Teacher supervision and evaluation are fundamental responsibilities of the principal. Yet principals and teachers find their supervisory interactions to be difficult and unsatisfying experiences. This article explores the micropolitical context in which supervision and evaluation take place. Highlighting specific examples in New York City, the…

Based mainly on a study of newspaper adverts for qualifications and tuition courses in Sri Lanka over a period from 1965 to 2000, this paper describes a decentralisation of control over the supply of qualifications. It is argued that this has occurred not through a deliberate policy mechanism to decentralise qualifications, but rather by default,…

Today's climate of supercharged patriotism and apparent intolerance for comment or critique calls to mind an earlier period of U.S. history. The Cold War that began in the mid-to late-1940s, along with McCarthyism and the anti-communist movement in the early 1950s, created an atmosphere of national hysteria and paranoia. For the past decade,…

Explores the consequences of integrated choice/accountability policies for school organization and governance, examining the constitutional context of school authority, identifying historical trends in the exercise of authority by various stakeholders, presenting a model for understanding governance today, describing school choice and performance…

Examines turbulence in U.S. education, explaining how today's changing educational policy environment causes new frustrations. Suggests that federal, state, local, and site- level are current sources of indecision and struggle that have implications for today's choice of direction concerning inquiry and leadership for public education. Discusses…

Examines California's Public School Accountability Act within the K-12 policy and political context, asserting that the new accountability imposes a new regulatory scheme on California's schools that adds to the "regulatory baggage" schools already carry. Suggestes that simply adding one more layer of regulation without reassessing the…

Today, discussions about high-stakes testing of students rage in the popular media, in the Oval Office, in Congress, and within state houses across the nation. Also, reactions to these discussions of high-stakes testing are underway in schools and communities, among and between teachers, students, parents, and administrators. This article…

The "problem" of boys' achievement in the United Kingdom has emerged as part of a policy response to a crisis in the post-war social settlement. Post-Fordism has become the dominant meta-policy of education reform in the United Kingdom, constituting both policy problems and solutions as gender-neutral. However, the economic and political…

Since the 1990s participation has become a buzzword in education as well as in development contexts. In those contexts, participation has more particularly been linked up with personal promises of self-fulfilment, ownership and self-determination as well as with democratic ideals such as justice, equivalence and freedom. In the paper, we focus on…

Athletics has been significantly impacted by Title IX through an increase the number of female athletes, the number of teams available, and indirectly, the development of women's professional leagues. However, women in leadership positions in athletics have declined significantly since Title IX was signed into law. A concern about the…

Effective project managers are required to have both "hard" technical skills to help control the iron triangle of time, cost and functional scope as well as relationship management skills to work effectively with people and get the best out of them. This paper argues that project managers also need a third skill: we refer to it as tapping into the…

When the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) decided to remove the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) from its list of censured colleges, an opportunity was created for VCCS colleges to examine anew the status of academic freedom. The 1972 decision to abolish tenure within the VCCS had been viewed by some faculty as a direct…

This paper argues that Foucault's conception of "governmentality" provides a powerful tool for understanding learning and education and links the organisation of learning to both politics and economics in developed Western societies. What is offered by Foucault's conception, I will argue, is a new version of superstructural sociology, which…

This study extends priming research in political communication by focusing on an alternative political information source (i.e., Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11), affect rather than cognitions, and the existence of intra-affective ambivalence. In addition, two moderator variables are analyzed: political party identification and need for closure.…

The prevailing performance discourse in education claims school improvements can be achieved through transparent accountability procedures. The article identifies how teachers generate performances of their work in order to satisfy accountability demands. By identifying sources of teachers' knowledge that produce choreographed performances, I…