This report addresses the core challenges faced by leaders in the current context of high expectations and accountability, often accompanied by inconsistent or limited support. The report assumes the leadership role is based on a commitment to lead for learning; that is, to pursue a learning improvement agenda for the students in the school, the…

Scholarship on dialect diversity in classrooms has yielded two seemingly incompatible lines of research. Although numerous pedagogical approaches have been shown to provide productive alternatives to traditional responses to stigmatized dialects, research on public perceptions and teachers' attitudes suggests that negative beliefs about…

This article examines experiences in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces with devolved school governance, introduced in 1996 to promote democratic participation in education decision making. Utilizing the ''theory of action'' framework, this analysis is an effort to de-center the school governance debate by moving from a central government…

In this activity, students will be able to apply the concepts of stories and rituals to an analysis of the ritual in the short story "Harvest Home" by David Bradley, gaining understanding of how stories and rituals affect and reflect family values, power structures and identities. "Harvest Home" talks about the rituals involved in a…

Political leaders, the media, business people, trade union leaders and academics continually refer to how globalisation is impacting on our lives. Governments may at times argue that globalisation benefits us, and at others attribute to globalisation many of the major problems we currently face. What do ordinary people make of all this? We do not…

Purpose: To highlight the relevance of management control in action learning programs that aim to foster organizational learning. Design/methodology/approach: Literature review plus case study. The latter consists of archival analysis and multiple interviews. Findings: When action learning programs are built around singular learning experiences,…

Background: This study examined power dynamics in verbal interactions between care staff and people with learning disabilities. Method: Recordings of residents' meetings in a group home for people with learning disabilities were examined. Results: The analysis showed some of the ways in which power was exercised in verbal interactions between care…

This paper is about multilingual signs in Tokyo. It is based on empirical research conducted in 2003. Special attention is given to the distinction between official and nonofficial multilingual signs. It will be demonstrated that the two types of signs exhibit some essentially different characteristics with regard to the languages contained and…

An illustrative story of a graduate student serves to show that as the literate discourse community lives out the tension between those who initiate shared power and those who maintain traditional standards, discourse communities can include or exclude others by using the power of leadership. Discourse communities act through professional…

French and Raven (1959) proposed five bases of social power: referent, expert, legitimate, reward, and coercive power. Other power bases, such as information control and ecological control, have also been proposed. Another factor which might be considered a power base is the credibility of a source. A 2 x 3 factorial design was used to manipulate…

This paper is based on the premise that culture creates realities that include a repertoire of symbol interpretations and communication patterns on which people automatically draw, and that this pattern is as manifest in professional cultures as it is in national or ethnic cultures. The paper takes a systematic look at hospital nursing culture,…

A model is provided for a political action workshop to educate individuals in the political process and productive participation. The workshop begins with a quiz designed to make the participant recognize the inadequacy of his political involvement and of political involvement in the country in general. A segment on the legislative and policy…

The administrator who is open and authentic in his use of power and resources and who is sensitive to the meanings attached to his use of power, will be seen as a leader among those he serves. (Available from Department of Educational Administration, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E1) (Author/WM)

This document focuses on specific linguistic features that serve ideological functions in texts written in South Africa from 1985 to 1988. The features examined include: naming; metaphors; old words with new meanings; words becoming tainted; renaming or lexicalization; overlexicalization; strategies for resisting classification; tense and aspect;…

This paper brings together ideas from feminist epistemology and critical theory to initiate a conversation on repressed or distorted communication. It argues that current feminist epistemological studies of women's ways of knowing, making sense, and solving problems can and should inform attempts to empower democratic dialogues and restructure the…