Exploring the Current Nature of a School Principal\u27s Work

This study employed a qualitative framework to explore the current nature of a selected school principal’s work. Specifically, through observations, audio journals and interviews, I sought to better understand what a selected Ontario elementary school principal did when engaging in her work. The research questions were designed to explore how the principal spent her time and why, and examine the challenges she faced in accomplishing her work. The findings of the inquiry revealed that the school principal was concerned with fulfilling the formal mandates of her job while emphasizing communication, building relationships and the instructional program in developing healthy learning environments for students. She employed a range of media in the day to day operationalization of her work and faced several challenges including increasing student diversity, labour relations, and lack of parental involvement

Principal Leadership and Prioritizing Equity in An Era of Work Intensification: Must Wellbeing be Sacrificed?

This case explores the themes of equity, leadership, wellbeing, and work intensification. The case follows Jennifer “Jen” Barns, the new principal at Westfield Public School, a JK-8 school in Ontario. Jen is overwhelmed by all the responsibilities of the job. She does not have a productive working relationship with staff and is unable to get them to support a social justice initiative or take on responsibilities at the school. At first glance, it appears the issue may be with the teachers or even the equity agenda Jen is proposing to implement. However, a closer look at the case reveals gaps in principal leadership that would need to be addressed if Jen is to turn things around. Three teaching exercises are included to fully situate the case and chart a course of action that includes identifying the issues in the case and developing several leadership principles that would transform the learning environment at Westfield, foster sustainable school improvement, and improve Jen’s wellbeing. While the case casts an important gaze on the impact of an equity focus on workload and wellbeing, it provides the basis for a discussion of the pivotal role principals play in leading schools in this contemporary era of change

Book Review: Miller, P. (Ed.) (2013). School leadership in the Caribbean: Perceptions, practices, paradigms.

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BOOK REVIEW: Thompson, C. (2013). Leadership Re-imagination: A Primer of Principles and Practices (Kindle DX version). Kingston, Jamaica: The Caribbean Leadership Re-Imagination Initiative.

BOOK REVIEW: Thompson, C. (2013). Leadership Re-imagination: A Primer of Principles and Practices (Kindle DX version). Kingston, Jamaica: The Caribbean Leadership Re-Imagination Initiative

Using the EBAM Across Educational Contexts: Calibrating for Technical, Policy, Leadership Influences

This article reports on a rigorous approach developed for calibrating the Evidence-Based Adequacy Model to suit the Ontario K–12 public education context, and the actual calibrations made. The four-step calibration methodology draws from expert consultations and a review of the academic literature. Specific attention is given to the technical revisions and, importantly, the significant influence of policy(values) and leaders’ decision-making on the calibration process. It also presents emerging implications for leaders and researchers who are considering calibrating the EBAM for use in their educational context. Calibrating the instrument was a necessary step before use in a jurisdiction outside of the United States, where the model was developed, and our team has been the first to outline a methodology and bring Canadian evidence to the discussion

Education Research in the Canadian Context

This special issue of the International Journal of Education Policy & Leadership (IJEPL), Research in the Canadian Context, marks a significant milestone for the journal. Throughout our twelve-year history, we have sought to publish the best research in leadership, policy, and research use, allowing authors to decide the topics by dint of their research. While this model still serves as the foundation for IJEPL content, we decided to give researchers a chance to engage in deeper conversations by introducing special issues. In our first special issue, researchers discuss their work within the scope of education policy, leadership, and research use within the Canadian context. While many aspects of leadership, teaching, and learning can be seen as similar across contexts, there are also issues of particular concern within national, regional, provincial, or local spheres, particularly when looking at policy and system changes. The researchers featured in this issue provide an important look into education in Canada.PolicyIn the policy realm, Sue Winton and Lauren Jervis examine a 22-year campaign to change special education assessment policy in Ontario, examining how discourses dominant in the province enabled the government to leave the issue unresolved for decades. Issues of access and equity play out within a neoliberal context focused on individualism, meritocracy, and the reduced funding of public services. While Winton and Jervis highlight the tension between policy goals and ideological contexts, Jean-Vianney Auclair considers the place of policy dialogues within governmental frames, and the challenge of engaging in broadly applicable work within vertically structured governmental agencies. One often-touted way to move beyondResearch useWithin the scope of research use, Sarah L. Patten examines how socioeconomic status (SES) is defined and measured in Canada, the challenges in defining SES, and potential solutions specific to the Canadian context. In looking at knowledge mobilization, Joelle Rodway considers how formal coaches and informal social networks nserve to connect research, policy, and practice in Ontario’s Child and Youth Mental Health program.LeadershipTurning to leadership, contributing researchers explored the challenges involved in staff development, administrator preparation, and student outcomes. Keith Walker and Benjamin Kutsyuruba explore how educational administrators can support early career teachers to increase retention, and the somewhat haphazard policies and supports in place across Canada to bring administrators and new teachers together. Gregory Rodney MacKinnon, David Young, Sophie Paish, and Sue LeBel look at how one program in Nova Scotia conceptualizes professional growth, instructional leadership, and administrative effectiveness and the emerging needs of administrators to respond to issues of poverty, socioemotional health, and mental health, while also building community. This complex environment may mean expanding leadership preparation to include a broader consideration of well-being and community. Finally, Victoria Handford and Kenneth Leithwood look at the role school leaders play in improving student achievement in British Columbia, and the school district characteristics associated with improving student achievement.Taken together, the research in this special issue touches on many of the challenges in policy development, application, and leadership practice, and the myriad ways that research can be used to address these challenges. We hope you enjoy this first special issue of IJEPL

