Adaptive leadership theory places a strong emphasis on overcoming challenges to achieve success in an organization. For school leaders, this means helping stakeholders navigate new and challenging situations that occur in the context of school improvement efforts. School leaders who strive to adopt an adaptive approach should consider the…

This article critically evaluates the Reform of Vocational Education (RoVE) reforms in New Zealand which were prompted by a financial crisis in the sector. Despite the best efforts of policy makers, faith in New Zealand's market-led system has been in decline for many years and the RoVE takes the decline in faith in New Zealand's market-led system…

In 1963, Howard Y. McClusky wrote the theory of margin, defining the personal ratio of power to load. Margin theory has been used to predict success; however, more research is needed to redevelop how this sixty-year-old theory is situated in the current environment. This grounded theory study examined the changes to margin by hybridization.…

Change theory has increasingly become an area of scholarship in STEM education. While this area has traditionally been a topic for organizational psychology, business management, communication studies, and higher education, STEM education researchers are increasingly aware of the need to use formal theories to guide change efforts and research.…

Recent articles have introduced ideas from Physics, specifically, negentropy, to the social sciences. Applications have been primarily in higher education, online learning, and organizations. This article applies negentropy to PK-12 school contexts, discussing the principles for application of systemic school reform and improvement. Negentropy is…

In this theoretical article, we respond to a common education policy discourse that represents community participation in educational policy-making as an essentially rational solution to policy problems and as inherently progressive and democratic. We propose that conceptualising participatory politics as 'publics' challenges this discourse and…

One of the field of psychology's stated goals is to produce scholarship with findings that benefit the world. Over the last 10 years, psychology scholarship and its presumed societal benefits have been called into question due to the field's history of questionable research practices, racism, and epistemic oppression. Calls for methodological,…

Marx developed a sophisticated theory of labour under capitalism's expanding reproduction but wrote little specifically on immaterial labour. This paper reflects on how to build from Marx's writings a more comprehensive theory of immaterial labour. Integral to this theorisation is bringing in young Marx's writings on alienation and human nature,…

This is the story of a course in higher education that, over a period of ten years, went from being one of the most popular courses, among both students and teachers, to becoming one of the more problematic. Students and teachers felt that the course had many problems that needed to be addressed. For the course round of 2022, the decision was…

Kay Psencik, Frederick Brown, and Stephanie Hirsh explore how school leaders can apply a learning lens to achieve their ambitious goals for educators and students in "The Learning Principal," their new book for Learning Forward. Chapter 3, "Managing Change," details how leaders can create the conditions and learning…

Routines play a major role in educational change in schools. But what happens if the routines performed by school staff fail to deal successfully with current challenges? What strategies aid adaptation of the routines in a specific situation? Up to now, there exists no comprehensive concept for understanding why and at what points the adapting of…

In this response article, the author argues that the notion of 'disruptive innovation' should not be a guiding light for higher education. First and foremost, proponents of this idea would do well to recognise that much broader discourses of revolutionary change have characterised the field of education technology for decades. In short, it is an…

In education systems there is inter-connectedness with multiple sub-systems which interact with each other. This paper argues that complexity theory is well suited as a lens to research education reforms. Key elements of complexity theory that are particularly useful are applied to the South African case. Aspects of complexity theory include:…

This paper evaluates an Environmental Education programme where the barriers and opportunities for professional development, access to specialist resources, provision through technology and partnership are considered within the context of Wales and the demands of a new curriculum. The findings reflect on the first three years of an education…

This article responds to commentaries on the author's opening article in this issue, "Disruptive Innovation and Technology Enhanced Learning" (EJ1288163). Herein, Michael Flavin begins by discussing arguments for and against Uber and Wikipedia as disruptive innovations. He addresses commentaries in this issue by Michael Raynor, Terry…