Education policy: process, themes and impact

Education policy is high on the agenda of governments across the world as global pressures focus increasing attention on the outcomes of education policy and on the implications for economic prosperity and social citizenship. However, there is often an underdeveloped understanding of how education policy is formed, what drives it and how it impacts on schools and colleges. Education Policy: Process, Themes and Impact makes these connections and links them to the wider challenges of educational leadership in a contemporary context

Towards an analysis of the policies that shape public education

The environment in which school leaders and teachers work is shaped by educational policy. Policy is, in turn, derived from the dominant political ideologies at any particular time. The interrelationship between ideology and policy shapes both the overall organization of education and the operational practices and procedures of staff in schools and colleges. An understanding of the nature of policy, how it is derived from political ideology and how policy helps to determine both the organization of education at national, local and school and college level can help school leaders to develop effective responses to policy and policy shifts. This article offers a model for conducting such an analysis

Generating change from below: what role for leadership from above?

In recent years the benefits of distributed leadership have often assumed the status of an unchallengeable orthodoxy. There is a general acceptance that leadership is best when it is dispersed. In reality this is often little more than a form of ‘licensed leadership’ in which those working in subordinate roles can only exercise their leadership in tightly prescribed contexts. This article investigates the contribution of teacher professional development to promoting a more optimistic vision of teacher leadership and, ultimately, organisational change. It explores the role of leadership ‘from above’ in supporting classroom teachers to engage with and sustain change. The study, which was situated in the Republic of Ireland, employed a case study approach with 20 participants in five urban disadvantaged schools. The article seeks to demonstrate how a professional development initiative was used to promote significant and sustained change in four of the five case study schools. It argues that in order to understand sustained change in schools it is necessary to better understand the complex ways in which leadership from above can generate change agency from below. This article offers a critical perspective in relation to mainstream distributed leadership theory and practice

Wrestling with Destiny: The Cultural Socialization of Anger and Healing in African American Males

Society’s negative images of Black males have devastating consequences for their emotional and spiritual health. The PLAAY project (Preventing Long-term Anger and Aggression in Youth) is a multi-component program that seeks to reduce the anger and aggression of Black urban youth with a history of interpersonal conflict. The program components include in-vivo assessment and intervention during athletic movement (basketball play and escapist martial arts), cultural socialization therapy, and parent empowerment groups. In the martial arts and basketball intervention components, the role of movement is essential to understanding how the boys express their confidence and frustration. This article begins with a reflection on the author’s own emotional and cultural anger towards the limits of Western scholarship and collegiality, examines the theological implications of imaging on Black male mental health, and finally describes the development and procedures of PLAAY. Theological and psychological implications of culturally relevant interventions will be discussed

Marine exploration

Less than 50 years ago knowledge of the geology of the UK continental shelf (UKCS) was extremely limited. The BGS marine geoscience programme began about 40 years ago in response to the development of the UK oil and gas industry. The BGS was funded by the then Department of Energy to carry out a national mapping programme based on geophysical data, seabed samples and boreholes. By the 1990s, geological maps at a scale of 1:250 000 were published for the shelf regions showing seabed sediments, Quaternary geology and bedrock. The deeper water areas to the north and west continue to be explored with support from the oil industry. A series of regional reports, the offshore equivalent of the BGS regional guides, were published and reports for the Atlantic Margin will be published in 2010. MAREMAP is a new multidisciplinary environmental mapping programme designed to underpin the new marine industries and environmental issues

Working together to promote the rights of children affected by violence against women: an evaluative study

