Download or read book Challenges of Conflicting School Reforms written by Mark Berends and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2002-03-29 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A decade ago, New American Schools (NAS) launched an ambitious effort forwhole-school reform to address the perceived lagging achievement of Americanstudents and the lackluster school reform attempts that have produced so fewmeaningful changes. As a private nonprofit organization, NAS set out tohelp schools and districts significantly raise the achievement of largenumbers of students by offering whole-school designs and design-basedassistance during the implementation process. NAS is currently in thescale-up phase of its effort, and its designs are being widely diffused toschools across the nation. During the 1997_1998 and 1998_1999 school years,RAND assessed the effects of NAS designs on classroom practice and studentachievement in a sample of schools in a high-poverty district. RAND foundthat high-poverty schools often have fragmented and conflicting environmentswith difficult and changing political currents and entrenched unions.Teachers in high-poverty schools tend to face new accountability systems andfluctuating reform agendas. These teachers generally lack sufficient timefor implementing reform efforts, often becoming demoralized and losing theirenthusiasm for the difficult task of improving student performance underdifficult conditions. RAND concluded that high-stakes tests may motivateschools to increase performance and to seek out new curricula andinstructional strategies associated with comprehensive school reforms.However, those same tests may provide disincentives to adopt richer, morein-depth curricula that can succeed in improving the learning opportunitiesof all students, particularly those in high-poverty settings.

Download or read book Challenges of Conflicting School Reforms Effects of New American Schools in a High Proverty District written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A decade ago, New American Schools (NAS) launched an ambitious effort for whole-school reform to address the perceived lagging achievement of American students and the lackluster school reform attempts that produced so little meaningful change. As a private non-profit organization, NAS set out to help schools and districts significantly raise the achievement of large numbers of students by offering whole-school designs and design-based assistance during the implementation process. NAS is currently in the scale-up phase of its effort and its designs are being widely diffused to schools across the nation. The purpose of this study is to examine the conditions of NAS classrooms compared with non-NAS classrooms and to study the relationships between classroom conditions and student achievement in a high-poverty district in San Antonio, Texas. The focus is on the conditions in the district, schools, and classrooms that promote or inhibit design implementation and changes in teaching and learning. Specifically, this study addresses the following questions: ̂Do the NAS designs extend beyond changes in school organization and governance and permeate classrooms? Do NAS teachers and students interact with each other and subject materials in ways that reflect the innovative curricular and instructional approaches of the design teams? ̂What factors at the district, school, and classroom level are related to implementation of designs, changes in classroom instruction, and student achievement?

Download or read book Unite Or Divide written by Elizabeth A. Cole and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Neoliberalism and Education Systems in Conflict written by Khalid Arar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neoliberalism and Education Systems in Conflict: Exploring Challenges Across the Globe explores how neoliberal values are imprinted onto educational spaces and practices, and by consequence, fundamentally reshape how we come to understand the educational experience at the school or system level. Countries across the globe struggle with the residual effects of increased accountability, choice/voucher systems, and privatization. The first section of the book discusses the direct imprint of neoliberal policies on educational spaces. The next section examines the more indirect outcomes of neoliberalism, including the challenges of inequity, access, violence, racism, and social justice issues as a result of neoliberal ideologies. Each section of the book includes case studies about education systems across the globe, including Britain, Middle East, Turkey, United States, China, and Chile written by international contributors. Neoliberalism and Education Systems in Conflict is essential reading for educators, scholars, and faculty of educational leadership and policy globally.

Download or read book The Contested Role of Education in Conflict and Fragility written by Zehavit Gross and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-06-17 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book brings together new thinking on education’s complex and evolving role in conflict and fragility. The changing nature of conflict, from inter- to intra-state, and with shifting geopolitical power balances, demands a reconceptualization of where education is positioned. Claims that education on its own can be an agent of conflict transformation are disputed. Deliberate attempts at peace education are not without critics and controversies. This collection aims to generate new realism from empirical and reflective accounts in a variety of countries and political contexts, as well as provide innovative methodological approaches to the study of education and conflict. The particular distinctiveness of the volume is the emphasis on ‘contested’ – it includes the debates and disagreements on the many faces of education in conflict, as well as material on teaching controversial issues in fragile contexts. Crucially, it underscores how education itself exists within highly contested projects of state, nation and region building. As well as overview comparative chapters, the collection encompasses a range of specific contexts, geographically and educationally – Algeria, Canada, El Salvador, Israel, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Tunisia, UK and US, with settings that include schools, higher education and refugee camps. Focuses range from analyses of education in historical conflicts to contemporary issues such as post Arab Spring transformations. Perennial concerns about religion, colonialism, protest, integration, cohesion, emergencies, globalization and narrative are given new slants. Yet in spite of the debates, a cross-cutting consensus emerges as the crucial need for critical pedagogy and critical theory if education is to make any mark at all on conflict and fragility. "

Download or read book Standards Reform in High poverty Schools written by Carol Ann Barnes and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This author brings the voices of people in one school to the "policy table" at which so many sit with little understanding of the other realities involved in their reform strategies--even those strategies that are well reasoned and based on the authority of research.