School Principals\u27 Work in Grenada

This dissertation explores school principals’ work in Grenada, a former British colony in the Caribbean. The dearth of perspectives of school leadership in/on the Global South, broader tensions in the field around standards, frameworks, and expectations around the principalship, and, particularly in Grenada, the lack of documentation around principals’ work, geo-economic challenges including fiscal constraints, and sociohistoric ideologies and tensions around labour, civic duty, and Christianity contextualized the study. The study was qualitative and interpretive, utilizing direct observations and semi-structured interviews to garner eight (four each in primary and secondary schools) public school principals’ understandings, actions, and challenges relative to their work. The research framework constituted a relational understanding of principals’ labour as embedded and embodied in context intertwined with a conceptualization of work as a social construct. This necessitated a focus on principals’ thinking about their work and the actions they undertook daily but also probing the conditions and relations around which such thinking and actions unfolded. Principals understood work as, a calling/vocation, service, and commitment to student learning. Consequently, they undertook many denominational-based actions and other duties around organizational management, instructional supervision, and community relations, overall reporting high volumes of administrative tasks, little time for instructional supervision, and high volumes of unfree labour. Limited governmental and denominational supports, inadequate and outdated infrastructure, pedagogy, and resources, negative public regard for some schools, and intimidation dictated day-to-day undertaking of work, driving high rates of manual labour, fundraising, and charity among principals. The findings underscore the highly administrative nature of the work of school principals and corroborates incumbents’ admissions in the literature of time constraints in undertaking instructional work. The findings also illuminate wider evidence in the field of the highly compliant nature of principals’ contemporary work, with Grenadian principals working long, arduous hours notwithstanding grave socio-economic hardships – not of their making – constraining their abilities to perform their work. Principals ascribed this commitment to their Christian (moral) principles and broader civic beliefs, but it was apparent that broader societal expectations around principals’ labour and some principals’ fear of victimization also ensured compliance and control of principals’ labour in Grenada

Critical Thinking, Active Learning, and the Flipped Classroom: Strategies in Promoting Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice in the B.Ed. Classroom

In Canada, the national rhetoric of tolerance for diversity oftentimes does not match up to student experiences in the classroom (Dei, Mazzuca, McIsaac, & Zine, 1997). Many students face discrimination because of ethnicity, religious, gender, sexuality, disability, and socioeconomic status. Such discrimination negatively impacts not only students’ ability to perform at high standards, but future economic capital (Harvey & Houle, 2006; Ryan, Pollock, & Antonelli, 2009). The implication for educators in creating more inclusive, socially-just classrooms becomes significant when one looks at Canada’s changing demographic trends (see Eggertson, 2007). It is incumbent that policymakers, researchers, and educators move beyond rhetoric and prepare future teachers with the skills for teaching in Canada’s growing, diverse, and young classrooms. This workshop is designed for instructors who teach in Bachelor of Education programs at any Canadian university. At the same time, it is adaptable to non-Canadian, and/or non-B.Ed. classrooms. The aim is dual and intertwined: to model pedagogy and instruction that instructors can adopt or adapt in teaching for equity and social justice in their own classrooms, and to guide instructors, using stimuli from written and visual text, to interrogate and evaluate their own teaching practices, and re-align them to foster aims of inclusion and social justice. Towards these ends, the workshop employs a triad of strategies, namely critical thinking, active learning, and the flipped classroom

The Work of School Leaders: North American Similarities, Local Differences.

This study explores the perceptions of successful school administrators in their roles within the changing context of schooling in Ontario, Canada, and the US states of Arizona and New York. This research considers district and campus administrators\u27 work experience and contemporary challenges related to province- or state-specific expectations, school improvement issues, resource distribution and accountability. Focus groups of practicing principals reflected the ways in which school leadership was defined and enacted across borders, providing significant commonalities within the international perspectives of the participants, as well as context-specific differences in the interpretation of their perspectives