Since PreK-12 student achievement is the primary focus of schools, all teachers are called to serve as teachers leaders and improve learning on their campuses. Rather than waiting until they have gained experience, teachers can begin acquiring the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of teacher leaders during their preservice programs. Drawing upon…

Little is known about parental involvement in the prereferral intervention team (PIT) process. To shed light on the role of parental involvement in PIT meetings and referred student outcomes, this study used a stratified sample of 88 PIT student records from 14 elementary schools within one district. The records were randomly selected and reliably…

Principals have a strong role to play in forming school cultures that encourage change. Changing a school's culture requires shared or distributed leadership and instructional leadership. A multiyear study found that three elements are necessary for a school culture that stimulates teachers to improve their instruction: 1) Teachers and…

This study examined young people's decision making on issues that affect their lives: bullying in different contexts (e.g., family, peer groups, school) and their involvement in evaluating the availability and effectiveness of support services (e.g., disability, care). Key aims of this study were to offer young people a platform to evaluate…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze to which point collective intelligence (CI) concepts and ideas, as applied to organizations, can contribute to enlarge the conceptual basis for business sustainability (BS). Design/methodology/approach: The paper is written from an engineer-minded, systemic and cybernetic perspective. It begins by…

This paper considers a different approach for developing ethical organizations. It argues that the practice of servant leadership provides a systematic training approach that should develop a more ethical culture. Servant leadership can serve as a "character ethic" that is teachable to individuals or organizations. The advantages and…

Schools and districts across the country are being subjected to some of the fiercest budget cuts in recent history, even as principals are held increasingly accountable for significantly improving student achievement, particularly in schools labeled "persistently low-achieving." For the 5,000 lowest-performing schools, there is the…

Patient centered medicine is a paradigm of health care that seeks to treat the whole person, rather than only the illness. The physician must understand the patient as a whole by considering the patient's individual needs, social structure, socioeconomic status, and educational background. Medical education includes ways to train students in this…

States have been given flexibility under No Child Left Behind to create need-driven comprehensive school improvement plans with an approved accountability system, however those unable to show increased student learning will be deemed as failing. Schools labeled as failing require a comprehensive framework for improvement. Research has identified a…

The impact of education decentralization on high-quality education has been mixed at best. This can be attributed to a variety of factors including decentralization itself, ineffectual implementation, political-economic friction, and poor design. This paper focuses largely on the issue of design, contending that if governments or donors aim to…

This article features Lesher Middle School, a school of choice, as are all of the schools in the Poudre School District in Ft. Collins, Colorado. In 2004, it was a traditional junior high school with a declining enrollment that housed an application-based International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme (IB MYP) that resulted in tracking…

This action research study examined the process of creation and implementation of a case statement for an urban community college foundation. An instrumental case study methodology was used in examining this process. The study chronicled a successful participatory development process that allowed a number of stakeholders to effectively work on…

Purpose: The dual purpose of this paper is to determine how superintendents in US school districts work with stakeholders in the decision-making process and to learn how different choices superintendents make affect decision outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: This multiple case study of three school districts employs qualitative methodology to…

This study describes a collaborative initiative with doctoral students to create an academic climate more conducive to fostering interaction across disciplinary groups in a faculty of education in North America. The project attempted to ensure that these students had a voice in creating practices, structures, and policies in the faculty that would…

The view that children should have a say in and participate in the decision making of matters that affect them is now an accepted position when considering research and policy in the early years. This paper reviews the field of child participation in the Australian context to show that, despite growing evidence of support within policy and…