School culture and leadership of professional learning communities

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore supportive and shared leadership structures at schools as a function of school culture policies and procedures. Design/methodology/approachA qualitative study was conducted at three secondary schools in the Midwestern USA. Administrators and teachers were interviewed, professional learning communities observed and artifacts collected to explore school culture policies, procedures and leadership in the implementation of professional learning community practice. FindingsThis study concludes that school leaders must provide supportive and shared leadership structures for teachers in order to ensure a positive school culture and effective professional learning communities that impact school improvement. Leaders in schools must work directly with teachers to create policies and procedures that provide teachers the leadership structure to directly impact school improvement through professional learning community collaborative efforts. Originality/valueThis study builds on the school culture and professional learning communities literature by exploring existent policies and practices in schools as unique cases. Much of the literature calls for specific case studies to identify issues in the implementation of effective practice. This study is important to the community as specific cases that may inform educational leaders on mechanisms that may be leveraged to ensure successful implementation of policies and procedures outline in school culture and professional learning community literature

Intellectual and physical shared workspace: Professional learning communities and the collaborative culture

Professional learning communities are one of the leading school reform movements. Schools have shifted to a collaborative culture where administrators and teachers physically and intellectually interact using a collaborative inquiry process for professional learning. The workspace interactions include shared leadership, decision-making, teaching and learning practice, and accountability measures. Attributes and characteristics of effective collaboration and professional learning communities greatly affect the outcomes of professional learning communities. An emergent framework is provided that includes attributes of effective collaboration and the characteristics of effective professional learning communities that merge into intellectual and physical shared workspace. Recommendations are provided on the role administrators and teacher leaders play in using the frameworks to ensure greater emergence of activities and products from the collaborative inquiry process

Collaborative inquiry and the shared workspace of professional learning communities

An exploration of an educator collaborative inquiry in the shared workspace of professional learning communities reveals that the educator collaborative inquiry enables the leaders to focus on increasing student achievement scores

Is Health Politics Different?

The aging of the global population, combined with changes in technology and cultural understandings of disease and the body, have thrust discussion and contestation over health into the center of local, national, and global politics. Is the politics of health different from the politics of other policy domains? On a number of dimensions, I conclude that it is. Voters and politicians in the developed world appear more likely to accept redistributive claims with respect to health than they are in other policy areas. Nations vary less widely in spending on health than on other functions of government and policy. Moral claims made about health are more likely to attach to its politics than are moral claims about the environment, labor, finance, and energy. More than these other realms, health politics encompasses issues regarding identity, the human body, and other personal matters that endow the health arena with greater significance. Bureaucratic agencies of state are more involved in the provision and regulation of health politics than in other areas, and the science-related nature of state expertise allows medical science itself to be sculpted in deeply political and administrative ways. The article concludes with reasons why political scientists should approach cross-policy generalizations cautiously, and with a call for greater engagement with health politics—to do for political science what health economics, the history of medicine, and medical sociology have done for other social science disciplines.Governmen

Professional Outpatient Mental Health Service Delivery to the Church: An Analysis of Conservative Evangelical Attitudes in the Pacific Northwest United States

Over the years. various models have been developed for optimal mental health service delivery to various populations. The Christian community is not exempt from this evolutionary process which is affected by culture, technology, economics and research_ This study investigated attitudes of Conservative Evangelical Christians coward professional outpatient mental health service delivery. and examined six research questions which investigated {a) perception of antagonism between Christianity and psychology: (b) utilization of mental health services in the past; (c) perceived degree of pastoral influence on views toward psychology; (d) factors thought to be significant in shaping present attitudes toward psychology; (e) differences between rural and urban respondents, and (f) suggested steps that counselors might take to facilitate a comfortable counseling relationship with a Conservative Evangelical Christian client. Participants included 549 individuals (524 parishioners and 25 pastors), representing 12 churches from 3 denominations (Conservative Baptist, Evangelical Church of North America [ECNAJ, and Christian Independent). Churches were selected based on their representation as Conservative Evangelical. Both rural and urban locales in the Pacific Northwest United States were represented in the sample. Congregant attitudes coward professional mental health services were influenced by many factors. the most important being Family and Friends and Personal Experience. Professional clergy had less influence on congregant attitude than was expected. The theme~ of Compassion , Christian commitment , and Connection were important to respond ems for the facilitation of a comfortable professional relationship with a mental health counselor By understanding current Evangelical attitudes toward professional mental health services, as well as 1he factors 1ha1 shape those attitudes, practitioners interested in serving this population can formulate appropriate service models, marketing approaches, and treatment interventions 10 better serve the needs of1he Conservative Evangelical Church community