories and the large body of relevant research and from lessons learned and shared by many school leaders and staff who strive everyday to do their best for children.Our emphasis on new directions in no way is meant to demean current efforts. We know that the demands placed on those working in schools go well beyond what anyone should be asked to do. Given the current working conditions in many schools, our intent is to help make the hard work generate better results. To this end, we highlight new directions and systemic pathways for improving school outcomes.Some of what we propose is difficult to accomplish. Hopefully, the fact that there are schools, districts, and state agencies already trailblazing the way will engender a sense of hope and encouragement to those committed to innovation.It will be obvious that our work owes much to many. We are especially grateful to those who are pioneering major systemic changes across the country. These leaders and so many in the field have generously offered their insights and wisdom. And, of course, we are indebted to hundreds of scholars whose research and writing is a shared treasure. As always, we take this opportunity to thank Perry Nelson and the host of graduate and undergraduate students at UCLA who contribute so much to our work each day, and to the many young people and their families who continue to teach us all.Respectfully submitted for your consideration,Howard Adelman & Linda Taylo

A SOUTH AFRICAN CASE STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERCEIVED FAIRNESS IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND EMPLOYEES’ PSYCHOLOGICAL EMPOWERMENT

ThesisIn South Africa, there is a concern with the public service that human resource management functions and practices are influenced politically and therefore not done fairly. For example, there are complaints on delays in appointments, too much bureaucracy, favouritism and nepotism in appointments, poor handling of performance appraisals, and lack of succession planning. The existence of these myriad complaints leads to the rise of questions such as: How do public service employees view all these allegations? Do their views about these allegations affect their feelings of psychologically empowered outcomes within their work environment? The objective of this study was to determine whether alleged unfair human resource management practices affect employees’ feelings of psychological empowerment in a government department in the Free State Province of South Africa. Borrowing from organisational justice theory, the researcher argues that unfair human resource management practices in the South African public service will lead to low employee perceptions of fairness (or justness) in the HRM practices of a government department, and this, in turn, leads to negative feelings of employee psychological empowerment. This theory was tested using four (4) emergent hypotheses and validated with empirical data collected from employees of the respective government department. The study was that: i) Employees viewed HRM practices as unfair although they felt psychologically empowered ii) Overall perceptions of fairness in HRM practices and employees’ feelings of psychologically empowered were partially related. These findings are presented and discussed within the context of the organisational justice theory. Recommendations for practice and further research are suggested

Empowerment in the Public Sector: Testing the Influence of Goal Orientation

Empowerment has emerged as an important new issue in the public sector organization setting in the wake of mainstream new public management (NPM). Nevertheless, few studies in this frame have combined structural (managerial) and psychological (individual) approaches in an integrative study of empowerment. There is also a need to examine the moderating variables involved in this relationship, as well as to extend research on work motivation in public management. This study explores the effect of structural empowerment on psychological empowerment, and it also draws on goal orientation (GO) theory to examine the moderating role of employees’ GO in this link. The model is tested on a sample of 521 Spanish local authority employees. The results do not confirm the direct link between structural and psychological empowerment, but show that learning GO has considerable moderating power in this relationship, and its interaction with structural empowerment affects employees’ psychological empowerment levels

From “This Job Is Killing me” to “I Live in the life I Love and I Love the Life I Live”, or from Stakhanov to Contemporary Workaholics

F. W. Taylor is often celebrated as a founding father of organization and management theory, one whose commitment to efficiency is legendary. If we define efficiency in terms of maximizing output from a given – or lesser – number of workers it can be considered that, in some cases, Taylor’s science has achieved a remarkable success. Contemporary organizations managed to create such a state of commitment (be it spontaneous or imposed), that people have adopted excessive working as lifestyle. Life is organized around work, with work occupying more and more territory from the former private life. We discuss the notion of excessive working, present several forms of excessive working, contest the idea that excessive working is necessarily noxious, suggest a dynamic understanding of the different forms of excessive working, and challenge researchers critically to discuss their practical success. As the saying goes, there can be too much of a good thing.

Factors influencing employee perceptions in lean transformations

The purpose of the study was to investigate employee perceptions during a lean transformation1. The combination of case study and survey methodologies was used to define elements influencing the perceived lean success of shop floor employees. According to our findings, belief, commitment, work method and communication all have a considerable direct impact on workers’ perceptions of lean success. However, their effects are very different based on the scope and focus of changes that is influenced by process characteristics. Perceptions regarding successful lean transformation during a moderate reorganisation of the company’s welding plant, where mainly males work, are affected only by commitment and work method, whereas the deep reorganisation of the sewing plant (populated by female employees) is only influenced by belief and communication

Striving to achieve it all: men and work-family-life balance in Sweden and the UK - implications for well-being and HRM

Our research paper investigates how men voice their experiences of the three dimensions of well-being: happiness, health and relationships (after Van de Voorde et al., 2012) in balancing their work and non-work lives. We discuss how their perceptions and practice relate to human resource management (HRM) in the workplace, and identify the key tensions in managing their engagement and well-being. This paper builds on research published in Construction Management and Economics in August 2013 (Vol. 31, No. 8: Raiden and Räisänen, pp. 899-913) where we critique the work-life balance literature for largely limiting the construct as being a female-oriented entitlement. Consequently, little attention has been paid to how men experience their work-life situations, especially the men who are keen to share the family care. We contribute to filling this gap by critically examining how male academics in construction-related departments at Universities in Sweden and the UK construct their relationships with family and work. The data consisted of the career-life stories of seven male academics from each country. These were at different phases in their career trajectories and held different university positions. A narrative analysis approach was then applied on the data. Three core narratives emerged: family connected with partner; work as key priority; and desire to pursue personal projects, which competed with each other for the narrators’ sparse time. A salient feature of all the narratives was the men’s struggle to accommodate family and (personal) life with work, which to them was the prioritised sphere. This struggle left many feeling that they had no time to do a good job in any sphere, and in Sweden in particular the combination pressure was intense. In this study, well-being emerged as a critical albeit difficult to articulate feature since it was embedded in all the three elements of the work-family-life triad, often with conflicting outcomes. The purpose here, therefore, is to revisit the data using a well-being lens

Trust and Betrayal in the Medical Marketplace

The author argues in this Comment that disingenuity as first resort is an unwise approach to the conflict between our ex ante and our later, illness-endangered selves. Not only does rationing by tacit deceit raise a host of moral problems, it will not work, over the long haul, because markets reward deceit\u27s unmasking. The honesty about clinical limit-setting that some bioethicists urge may not be fully within our reach. But more candor is possible than we now achieve, and the more conscious we are about decisions to impose limits, the more inclined we will be to accept them without experiencing betrayal