1,721,015 research outputs found
The role of educational leadership to promote the culture for sustainability within educational institutions
No full textThe effects of unregulated economic and industrial progress have led the international community to reflect on the serious consequences caused at an environmental and social level such as: pollution and destruction of natural ecosystems, inequalities, the exhaustion of natural resources, economic crises and wars, global population growth. Therefore, in 2015, the need to face these increasingly complex challenges drove the international community to define an ambitious action program contained in the 2030 Agenda, whose 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are shared by 193 Member States, precisely because the guarantee of sustainable development requires commitment and assumption of responsibility by all States and all organizations. Such a vision, however, requires reorienting the education of all nations to be able to develop knowledge, skills, perspectives, and values, to give all people of all ages the opportunity to take responsibility for creating and inhabiting a sustainable future (UNESCO, 2004).
Considering the role attributed to education, a decisive role for the development of successful education for sustainability must be given to educational leaders who can be key agents for the creation of school organizations for sustainability and for meaningful teaching and learning processes (Leithwood et al., 2004). An educational leader who wants to create an organization guided by the culture of sustainability has the responsibility to (a) support his teachers in developing the knowledge, skills and dispositions that the pedagogy for sustainability requires; (b) promote practices that can reflect the philosophy of/towards sustainability; (c) build the school as a social actor by promoting alliances with the community, to ensure the achievement of common objectives for a sustainable future (Kadji-Beltran et al., 2013).
Creating a sustainable school requires rethinking school functioning in a holistic way, including the curriculum, teaching/learning processes, resource management and collaborative approaches both within and outside school boundaries. This means adopting a whole-school approach (Henderson & Tilbury 2004) to start a transformative journey capable of creating coherence between pedagogical, organizational, and social culture, physical spaces, the use and management of resources.
For an educational institution, the adoption of the whole-school approach model implies to make the effort to minimize the gap between the declared values and the practices implemented.
Therefore, the concept of sustainable school therefore coincides with a holistic approach to education for sustainable development (ESD), since its principles should be part of the ordinary transformative and improvement process of the school and not an optional or alternative perspective; it should concern the construction of learning environments and experiences useful for engaging students in practice, contributing to the construction of a more sustainable society and a better quality of life (Gough, 2005); it should present itself as a model of sustainable life, operationalizing democratic governance and an inclusive culture. This implies that leaders of educational institutions have to play the role of agents of change since they have a position that allows them to shape the organizational structure and build the conditions for the implementation of innovative planning and successful practices.
ESD requires the implementation of a holistic change in the organization guided by the adoption of a leadership style that orients and promotes transformation rather than adaptation, which looks to a sustainable future from an interdisciplinary perspective, based on an effective collaboration at the governance level. In this sense, transformative leadership becomes vital for the implementation of ESD, but
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itself sustainability requires a change of leadership paradigm. This can be achieved in the implementation of those components identified by Hargreaves and Fink (2006) in the construction of shared actions, in the ability to share responsibilities, to promote learning, to collaborate and cooperate with others in the promotion of education for sustainability (EfS).
Therefore, the education for sustainability requires leadership that can create a vision of change and motivate people to participate in the implementation of sustainable processes (Scott, Tilbury, Sharp, & Deane, 2012), to negotiate change with various local agencies and the internal and external community, to create sustainable practices that truly respond to the needs of the reality.
Although in Italian schools there are initiatives and experiences in favor of sustainability education, there are no specific studies on the role of leadership for ESD in educational institutions. To fill this gap this study aims to respond to the following questions “What perceptions do the participating principals have of their leadership and of the actions implemented to promote sustainability education according to the 2030 Agenda’s values?”
To respond to the research question the northern Italian schools’ principals were invited to respond to an open question questionnaire that was ad hoc created. Data collected from the 51 participants showed that principals are aware of their role and leadership in promoting the development of sustainability mindset: they include goals and initiatives for sustainability in all the institutional documents, making more effort on those that are regulated by specific norms. However, much more effort needs to be done before considering EfS as a holist approach that characterize values, culture and practice of the whole educational community
La leadership in giovani e adolescenti
No full textIl capitolo presenta l'abilità di leadership come una componente fondamentale dello sviluppo giovanile e come processo che merita di essere sostenuto, poiché capace di orientare i comportamenti della vita adulta. La leadership è stata presentata non semplicemente come abilità del singolo, ma come processo relazionale e sociale che influenza e orienta i soggetti e i gruppi verso l'obiettivo comune da raggiungere. Le dimensioni salienti della leadrship sono state presentate come abilità i nterne ed esterne. Le prime fanno riferimento a una sorta di dialogo interiore e quindi alla consapevolezza di sé e al senso di autoefficacia, mentre le seconde si legano a una dimensione che coinvolge l'interazione con gli altri, processo entro il quale diventa determinante creare e comunicare una visione orientata al cambiamento, ma anche lo spirito di iniziativa come abilità di pianificare e implementare le azioni, la comunicazione come 'arte oratoria' capace di influenzare, la collaborazione come abilità che porta a condividere e valorizzare gli altri.Il capitolo oltre a focalizzare l'attenzione sull'importanza di promuovere lo sviluppo della leadership nei giovani, ha dato spazio a quei processi ai quali gli insegnanti dovrebbero garantire per assicurarne lo sviluppo:la costruzione di partnership docenti/studenti, il riconoscimento della capacità di decidere e di assumersi delle responsabilità da parte degli studenti, delle loro abilità e conoscenze, la costruzione di ambienti per la partecipazione.Il capitolo oltre ad offrire stimoli per la riflessione, si conclude offrendo un esempio di di procedura strategica, realizzabile a scuola, a sostegno dello sviluppo della leadership degli studenti
What Defines Success in Developing Sustainability Competences? A Systematic Review
No full textThe dynamic landscape of higher education has increasingly emphasised the development of sustainability competences among students in response to address global sustainability challenges, resulting in significant institutional momentum in the sustainability field in recent years. This study aims to conduct a systematic review with the objective of examining competence-based programs at the higher education level for the development of key sustainability competences, as well as the pedagogical approaches employed by higher education institutions. In alignment with our research aim, a systematic search based on PRISMA guidelines, was conducted using scientific databases of Scopus, targeting empirical articles, and employing sustainability competences, higher education institution, and pedagogical approaches as primary keywords. Following the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the search yield empirical studies focusing on the development of sustainability competences in higher education institutions. The results provide two dimensions of sustainability competences development: a shift in teaching and learning from single, isolated disciplines to collaborative efforts within higher education institutions, and innovative pedagogical approaches rooted in the learning by doing
Introduzione
No full textLa prima parte del contributo è stato sviluppato su tre aspetti chiave che introducono i capitoli presentati successivamente nel volume. Una prima parte, facendo riferimento alla letteratura sviluppata sul tema, è stata dedicata alla presentazione del concetto di employability secondo prospettive diverse, identificandolo come costrutto complesso e non come una somma di competenze, ma come un processo in divenire al quale sono connesse molteplici variabili. In questa prima fase si è proposto un modello concettuale integrato di employability. Una seconda parte è stata concentrata sull'analisi della percezione di occupabilità dei giovani e sui suoi fattori determinanti, spiegando, ancora una volta, come l'employability sia una dimensione complessa e determinata da una molteplicità di fattori: personali, sociali, organizzative.Nella terza parte è stato identificato la relazione tra alternanza scuola-lavoro ed employability, offrendo diversi stimoli per la riflessione. La seconda parte del capitolo è stato focalizzato sulle soft skill nelle organizzazioni, sulla relazione tra soft skill e didattica oltre che come strumenti per preparasi al futuro
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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