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This study describes the perceptions of embedded teaching and learning leadership teams working on curriculum reform in science teaching departments. The teams combined a formally recognised leader, School Director of Learning and Teaching, with a project-based, more junior academic, Curriculum Fellow, to better leverage support for curriculum reform. Teams were established on the principles of localizing support and maximising credibility with discipline staff. The core teams were supported by a larger Faculty team of Associate Dean Academic, academic developer, educational designer, first year coordinator and project manager. Key themes emerging from the collected data were the complementary roles of members of the team, different perceptions of leadership between the School Directors of Learning and Teaching and the Curriculum Fellows, the importance of acting locally within the disciplines and the synergistic value of working in a team. The combination of formal and informal leadership aggregated into the FSTE School teams offers a model to support sustainable improvement in science teaching and learning in higher education.

School-based teams are a core method for stakeholder collaboration and coordination. Although school teams are responsible for making numerous decisions, a limited number of measures exist ...

The life of the primitive church, to this day, reflects the authenticity of the Church’s practices and its inner arrangement. As such, this article discusses the possibilities of the inner life and order of ecclesiastical communities in the most ancient times of the Church. It does not, however, question the significance of the role of the leading figures within the Church, as it corresponds with concrete pleas to the faithful for obedience, as already mentioned within New Testament writings, likewise does so the institution of the monarchical bishop, as propagated by the epistles of Ignatius of Antioch. However, Luke’s Acts of the Apostles do, for example, contain testimonials of the participation of the entire ecclesiastical community on the appointing of Apostle Matthias and the first seven deacons. Didache, the early Christian treatise, does too, on one note, stress the importance of the carriers of the prophetic charism, nonetheless it does offer ecclesiastical communities with certain criteria regarding their participation on the service of said charismatics, and their assessments thereof. The Gospel of Matthew, along with Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians, point towards participation of all the members of the ecclesiastical communities on the execution of essential penal measures against convicted Christians.

This article reports on research conducted in New Zealand that deals with early childhood education (ECE) centre working relationships with external organisations, including agencies, social services, and other education providers. The goal of the research was to identify the types of current collaboration, the nature of these relationships, and benefits that are being derived from them. A total of 79 online surveys, supplemented by follow-up interviews, confirmed that ECE centres presently work collaboratively with several external organisations. They include educational providers, social service agencies, health services, and cultural support organisations. However, the nature of these relationships is largely compartmentalised and ad hoc, resulting in the potential for incomplete information sharing, and a lack of consistent, integrated decision making. Truly transformative partnering relationships remain a largely aspirational goal in ECE education. Key impediments include time for relationship building, and insufficient funding. Recommendations for improvement are offered, which are likely to be consistent with the goals of the Ministry of Education’s Early Learning Action Plan 2019–2029.

This research examines the impact of various high-impact educational practices integrated in different group elements (groups course, in-class group activities, and a learning community) on student perceived group work experience related to the Emerging Values model. The Emerging Values model found academic group work to be beneficial for students, specifically associated with peer value and group work values. Different types of high-impact educational practices related to groups are examined using the Emerging Values model. Implications for teaching group work and personal and professional growth in group work are examined. The integration of group work in the higher education classroom and application to professional environments is discussed extensively.

Does school participatory budgeting (SPB) increase students’ political efficacy? SPB, which is implemented in thousands of schools around the world, is a democratic process of deliberation and decision-making in which students determine how to spend a portion of the school’s budget. We examined the impact of SPB on political efficacy in one middle school in Arizona. Our participants’ (n = 28) responses on survey items designed to measure self-perceived growth in political efficacy indicated a large effect (Cohen’s d = 1.46), suggesting that SPB is an effective approach to civic pedagogy, with promising prospects for developing students’ political efficacy.

The South African education scene is characterised by principals who come from the apartheid era where they manage the school alone in an authoritarian manner. Old approaches to school management have changed because the society has also changed. There is a shift from top-down style of leadership to shared or distributed leadership which requires the empowerment of those in managerial positions in schools. The principal is expected to manage the school together with significant stakeholders. In this study attention was focused on the extent to which principals perform the duties of instructional leadership and how they empower the School Management Team (SMT) to execute instructional leadership. Additionally, the study aimed at finding out impediments that principals experience in the course of empowering the School Management team. The study used a quantitative method involving the use of a questionnaire. The study population consisted of 90 principals and deputy principals and 165 heads of department in Tshwane-West District. Data analysis consisted of descriptive and inferential statistics. The greatest challenge is the administrative workload experienced by principals. The study also found that rural principals perform the duties of instructional leadership more than the urban principals. Principals perform their duties well and this is good for the academic performance of learners. Key words: School management, instructional management, empowerment, culture of teaching and learning, teaching and learning.

