The complex leadership attribute of "negative capability" in managing uncertainty and engendering trust may be amongst the qualities enabling institutions to cope with multiple recent government policy challenges affecting English higher education, including significant increases in student fees. Research findings are reported on changes…

This follow-up study presents findings from 11 structured interviews that were conducted with principals engaged in a conversion from a large comprehensive high school to six small schools. Key findings are (a) the greatest barrier to improvement was entrenched instructional patterns and (b) goals of college readiness and social/emotional…

Serious re-examination of participatory traditions of democracy is long overdue. Iconically central to such traditions of democratic education is the practice of whole School Meetings. More usually associated with radical work within the private sector, School Meetings are here explored in detail through two examples from publicly funded…

This study is part of the International Study of Principal Preparation project and reports on a Canadian Catholic Board's mentoring programme for novice school principals. This programme aims to produce effective managers and provide formal collegial support. A pragmatic, mixed-method approach involving interviews with participants along with an…

Scholars and reformers in the United States have called for converting large high schools into smaller units to provide a more effective, personal, and culturally responsive education for all students. Current literature argues that such "conversion high schools" should break into fully autonomous small schools rather than more…

Colleges of education must instantiate their candidates' knowledge, skills, and dispositions for accreditation. Professors often have candidates reflect on field experience as a way to enhance their learning. This study examines reflections of 43 candidates over a 2-year period. Candidates engaged in an after-school enrichment program as…

This paper draws on literature that has theorised child participation within the sociology of childhood framework to examine how children participate in governance within school spaces. Four children aged between 13 and 17 (in grades six and seven) who serve as prefects at a primary school in Lesotho were participants in this study. Data was…

A framework for urban public high school reform is presented for managing site-based change through re-envisioning, reculturation, restructuring, and remoralization. The four Rs for reform framework is elucidated through a qualitative study of a low-performing urban public high school that was transformed into a new more successful school. The…

Leadership, currently prescribed as a key requirement for effective school organization and management, is examined here as a rhetorical or discursive device, as a "turn", in the sense used in literary and sociological discussion of the linguistic turn. In the educational sphere, a tacit separation of leadership from issues of governance…

This study assesses the effects of three aspects of school organization--student enrollment, student-teacher ratio, and the number of different students taught--on the property and personal victimization experiences of students. It hypothesizes that smaller schools, schools with lower ratios of students to adults, and schools in which the number…

Taking as its starting point a series of interviews with senior and middle managers in FE colleges across the country, this paper argues that the values and practices which reflect a commitment to inclusive education and training are unlikely to become effectively embedded within the organisational structures and ethos of a college simply through…

The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) partnered to examine five different models initiated by the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) in 36 schools. CPS was an early adopter of dramatic intervention strategies in low-performing schools, and the reforms in this study were implemented…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the means by which principals achieve an impact on student achievement. Research Design: Through the application of structural equation modeling, a mediated-effects model for school leadership was tested, using data from 97 secondary schools in the Netherlands. Findings: The results showed a small…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine the relationships between leadership styles of primary school principals and organizational health and bullying. Design/methodology/approach: Two hypotheses were formulated in relation to the research. Three instruments were used--a multi-level questionnaire for measuring leadership, an…

The purpose of this study is to understand how a policy that provided college-prep coursework for low-skill students may affect instructional organization within schools, and how such effects on instructional organization may have unintended consequences on academic outcomes of high-skill students who were not targeted by the policy. The author…