Download or read book The Dimensions of Time and the Challenge of School Reform written by Patricia C. Gandara and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the education reform movement matures into its second decade, it is clear that many promising efforts have fallen short in their attempts to create real school change. One reason for this is that the process of school reform is much more complex than most reformers realized or were willing to acknowledge. The Dimensions of Time and the Challenge of School Reform points to another problem--the problem of time--and its role in both the success and failure of school reform efforts. The importance of understanding the role that time plays in both learning and instruction and finding ways to provide time for teachers grappling with change and students learning to accommodate a new language and culture are important themes in this book. This book is directed to policymakers and practitioners as well as to academics in that it combines theory with the "real world" experiences of many who have been active in the school reform movement and who have learned, through trial and error, how to think about time in innovative ways. -- Back cover.

Download or read book The Challenge of School Reform written by Lewis C. Solmon and published by IAP. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work expands on the ideas and themes discussed in the first two volumes in this series on education policy: The first book — Talented Teachers: The Essential Force for Improving Student Achievement — examines the importance of teacher quality. Years of research have repeatedly confirmed what we inferred to be true—outside of the home environment, the quality of a student’s teacher has the strongest impact on learning. After talented teachers were found to be a powerful component for bettering education, the second book — Improving Student Achievement: Reforms that Work — introduces reform ideas and programs that positively impact both teacher quality and student work. Now, The Challenges of School Reform: Implementation, Impact, and Sustainability deepens these discussions by exploring the answers to questions regarding ensuring the longevity and sustained success of effective school reform.

Download or read book Reshaping the Future written by and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication focuses on the role that education can play, both in terms of conflict prevention and in the reconstruction of post-conflict societies, drawing on research in 52 conflict-affected countries and a review of 12 country studies. These case studies include Angola, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Timor Leste, Cambodia, Lebanon, El Salvador and Nicaragua, and consideration is given to how lessons drawn might be applied to recent conflict situations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Issues discussed include: the relationship between conflict, poverty and education; the challenges of reform and reconstruction; teacher training and teaching resources; governance and financing; the legacy of conflict; and the role of the World Bank in supporting education reconstruction.

Download or read book Challenging Standards written by Jonathan A. Supovitz and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains a host of short chapters organized into four sections that form a tapestry for educators to consider the different dimensions of implementing more rigorous education standards.

Download or read book Ideology And Educational Reform written by David C. Paris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-13 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ideology and Educational Reform traces the underlying ideological problems that make genuine educational reform difficult. It describes three major themes in public education: common school, human capital, and clientelism.

Download or read book From Conflict to Collaboration written by Robert Feirsen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-04-04 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conflict is both a timely and a timeless challenge in schools, stymying school reform initiatives and elevating administrators’ job stress. If “school is a family,” as many claim, it is often a dysfunctional one. Relationships between and among staff, parents, community and school boards may be destructively divisive, or alternatively, schools may avoid addressing controversial issues like inequity, fearful of tensions that would be unleashed. From Conflict to Collaboration: A School Leader’s Guide to Unleashing Conflict’s Problem Solving Power offers a novel perspective. Rather than impeding school reform, school leaders may harness conflict to spark organizational vitality and growth. Honoring diverse viewpoints enables savvy school leaders to engage stakeholders in meaningful collaboration that builds capacity, enshrines productive dialogue and group problem-solving as cornerstones of school culture, and energizes the school community. Drawing on knowledge from the fields of education, engineering, psychology and business, the book offers an on-the-job guide for present and future school leaders. Dozens of actionable leadership strategies are highlighted; case studies illustrate key concepts; and probing questions for school leaders and school improvement teams follow each chapter. In a step-by-step process, the book demonstrates how the techniques of design thinking may be applied to build a school’s “conflict agility.”

Download or read book Primary School Leadership in Post Conflict Rwanda written by Gilbert Karareba and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the current status of primary schools in Rwanda and the history behind their development. It argues that current primary school leaders in the area encounter a wide range of problems relating to conflict prevention, teachers' and school leaders' professionalism, financial and resourcing constraints, student attrition, and parental disengagement, many of which can be attributed to the legacies of war and the genocide in 1994. The book also presents a range of strategies that are pursued by school leaders while dealing with these concerns, as the Rwandan government invests in reconstructing education following the country's turmoil. Through examining the issues of the past and the present, the book provides valuable insights for researchers of educational leadership, school leaders, education policy makers, and those in charge of preparing, developing, and implementing professional development programmes for school leaders and teachers in Rwanda, as well as in other post-war and developing countries.