Health is the best gift, peace is the best wealth. HR is a dynamic concept and so are the HR policies. Work Life Balance has gained tremendous importance since few years. Gone are the days of 9 to 5. When we coin the concept of Business Process Outsourcing or BPO; the thing which strikes our minds is odd timings. It is vital that attention be given to work life balance. Enjoyment and achievement are the two major factors which relate to the overall success of a person in whole. A person works for family & his own satisfaction. If the right balance is struck between work & personal life, it can result into miracles. The study is undertaken to study the effects of quality of work life on the employee performance and employee satisfaction. The factors considered for study are work family conflict, organizational commitment, work exhaustion, work overload, fairness reward, participative decision making, performance enhancement. The findings show that the five factors (Participative Decision making, Work exhaustion, Work overload, Fairness of reward and Performance enhancement) of quality of work life effects the performance of the employees of the banking sector in Nagpur. The four factors (Performance enhancement, Organization Commitment, Fairness of reward and Work family conflict) of quality of work life effect the satisfaction of the employees of the banking sector in Nagpur.

This study investigated the mediating role of initiative climate on the relationship between distributed leadership and organizational resilience in schools. The study employed a cross-sectional design following quantitative methods. The sample consisted of 310 teachers recruited from different cities located in seven geographical regions of Turkey in 2020-2021 academic year using convenience sampling. Data were collected online (Google Forms) using the Distributed Leadership Inventory, Personal Initiative Scale, and Organizational Resilience Scale, all of which had acceptable validity and reliability. Participants “agreed” with initiative climate and organizational resilience in schools and school principals’ distributed leadership behaviors. There were positive correlations between the variables. The results showed that distributed leadership (leadership coherence and leadership functions) fosters initiative climate and organizational resilience in schools. Initiative climate also contributes to organizational resilience in schools. Lastly, it can be said that distributed leadership has a significant effect on schools’ resilience through initiative climate.

Under the current decentralization system in China, individual characteristics of the local political elites and collective characteristics of the standing committees of the local party have an impact on local education fiscal policy. Yet published research on the similarities and differences between the collective influence of the Standing committee and the individual influence of the political elite are lacking. To address this gap in the literature, our study discussed the impact of local political elites represented by the mayor and the secretary and the collective of standing committees of the local party on education fiscal expenditure. We construct multiple regression models and analyze the R2 Change of variables is based on the cross-sectional data from 2015 of 283 prefecture-level administrative units in China. We find that both political elites and the standing committees have significant impacts on fiscal expenditure in education, and that the influence of the latter is greater than that of the former. The effect of individual characteristics and collective characteristics on education fiscal expenditure is not completely consistent across prefectures. China's prefectural governments implement China's unique principle of democratic centralism when they make decisions on local spending for education and the collective decision-making under the leadership of the committee plays an important role in education fiscal expenditure. Based on this, we put forward policy suggestions to further develop the principle of democratic centralism and to optimize optimizing the local government education supply and evaluation mechanism.

In the past decade, research-practice partnerships (RPPs) have grown in number and reputation. Stephanie Brown and Annie Allen describe the varied ways partnerships facilitate more sustained and productive relationships between researchers and practitioners. They share key findings from a comparative case study of three different types of RPPs focused on mathematics instructional improvement conducted by the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice (NCRPP) and make recommendations for how partnerships can build more authentic bridges between research and practice.

Despite the popularity of distributed leadership theory, the investigation of the micro-political aspects of such models have scarcely been explored, and insights on the cultural variety of distributed practices in schools are limited. The present study aimed to explore what micro-political aspects emerge in participative decision making in collectivist and individualist cultures. To this end, a multiple case study method was adopted, focusing on four Israeli public high schools. Schools were chosen to represent an ‘extreme’ case selection rationale: two non-religious urban schools representing individualist cases, and two communal schools in religious kibbutzim representing communal schools. The analysis shed light on three micro-political points of comparison between the prototypes of participative decision making in collectivist and individualist cultures related to control, actors, and stage crafting. The findings and implications are discussed.

Since the granting of Native American materials – excavated in archaeological projects sponsored by federal and state governments across the United States in the 20th century – to public repositories, museum professionals have sought to manage such collections with care. At the University of Missouri, students responding to the local mandate of NAGPRA advocated a public investigation into the issue of Native American collections repatriation in the early 1990s. Their activism in part transformed campus praxis in three ways, effecting ethical shared decision-making, appropriate public access, and policy-level leadership. This paper examines the primary sources generated by students, faculty, and local and national journalists to broadly comprehend how community members continue to address Native collections management and access in a public land-grant university setting.

