This paper examines how the process of scaffolding students to solve their social issues developed mature participation for both the teacher and students. A sociocultural perspective framed the research as the underlying assumption is that students learn from each other, mediated by the teacher or more capable peers. The study provides evidence…

This paper considers a sequence of failures in the design of information. It focuses on the Safe and Sustainable Indoor Cleaning study (SASI Clean), a 2007 government-funded study into cleaning practices in Australian childcare centers. Empowerment through participation was integral to the study, childcare workers being seen as collaborators in…

One of the ongoing challenges all educators face, often on a daily basis, is problem behavior. Compounding this challenge is the need to significantly alter these behavioral patterns among at-risk students early in their development to prevent correlated poor life outcomes such as academic failure and school dropout, mental health issues, or…

This article explores governors' perceptions of the role played by school principals in the democratic governance of secondary schools in South Africa. The South African Schools Act No. 84 of 1996 has mandated that all public schools in South Africa must have democratically elected school governing bodies, comprised of the principal (in his or her…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the current school-based management (SBM) policy reform in Indonesia, with an emphasis on the impacts of shifting authority and responsibility to school level, as well as challenges confronted by the school council members, followed by remedial measures to minimize the problems.…

There is an increasing emphasis on seeking and using the views of children and young people in research, evaluation and consultation. This question was at the centre of a day-long event of presentations and workshops organized by the National Foundation for Education Research in November 2007. Key objectives for the workshop included. (1) Review…

In civic youth work program staff focus on larger outcomes and do not often attend to the importance of seemingly mundane and simple tasks. Young people talk about how these simple tasks have powerful meaning for them and their work even as adult volunteers talked about the challenges of working democratically with young people. To integrate these…

An effective school requires an effective leader, but great principals rarely just happen. They are cultivated. This Wallace Perspective draws on a decade of foundation research and work in school leadership to show how urban school districts can play a major role in ensuring they have principals who can boost teaching and learning in troubled…

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.…

Many school leaders today are experiencing many challenges to ensure that their schools are successful. Since the passage of No Child Left Behind Act, school leaders have been faced with making sure that all students, regardless of language and/or background, are successful on the state assessment test. If students do not make AYP Annual Yearly…

The purpose of this mixed methods follow-up single case study was two-fold: to determine if a school district was able to sustain a professional learning community (PLC) and to identify factors that enhanced, inhibited, or promoted the sustainability of a PLC from a district-wide perspective, with particular focus on how a change in leadership,…

Social movements at universities have recently flourished as a response to the Bologna Process and austerity measures at universities, but studies on learning within these movements are still scarce. Our goal is to describe one movement which started at the University of Gdansk in 2009 and aimed at democratising the university and implementing…

Distribution of leadership tasks, often described as distributed leadership, has emerged as an innovative concept for describing the deployment of leadership within schools. A distributed leadership perspective suggests that successful school leadership is not simply the charge of the formal leaders (e.g., Gronn, 2000; Ogawa & Bossert, 1995;…

The purpose of this paper is to examine leadership practices in school systems that are implementing data-driven decision-making employing the theory of distributed leadership. With the advent of No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) in the US, educational leaders are now required to analyse, interpret and use data to make informed decisions in…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the decision-making process in the Greek education system, as an indicator of the design and implementation of educational policy. Design/methodology/approach: The paper uses a case study approach to identify limitations in educational decision making in Greece. Specifically, it examines the case of…