Download or read book School Level Leadership in Post conflict Societies written by Simon R. P. Clarke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do different contexts influence the nature and character of school leadership? This book is predicated on the simple, yet profound, observation that school leadership can only be understood within the context in which it is exercised. The observation is particularly valid in relation to post-conflict societies especially when they have eventuated from new-wars. Schools in these contexts face highly complex circumstances and a level of environmental turbulence requiring different kinds of leadership from those operating in less complicated and relatively stable situations. By assembling an impressive array of international experts, this book investigates a much neglected area of research. Each chapter highlights the importance of context for understanding the realities of school leadership, and reveals the challenges and influences that school leaders face as well as the strategies they adopt to deal with the complexities of their work. In particular, valuable insights are provided into how intractable problems faced by schools can affect student, professional and organizational learning agendas. There are also important glimpses of the progression that can be made in schools by: -Enhancing the curriculum -Energizing teaching capacity; and -Optimising leadership capacity. Depictions of post-new war environments include Angola, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Kenya, Solomon Islands, Lebanon, Kosovo, Timor-Leste and Northern Ireland. The book will be key reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying educational leadership, comparative education and education policy.

Download or read book Conflict Transformation and Reconciliation written by Sarah Maddison and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-19 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines approaches to reconciliation and peacebuilding in settler colonial, post-conflict, and divided societies. In contrast to current literature, this book provides a broader assessment of reconciliation and conflict transformation by applying a distinctive ‘multi-level’ approach. The analysis provides a unique intervention in the field, one that significantly complicates received notions of reconciliation and transitional justice, and considers conflict transformation across the constitutional, institutional, and relational levels of society. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in South Africa, Northern Ireland, Australia, and Guatemala, the work presents an interdisciplinary study of the complex political challenges facing societies attempting to transition either from violence and authoritarianism to peace and democracy, or from colonialism to post-colonialism. Informed by theories of agonistic democracy, the book conceives of reconciliation as a process that is deeply political, and that prioritises the capacity to retain and develop democratic political contest in societies that have, in other ways, been able to resolve their conflicts. The cases considered suggest that reconciliation is most likely an open-ended process rather than a goal — a process that requires divided societies to pay ongoing attention to reconciliatory efforts at all levels, long after the eyes of the world have moved on from countries where the work of reconciliation is thought to be finished. This book will be of great interest to students of reconciliation, conflict transformation, peacebuilding, transitional justice and IR in general.

Download or read book Revisiting The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change written by Seymour B. Sarason and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 747 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisiting “The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change” provocatively and seamlessly joins Seymour Sarason’s classic, landmark text on school change with his own insightful re?ections on those same issues in the face of today’s crisis in public schools. This is an extensive, monograph–length revisiting. Part I of this book reproduces the second edition of Sarason’s ground–breaking work, The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change, in which he detailed how change can affect a school’s culturally diverse environment—either through the implementation of new programs or as a result of federally imposed regulations. Throughout, many of the major assumptions about change in institutions are challenged. Speci?c events and examples demonstrate that any attempt to implement change involves some existing regularity within the school. Dr. Sarason also takes a close look at government involvement in change efforts in schooling—and includes a detailed examination of current efforts to implement PL 94–142 into public schools. He presents compelling evidence that the federal effort to change and improve schools has largely been a failure. Also included are investigations into the purposes of schooling and how these purposes can be affected by change, and the process by which educators and administrators formulate intended outcomes of change efforts. In Part II, Dr. Sarason “revisits” the text and the issues 25 years after the original publication. As he explains in his preface, to him the word crisis means “a point in time when a dangerous situation contains con?icting forces of an intensity or seriousness that in the near term will be dramatically altered depending on which forces win out. When I wrote the book a quarter century ago, I did not regard our schools as in crisis...[though] my intuition . . . was that a crisis would come sooner or later. It has, in my opinion, come.” Believing that “what happens in our cities and our schools will determine the fate of our society,” Dr. Sarason is deeply concerned that the reform arena is being manipulated by forces that are at best untroubled by and at worst intent on the dismantling of the public school system. That, coupled with his fear that even the system’s defenders are not focusing on the real issues, has infused Dr. Sarason’s return to the topic of educational change with a great sense of urgency. The important things he has to say will be welcomed by all who truly care about the state of the public schools that America’s children attend.

Download or read book Primary School Leadership in Cambodia written by Thida Kheang and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-16 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the relationship between context and leadership in post-conflict Cambodia. Building on the understanding that approaches to leadership are tightly woven within the contexts that leaders operate, the authors examine the case of primary school leadership in Cambodia. A low-income and post-conflict society rocked by civil war and genocide between the 1960s and the 1990s, the country is – perhaps unsurprisingly – faced with numerous challenges as it engages in the process of national rehabilitation and reconstruction, particularly in relation to the education system. The authors provide a comprehensive historical background to primary school leadership not only in Cambodia, but in post-conflict environments more broadly: informing school leadership preparation, development and support, and facilitating understanding of the context in which school leaders work. This book will be of value to students and scholars of primary school education and education in post-conflict countries, as well as to practitioners and policy makers.