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…

School reform has taken many shapes over the years. Among the most pervasive of school-reform theories is school-based management (SBM), which is examined in detail in this book. The introductory chapter locates the current round of SBM in the longer cycle of educational reform, describes the extent of SBM activity over the past decade in the…

Issues of governance pervade the teacher education field due to the diverse agendas which influence the function of teacher education programs at the institutional level. The purpose of this article is to explore the philosophy and processes of governance. In order to clarify philosophical issues, the following questions are addressed: (1) Are…

Academic freedom may be defined as the right to do that which a faculty member finds appropriate to scholarly inquiry and instruction, so long as it is not legally proscribed, does not constitute an explicit violation of institutional policy or a prior agreement to perform designated responsibilities and observe specified standards of conduct, and…

In this discussion of teacher empowerment, areas related to teacher sense of impact or efficacy are examined. These areas include: (1) administrative support; (2) responsibility for meaningful tasks; (3) control/decision making related to curriculum; (4) decisions on teaching assignments; (5) input on policies and procedures; and (6) choice in and…

This discussion of educational reform and school improvement is divided into three areas. Barriers to reform are considered in the first section, with a particular focus on the role of teacher unions in blocking many proposed reforms, e.g., career ladders, and the intrusion of politics into educational reform movements. It is pointed out that the…

An analysis of principals' beliefs and behaviors with regard to instructional supervision in the context of Meyer and Rowan's (1977, 1978) concept of the "logic of confidence" is presented in this report. Methodology involved interviews with and observations of 6 administrators and triangulating interviews with 12 teachers. Nine distinct…

Contemporary controversy about the proper mix of autonomy and obligation in teaching reveals contention concerning the role of teachers as professionals. At the classroom level, this controversy revolves around the individual teachers' translation of prescribed curricular policy into the operational curriculum of the classroom. An exploratory case…