'Leadership' has now become one of the most over-used terms in school organisation, so much so that it is now difficult to find mentions of 'management' and 'administration' in school organisation literature. Papers published in "Educational Management, Administration and Leadership" and "Management in Education" over the last…

Purpose: This paper proposes a new conception of school systems arising out of the collision of three forces--(1) a longstanding press to rationalize the technical work of schools in the service of educational excellence; (2) a growing democratic press to equitably engage community members in the process of defining educational excellence; which…

Purpose: This paper explores the emergence and shift in critical theories and problems-of-practice over the last 50 years. Design/methodology/approach: Quipu is an Incan record-keeping system used across the Andes. Using multiple strings of different colors, hundreds of different knots were used to count, record historical events. The underlying…

Purpose: The need to innovate and apply alternative forms of school organization is evident as the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a need to establish new conceptualizations of schools and education management. The paradigm shift in learning inexorably necessitates a corresponding paradigm shift in educational organization, administration and…

The authors argue that from the perspective of distributive justice, school district fragmentation--meaning both the existing reality of hyper-proliferated school districts and the practice of further breaking larger districts into smaller ones--produces three distinct injustices. First, it undermines racial solidarity and the bonds of community.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework that explains structural responses to external organizational shocks. The authors illustrate framework dynamics with one district's secondary schools' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: The conceptual framework imagines structure as emergent,…

This article argues that crucial elements of the three most important theoretical models of twentieth-century education can be traced back to three Protestant denominations that were developed in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. First, rather than to look in depth at the Protestant Reformers' own educational ideas, the paper…

This study focuses on how admissions at selective colleges and universities represent key racialized organizations. We analyzed data from 50 individual interviews of admissions professionals, through a theory of racialized organizations to recognize admissions as practices that consistently reproduces systemic inequities. We reveal how…

From the fall of 2017 to the winter of 2020, the Student-Centered Assessment Network (SCAN) aimed to transform high school teaching in Rhode Island. Researchers and teachers worked together to make high school classes more student centered by increasing teachers' use of student-centered formative assessment. Network leaders (the hub) organized…

In almost any conversation about accountability for private schools, accountability for public schools is assumed. This is a dangerous myth. By assuming that the edifice that states and the federal government have created over the past several decades actually holds schools accountable, school choice advocates immediately find themselves in an…