A study of 17 charter schools in 10 California districts concludes that these schools have not lived up to the assumptions propelling them. Charters fell short on accountability, administrative autonomy, funding efficiency, choice and admissions, infusion of competition, and instructional innovation. Public school educators claim charters are…

The influence of curriculum control policies on sense of autonomy and job satisfaction was studied for 195 high school mathematics and social studies teachers in California, Florida, and New York. Teachers reported high personal control over content and pedagogy, and there was little evidence that constraints affected efficacy or satisfaction.…

Examines the experiences of a small group of (British) teachers who have assumed leadership roles that have enhanced their teaching. Respondents point to the significant effects of work culture on teacher development. Those involved in leading such developments must be sensitive to each school's peculiarities and use what works locally.…

Group discussions and interviews with counselors in small and rural schools in Maine and upstate New York focused on the advantages and disadvantages of working in small schools, role generalization and confusion experienced by school counselors, professional autonomy and accountability, and the need for relevant inservice training. (Contains 33…

This article investigates some of the antecedent conditions underlying the imputation of autonomy within conceptions of "teaching" and "learning". It links the history of those concepts with the separate roles and functions assigned to males and females in specific instances of educational practice. "Teaching" and "learning" are psychoanalysed as…

This research explores the history, philosophies and practices of an "A rated" public charter school (serving infants through 8th grade) in Florida. Participants are the professional educators who were involved in the founding of the school in 1999. Findings are based on semi-structured interviews probing the details of the history of…

High rates of faculty turnover can be costly to the reputation of an institution and to the quality of instruction. Community colleges may expect high rates of faculty turnover as an aging workforce retires. Other sources of attrition, however, can be attributed to organizational characteristics and the structural properties of faculty work. This…

This article argues that while social entrepreneurship shares concerns similar to those of social justice activism, the corporate and business ethos in the idea of entrepreneurship is not suited to the social concerns that teachers and other educators deal with in their everyday lives. The article points out characteristics of social…

This article assesses the organizational values of "gimnazija" in Slovenia and examines the factors that contribute to the building of quality management. The theoretical framework is built on Schein's model of levels of culture, Sathe's interpretation of organizational culture and Getzels and Guba's model of organizational behaviour.…

This article discusses the current role of the principal, how the role has changed, and how it should change. It also suggests that the principal shortage is an unintended consequence of these changes. In a national study, practitioners identified 45 descriptors of the principal's role. The analysis of the descriptors revealed four themes: role…

This article will set the context of democratic leadership in Scandinavian countries. This concept will be discussed in a dual perspective. On the one hand there are pressures to transform the governing of the schools towards a more "rigorous" form of New Public Management (NPM) with models of leadership/management from the world of…

This essay looks to varied conceptions of resistance with the aim of explaining how resistance might be incorporated into a notion of educator professionalism in the most effective way. The author contends that high-stakes accountability policy poses a complicated set of power relations for professional educators. Both students and educators are…

Teachers, and those who prepare them, struggle to balance test-centered legislative mandates and conscientious professional practices. Increasingly, professional judgment may be at variance with federal testing guidelines. Present federal testing requirements, if strictly followed, will retain a significant number of students in grade resulting in…

Under the curricular and pedagogical impositions of scripted lessons and mandated curriculum, patterns associated nationwide with high-stakes testing, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and the phenomenon known as the "narrowing of curriculum," new teachers in New York City (NYC) find their personal and professional identity thwarted,…

In 1997, the Illinois legislature passed House Bill 542 (Public Act 90-548) which changed teacher tenure requirements to a four-year, multi-tiered system that called for the accumulation of professional development credit for all teachers. The primary purpose of this study was to examine district responses to the 1997 legislation. To what degree,…