Parallel leadership: a clue to the contents of the 'black box' of school reform

The concept of parallel leadership that is introduced in this article derives from a five-year research project that was first reported in IJEM in 1997. Parallel leadership represents a relationship between teacher leaders and principals that is grounded in the values of mutual trust, shared directionality and allowance for individual expression. It appears to provide a leadership foundation upon which successful school reform can be built. Thus the lid of what Hallinger and Heck have called the 'black box' of school reform may have been prised open

3-dimensional pedagogy-the image of 21st century teacher professionalism

With the advent of post-industrialism the work of teachers will surely change dramatically. But how? In this final chapter of the year book, Dorothy Andrews and Frank Crowther draw on the outcomes of a successful school revitalisation project that has engaged teachers in serious ‘imagineering’ of their current work and their professional futures. On the basis of the outcomes of the project to date, Andrews and Crowther propose that teaching in the knowledge society will be a highly sophisticated, highly complex construct that can be viewed as three-dimensional. When the three-dimensions come together, the net effect is new knowledge that has the power to transform communities

A Faith-Based Context for Culturally-Relevant Instruction

Preparing prospective teachers who are equipped to successfully educate students from culturally, racially, and socioeconomically diverse backgrounds is critical work conducted by universities. This paper investigates how culturally-relevant pedagogies with biblical underpinnings have the potential to create educational environments that promote excellence, reflect the culture of the students and their communities, and develop awareness of societal injustices which inspire and equip prospective teachers to become agents of change. This approach is then illustrated through the course design and instructional strategies used in an introductory education course at a Christian liberalarts university

When the sleeping giant awakes: the lived experiences of teacher leaders and implications for schools and education systems

At the very heart of our schools lies a potentially powerful resource that often remains untapped – our teacher leaders. Within them resides the power to make a difference in schools and communities in their contribution to the capacity of the education system and the profession. Researchers worldwide have acknowledged that the key to successful school reform lies with teachers, yet the visibility of teacher leadership as an organisational resource is not overtly apparent. In view of a recent global focus on the current challenges facing leaders in schools, a renewed focus on teacher leadership appears very timely. Media reports cite teacher burnout and stress as teachers struggle to face the demands of external drivers for reform. Capacity is in danger of being lost to the profession as a whole generation of teachers and principals are approaching retirement, while the need to develop leadership capacity in the next generation of teachers is a challenge that must be addressed. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) flagged that developing the next generation of school leaders remains a challenge for all OECD countries, including Australia. This study was designed to interpret the lived experiences of teacher leaders following their school improvement journey in the Innovative Designs for Enhancing Achievements in Schools (IDEAS) project to: (1) develop images of teacher leaders once they had been through a process of school improvement; (2) understand what contributed to that image in their post-school improvement context; and (3) consider the implications for schools and education systems. Data collection involved two phases: Phase One, a written questionnaire survey; and Phase Two, semi-structured interviews. Purposive sampling was used for Phases One and Two to select IDEAS teacher leaders cross-sector and cross-system Australia wide. The Phase One survey was used to gather data from 25 teacher leaders. These data were used to narrow the field using criteria to select 10 participants for Phase Two semi-structured interviews and biographical interpretive analysis. Biographical interpretive methodology was employed to analyse the data. In the analysis, five images or categories of teacher leaders emerged from the data. While some of the categories of teacher leaders were empowered in their current contexts and others were not, the empowered categories illuminated very clearly the conditions for the development of teacher leader capacity within an organisational context. A Teacher Leader Capacity Building Model was developed as an outcome of this study and additionally provides the conditions for growing capacity for teacher leaders to be lead teachers or move into formal leadership roles. Teacher leader capacity is developed within a generative, organisational community context, which comprises three dimensions – the personal dimension, the collaborative dimension and the collective intelligence dimension. When all three dimensions are given priority, teacher leader capacity is sustained and organisational capacity is more likely to be enhanced. This led to a new metaphor for situating teacher leadership within an educational organisation, and proposal for further research: Leadership for organisation as community. Finally, this study has made a significant contribution to the research methodology literature in the use of mind mapping and concept mapping as methods of biographical interpretive data analysis in the accounts of the lived experiences of the teacher leaders

Widening the circle: Faculty-student support groups as innovative practice in higher education.

Faculty-student support groups have the potential to promote strategies for co-mentorship in places of learning. They can also function to facilitate alternative forms of pedagogical practice in the context of lifelong learning. The purpose of this paper is to describe ideas and practices in the innovative development of faculty-student support groups in higher education. The authors provide a context for introducing the model of a co-mentoring support group, for considering institutional dynamics in forming comentoring support groups, for illustrating a case study analysis of a university-based support group, for providing a collegial response to the mentoring literature, for considering the need to formalize mentoring programs and outcomes, for exploring challenges to and benefits of the support group effort, and finally for envisioning comentoring support groups more generally. The authors argue that more attention needs to be given to studying alternative pedagogical practices that enable mutualistic relationships to endure. This article accordingly offers an original holistic guide for viewing mentoring as interconnected cycles and phases of lifelong learning

