Cultural competence is the knowledge, behaviors, and dispositions necessary to effectively interact with other cultural groups. Two case studies are presented which illustrate the cultural competence of administrators in urban settings. Theories are reviewed to investigate the themes of cultural competence that emerged from the professional…

The HMIE study into the educational experiences of "New Scots" looked at the impact of the numbers of newly-arrived children and young people from migrant families on education services. The task involved a survey of all 32 local authorities and direct fieldwork with 12 local authorities. The fieldwork involved interviews with education…

Background: Through its Children First initiative, New York City policymakers promoted collaborative inquiry as a process for helping administrators and teachers use student data to improve instruction and raise student achievement. Since 2007, city schools were expected to engage higher proportions of faculty in the inquiry work each year.…

"El Escalafon" is the process for appointing school directors and "el Doble Turno" is the double shift of morning and afternoon session in Mexican schools. These two concepts open the door to examine more general issues in the appointment of school directors and the structure of the school day. Director appointment and school…

First-year principals will assume the role of instructional leaders in environments created by their predecessors. How these novices feel, react, and attempt to fulfill the expectations of their supervisor, staff, and community are investigated in this paper. Three male and three female first-year principals in Long Island, New York public schools…

Families from non-English speaking backgrounds who migrated to Australia were surveyed on their opinions about Australian schools and the process of making decisions about schooling and careers for young people. Four types of factors were organized into a framework for conducting the study and analyzing the data: (1) student background factors…

The first (exploratory) phase of the Learning in Science Project focused on science teaching/learning in the Form 1 to 4 level (ages 10 to 14) and sought to identify problems and difficulties in several areas. Provided in this paper are comments obtained during structured interviews (from students, ex-students, teachers, headmasters, science…

Practices for improving adolescent literacy--which includes reading, writing, and speaking--are much discussed and debated among secondary school educators and researchers. At Discovery Middle School in Madison, Alabama, the debate has ended after teachers and administrators implemented several practices that elevated student achievement from…