Globally, policy implementation in the education system has been found to be a challenging area of development. The South African education system is no exception to the ineffective implementation of policies. For example, in South Africa, the progression policy was introduced by the Department of Education in 2013 for the purpose of minimising school drop-out rates. It was intended particularly for learners who had been retained for more than 4 years in a phase. However, progressed learners have been said to be contributing to the decline of Grade 12 national results in 2015 and 2016. We argue that due procedures in the implementation of this policy could have affected the performance of progressed learners, and in turn the overall matriculation results. A qualitative approach was followed and a descriptive case study design was adopted in the study reported on here. Data were collected through document analysis and semi-structured interviews from 2 secondary schools in the Dimamo circuit, Limpopo province. We found that the progression policy was not implemented according to the stipulations. Communication breakdown, negative teacher attitude, overcrowded classrooms, a lack of knowledge and support were found to be contributory factors in the ineffective implementation of the policy. Keywords: implementation; progression policy; secondary schools

Drawing on the information processing perspective, this study examines the effects of TMT participative decision-making and heterogeneity on management innovation. It finds that TMT participative decision-making and heterogeneity individual and jointly contribute to management innovation. In addition, the effect of TMT participative decision-making is positively moderated by firm age, whereas that of TMT heterogeneity is negatively moderated by firm age. This study offers insights into how TMTs matter to management innovation, enriching the knowledge of the antecedents of management innovation. It also represents one of the first attempts that introduce firm age as a contingency for the innovation implications of TMTs.

We investigated the effect of expertise on the wisdom of crowds. Participants completed 60 trials of a numerical estimation task, during which they saw 50–100 asterisks and were asked to estimate how many stars they had just seen. Experiment 1 established that both inner- and outer-crowd wisdom extended to our novel task: Single responses alone were less accurate than responses aggregated across a single participant (showing inner-crowd wisdom) and responses aggregated across different participants were even more accurate (showing outer-crowd wisdom). In Experiment 2, prior to beginning the critical trials, participants did 12 practice trials with feedback, which greatly increased their accuracy. There was a benefit of outer-crowd wisdom relative to a single estimate. There was no inner-crowd wisdom effect, however; with high accuracy came highly restricted variance, and aggregating insufficiently varying responses is not beneficial. Our data suggest that experts give almost the same answer every time they are asked and so they should consult the outer crowd rather than solicit multiple estimates from themselves.

With nationwide concerns about the declines in youth voting turnout across the United States, increased attention has focused on schools to promote civic education, a broad curricular approach aime...

Guided by Dewey’s [1966. Democracy and education. New York: The Free Press] concept of ‘education as growth’, the purpose of this paper is to explore learners’ enactments of student voice in Physic...

Shared leadership and employee empowerment develop positive feelings in employees towards the organization, the work they do and themselves. These positive emotions create confidence for employees to try new methods and techniques in their work. Employees who approach their work with an innovative mindset will be more beneficial to their organizations and increase their own satisfaction. In this study, the shared leadership, employee empowerment and innovativeness levels of schools, the relationship of these variables with each other and the predictive status were examined according to the perceptions of the teachers. This study is a research in relational survey model. The data of the research were collected in the province of Malatya in November during 2019-2020 academic year. The data were collected through "Shared Leadership", "Employee Empowerment" and "Innovativeness" scales. Correlation analysis and structural equation modeling were used to analyze the data. According to the results of the research, the levels of shared leadership, employee empowerment and innovativeness in primary schools are “partially high”. There is a positive, significant and moderate relationship between the school's shared leadership and employee empowerment and teachers' innovativeness. In addition, shared leadership and employee empowerment predict teachers' innovativeness. For this reason, it is considered important to create a school environment where leadership is shared in order to increase the innovativeness of teachers and to support teachers and include them in decision-making processes in order to empower them.

The opus dwells on aspects of building narrative, especially for state policies. It thoroughly examines economic narratives as a reason for the economic fluctuations and aggrandizement of resources. The present work is a watershed development while explaining the factors behind the dynamics of the economic system, engages upon a bottom-up approach, and provides a model for the impact of narrative-driven choices at the micro and macro levels contemplating the role of narrative in escalating inequality. The present research is intrigued by the fact that narratives form an inextricable role while forming and implementing state policies; moreover, non-developmental narratives can dampen the impact of desired policy and economic objectives. Importantly, since facts do not always back narratives, erratic economic and social outcomes petered out from conventional policy action. A few wealthy and resourceful people can swing the narrative and build upon by the low literacy, learning poverty, lack of rational approach, religious and caste factors. Such narratives subsequently influence people’s decisions, often their political decision, which enhances their probability of acquiring more wealth, leading to a perpetual concentration of wealth and power in few hands. The reason for the “perpetual concentration” of wealth and power lies with the existence of strong narratives that directly or indirectly reinforces aggrandizement and causes penury to the few left out underprivileged sections. Such inequality will be nothing short of being “narrative-driven inequality”. The research also emphasized the role of institutions, media, and technology, which unanimously plays a crucial role in creating, validating, and disseminating narratives. An overall ethical responsibility must be felt and shared for the common good and shared prosperity. The participative decision making helps dilute non-developmental narratives.

There is widespread consensus that parental involvement in their children’s education contributes to the children’s success at school. However, it is also recognized that non-dominant populations, ...

University education partners have great potential to facilitate schools’ moving from a school led traditional approach for family involvement to an asset based, empowerment approach to partnership...