This presentation presented evaluative research of a project that addresses the needs of, and promotes the rights of, children affected by domestic violence and negative family conflict, in a large rural county in the Republic of Ireland. The case study organisation, Mayo Children’s Initiative, was established in 2009 with funding from The Atlantic Philanthropies. With a focus on prevention and children’s rights, the initiative locates much of its work in schools. This presentation draws on one aspect of the evaluation; inter-agency working. It explores how schools and other agencies can work collaboratively, in a complex social environment, to facilitate effective information sharing, co-facilitation of service delivery and development of a shared understanding and standardized approach to domestic violence and negative family conflict. The research adopted a mixed methods design. Data was collected through questionnaires and focus groups with school children and parents, and semi-structured interviews with stakeholder professionals. This presentation will explore key findings that are transferable to a range of inter-agency practice contexts. In particular; - The complexity of working across agencies with different priorities and approaches to responding to the issues, in relation to language used and understanding of this area of work; - The management of complex cross-referral processes embedded in an interagency, collaborative social community approach may be effective, but there is a need for policies that enable agencies to track referrals that they receive and generate; - There is value in having an organisation that can respond to immediate need in a way that is not mired in bureaucracy. However, such a service can be drawn on to compensate for lack of services elsewhere, when alternative provision may be more appropriate; - Where a cross-agency network works together ensuring joint ‘ownership’, effective governance and skilful leadership, interagency working can support wider awareness-raising of children’s rights, domestic violence and negative family conflict. This presentation will provide evidence of a range of creative ways in which services may co-ordinate and facilitate effective multi-agency working to address a complex social issue. A project of this nature can be a catalyst in bringing together agencies interested in supporting victims of domestic violence with specific reference to the needs and rights of children

Measuring privatisation in education: methodological challenges and possibilities

© 2018, © 2018 Educational Review. As the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) spreads, key questions that attempt to identify both the nature and the increasing scope and scale of this phenomenon become empirically significant. The concern of this article is to highlight some of the complexities of measuring one key element of the GERM: the privatisation of public education systems. Exploring indicators of privatisation through a set of methods for analysing Likert-style data, Mokken scale analysis and Rasch analysis, we generate a scale to measure an educational phenomenon so complex that it can appear to defy measurement. Our intention is to demonstrate that complex phenomena should not be oversimplified for the purpose of generating numeric data and that measurement is possible. The results, drawn from a European-wide survey, portray a nuanced pattern of privatisation at this regional level in which public funding and ownership remain important, but schools are commonly adopting a wide range of “private-like” practices

Final Report for the Success of African American Students (SAAS) in Independent Schools project

The Success of African American Students (SAAS) in Independent Schools was a collaborative, longitudinal, mixed-method research project focused on investigating and understanding the variety of social, emotional, and institutional factors that were thought to influence how Black students navigate the independent school environment. SAAS involved researchers from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) Graduate School of Education working with faculty and staff from several Philadelphia area independent schools. The SAAS project was supported by five years of funding from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Finally, SAAS utilized qualitative methods such as focus groups and semi-structured interviews as well as quantitative methods such as questionnaire surveys and behavioral observations

Empreendedorismo social e comercial: iguais, diferentes ou ambos?

O empreendedorismo tem sido o motor que vem impelindo uma boa parcela do crescimento do setor dos negócios, além de ser a força motriz responsável pela rápida expansão desse setor. Neste artigo, oferece-se uma análise comparativa do empreendedorismo comercial e do social, valendo-se de um modelo analítico pre-valecente, proveniente da área de empreendedorismo comercial. Na análise, destacam-se as principais similaridades e diferenças entre essas duas formas de empreendedorismo e apresenta-se um arcabouço para uma abordagem mais sistemática e eficaz do processo empreendedor. Exploram-se as implicações dessa análise de empreendedorismo social tanto para seus praticantes como para seus pesquisadores.O emprendedurismo ha sido el motor que viene impeliendo una buena cuota del crecimiento del sector de negocios, además de ser la fuerza motriz responsable por la rápida expansión de este sector. Este artículo ofrece un análisis comparativo del emprendedurismo comercial y del social, valiéndose de un modelo analítico prevaleciente, proveniente del área del emprendedurismo comercial. El análisis destaca las principales semajanzas y diferencias entre esas dos formas de emprendedurismo y presenta un marco para un abordaje más sistemático y eficaz del proceso emprendedor. Exploramos las implicaciones de este análisis de emprendedurismo social tanto para sus practicantes como para sus investigadores.Entrepreneurship has been the engine propelling much of the growth of the business sector as well as a driving force behind the rapid expansion of the social sector. This article offers a comparative analysis of commercial and social entrepreneurship using a prevailing analytical model from commercial entrepreneurship. The analysis highlights key similarities and differences between these two forms of entrepreneurship and presents a framework on how to approach the social entrepreneurial process more systematically and effectively. We explore the implications of this analysis of social entrepreneurship for both practitioners and researchers