1,720,967 research outputs found
School leadership during a pandemic: Navigating tensions
No full textPurpose
This paper explores, from the perspective of an Australian pracademic, how school leaders are leading during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
This essay explores the tensions navigated by school leaders leading during this time of global crisis, by looking to research as well as the author's lived experience.
Findings
The author finds that school leaders are navigating the following: accountability and autonomy; equity and excellence; the individual and the collective and well-being and workload.
Originality/value
This paper offers insights into school leadership, at all times but especially during times of crisis and during the COVID-19 pandemic
Transformational Professional Learning: Making a Difference in Schools
No full textEmerging from an education world that sees professional learning as a tool to positively shape teaching practice in order to improve student learning, Transformational Professional Learning elucidates professional learning that is transformational for teachers, school leaders, and schools.
Written from the unique ‘pracademic’ perspective of an author who is herself a practising teacher, school leader, and researcher, this book articulates the why and the what of professional learning. It acts as a bridge between research and practice by weaving scholarly literature together with the lived experience of the author and with the voices of those working in schools. It covers topics from conferences, coaching, and collaboration, to teacher standards and leadership of professional learning.
This book questions the ways in which professional learning is often wielded in educational settings and shows where teachers, school leaders, system leaders, and researchers can best invest their time and resources in order to support and develop the individuals, teams, and cultures in schools. It will be of great interest to teachers, leaders within schools, staff responsible for professional learning in school contexts, professional learning consultants, professional learning providers, and education researchers
Rethinking professional learning for teachers and school leaders
No full textPurpose
Situated within the conversation of the global push for teacher quality and for professional learning that positively shapes teaching practice in order to improve student learning, the purpose of this paper is concerned with transformational learning that actively shifts cognition, emotion, and capacity (Drago-Severson, 2009).
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is set against the backdrop of one independent, well-resourced Australian school during its professional learning intervention. It draws together findings from a narrative study that examined the lived experiences of 14 educators. The educators interviewed for this study included the researcher (also an educator at the school), two teachers, and 11 school leaders at middle and executive levels.
Findings
While the study set out to explore how educators’ experiences of professional learning (trans)form their senses of professional identity, it found that it is not just professional learning, but epiphanic life experiences that shape professional selves and practices. Learning is highly individualized, not one-size-fits-all. It is that which taps into who educators see and feel they are that has the most impact on beliefs, thoughts, behaviors, and practices.
Originality/value
This study suggests that transformational professional learning can occur in a wide range of life arenas. It recommends that the definition of professional learning be broadened, that teachers and schools think more expansively and flexibly about what it is that transforms educators, and about who drives and chooses this learning. Schools and systems can work from their own contexts to design and slowly iterate models of professional learning, from the bottom up and the middle out
Redefining leadership in schools: The Cheshire Cat as unconventional metaphor
No full textMoving away from the study of the principal as the central leader figure in schools, this article argues for an alternative narrative for school leadership. It draws on empirical data from a doctoral study to propose a new way of thinking about the school leader through the unusual metaphor of the Cheshire Cat.
Examining the stories of 11 school leaders from one independent PK-12 Western Australian school, including middle leaders who are often absent in school leadership literature, this article provides insights into school leaders’ perceptions of themselves as leaders, and their private processes of decision making. These leader stories challenge the notion of school leadership as an archetypal story of a central figure, showing that it can instead be quiet, subtle, fluid, and even deliberately invisible.
The visible-invisible Cheshire Cat school leader enacts collective vision, action, and transformation by acting as a deliberate and skilled collaborator in a complex, networked web. This reimagined school leader is one who makes careful decisions about how to best serve their communities, how to foster trust, and how to distribute power and agency, including when to appear and disappear, when to step forward and step back, when to direct and when to empower
Coaching for professional growth in one Australian school: “oil in water”
No full textPurpose
The purpose of this paper is to build knowledge around the use of coaching to develop teachers’ professional practice in schools. It surfaces insider perspectives of teachers and school leaders in one Australian school, during the development of a model for teacher growth, which used a combination of cognitive coaching and the Danielson Framework for Teaching.
Design/methodology/approach
A narrative approach to interview data were used to examine the perspectives of 14 educators – teachers and school leaders – involved in the implementation of a school-based cognitive coaching model.
Findings
This study found that being a coach is an empowering and identity-shaping experience, that coaching for empowerment and capacity building benefits from a non-hierarchical relationship, and that coaching can be enhanced by the use of additional tools and approaches. Implementing a school-based cognitive coaching model, in conjunction with the Danielson Framework for Teaching, can have unexpected impacts on individuals, relationships, and organizations. As described by a participant, these butterfly effects can be non-linear, like “oil in water.”
Originality/value
In examining teacher and school leader perceptions of a coaching model that trusts teachers’ capacity to grow, this paper shows what coaching and being coached can look like in context and in action. It reveals that cognitive coaching and the Danielson Framework for Teaching can be congruent tools for positive teacher and organizational growth, requiring a slow bottom-up approach to change, an organizational culture of trust, and coaching relationships free from judgment or power inequity. It additionally shows that the combination of being a coach, and also being coached, can facilitate empowerment, professional growth, and changes in belief and practice
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
Cutting apart together: A diffracted spatial history of an online scholarly relationship
No full textDrawing on the notion of cutting together-apart introduced by Karen Barad and combining it with Lefebvre’s notion of a flaneur (f. flâneuse) who moves between temporal, spatial and political relationships, this article performs a collaboration mediated by social media, namely blogging and tweeting. It draws on the notion of history, space, and social relationships to describe how two women met online. This collaboration as inquiry is about working together despite our differences – finding places to meet rather than diverge, and to dialogue rather than debate. Through a duo-ethnography of how this relationship worked and did not work, notions about how the digital world can act as a mediator for academic work are explored
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