Leading with moral purpose: teacher leadership in action

Mutualistic goal setting enables members of the school community to reinvigorate and build on the past in order to establish clear goals for the future. That past in the case study schools of this chapter is steeped in the various foundations of the schools and manifests in explicit values for action bringing life to the moral purpose of the school. Teacher leaders emerge from the process with zest for open and active work in parallel with their meta-strategic leaders. They lead with members of the professional community, bringing to life in classrooms the underpinning values of the school’s vision for learning. This chapter draws on examples of teacher leaders working in schools that have engaged with the school improvement process of IDEAS (Innovative Designs for Enhancing Achievements in Schools) and are leading significant new pedagogical action. Guided by the school improvement process based on building capacity for the alignment of school components through parallel leadership, mutualistic goal setting and collective responsibility, these teachers exemplify leadership that is underpinned by allegiance to an explicit set of values guided by a vision for learning. Each school is different and each teacher leader demonstrates recognised qualities of critical self-reflection, networking, and advocacy for improved student achievement from a contextually relevant vantage point of moral purpose. The result is an identified style of leadership, underpinned by moral purpose, whereby teacher leaders in concert with their meta-strategic principal actively engage in the articulation of their school’s values and vision for learning through pedagogical leadership and strategic planning

Building capacity: teachers thinking and working together to create new futures.

This paper is based on research illuminating organisation-wide processes used during a whole school revitalisation process, IDEAS (Innovative Designs for Enhancing Achievement in Schools). It explores the organisation-wide processes that engage teachers in futuristic thinking and the creation of shared meaning. The paper explores how teachers engaging in processes of school revitalisation think and work together to add significant value to their successful practices. The school revitalisation process at the heart of this research centres on the work of teachers and recognises the fundamental importance of teacher leadership in successful school change. Creative organisation-wide processes link personal pedagogical work with the work of the broader professional community of the school. This linking of personal and school wide pedagogical aspirations and understandings provides a foundation for culture building and the creation of new futures. It enables the professional community to build the capacity of the school to add value to classroom and school wide practices - improving teaching and learning as a result

Computational Thinking Integration into Middle Grades Science Classrooms: Strategies for Meeting the Challenges

This paper reports findings from the efforts of a university-based research team as they worked with middle school educators within formal school structures to infuse computer science principles and computational thinking practices. Despite the need to integrate these skills within regular classroom practices to allow all students the opportunity to learn these essential 21st Century skills, prior practice has been to offer these learning experiences outside of mainstream curricula where only a subset of students have access. We have sought to leverage elements of the research-practice partnership framework to achieve our project objectives of integrating computer science and computational thinking within middle science classrooms. Utilizing a qualitative approach to inquiry, we present narratives from three case schools, report on themes across work sites, and share recommendations to guide other practitioners and researchers who are looking to engage in technology-related initiatives to impact the lives of middle grades students

Asegúrate: an intervention program against cyberbullying based on teachers' commitment and on design of its instructional materials

This article presents the impact on cyberbullying of the Asegúrate program. This educational program is based on the theory of normative social behavior, self-regulation skills,and the beliefs held by adolescents and consists in a whole package of strategies and resources to help teachers to include in the ordinary curricula. The evaluation of Asegúrate was carried out with a sample of 4779 students (48.9% girls) in 5th and 6th grade in primary education and compulsory secondary education (M = 12.76; SD = 1.67) through a quasi-experimental methodology, with two measures over time. The instrument used was the European Cyberbullying Intervention Project Questionnaire. The results show that the involvement in cyberbullying as cyber-victim,cyber-aggressor, and cyber-bully-victim increase without intervention, whereas it diminishes when intervention is carried out by the teachers who have received specific training and have used the didactic Asegúrate package. Additionally, the impact of the intervention on the different types of behaviors was analyzed, and the results show that Asegúrate is more effective with some forms than with others. Consequently, the Asegúrate program is effective for decreasing the prevalence of cyberbullying, but some modifications need to be made to impact on all the different forms it can take.Gobierno de España PSI2017-86723-RGobierno de España PSI2016-74871-

Sustaining Autonomous Communities in the Modern United States (The United Communities of America)

America has become industrialized and characterized by social anxiety and overconsumption. The inability to be sustainable has led the once plentiful and flourishing nation into an ongoing sustainability crisis. Even if there is a deep connection between them, this essay focuses on social sustainability rather than ecological. It argues for an intentional community-based framework to keep American life sustainable. Pollution, civil unrest, and intense social anxiety create unfulfilling life conditions for many American citizens. Using examples from modern American intentional communities, I will explain the need for self-directing, close-knit communities. Flourishing community members, as it will be considered from sociological and pragmatist theory, are notably more autonomous and environmentally conservative than mainstream American society. Communal societies immensely aid in successfully establishing contextually-based governments that help fulfill their citizens. They are more conscious of their environment (in the broader sense than the ecological one) and thus seek a healthy sustainable consumption rate and social climate. The values and traditions that cultivate environmental care are integral in communities and often combat the instability of American society. Though grassroots communal living can be hard and often forsakes the amenities of capitalist America, it offers alternative values that would still sustain and help to achieve fulfillment by the population