This article presents a comparative interview study (N = 45) with Swedish and German special educators working in inclusive school settings in order to gain an understanding of how inclusive education is operationalized by the provision of special education needs (SEN) support; and how both aspects are conditioned by nation-specific…

Teacher leadership is an important pillar in building school capacity. Using an interpretive qualitative research design, the theoretical lens of Mezirow's (1978) transformative learning theory and Spillane's (2005) distributed leadership theory were used to inform the research questions in this study. With shifts in education reform, student…

Student voice has held a prominent place in the tradition of progressive and democratic schools and classrooms around the world. Once engaged it offers a chance to develop and use crucial skills for democratic living and to shape meaningful contexts for learning as students bring their own personal questions, cultural experiences, resources, and…

School-based research and practice in international education has emphasized academic outcomes, to the exclusion of other important aspects of education, such as caring in schools. In this case study, we consider the role of caring in a successful Tanzanian primary school. The practice of caring promoted by the school's leadership, rooted in…

Principals used distributed leadership, as suggested by researchers, to actively engage teacher leaders in instructional leadership responsibilities. It was not known how high school principals' distributed leadership practices enabled teacher leaders to assist principals with instructional leadership responsibilities. The purpose of this…

Over the past 20 years, federal and state reforms have drawn on heavy-handed attempts to close the achievement gap through top-down management of teachers. Such approaches have often included high-stakes accountability systems that mandate what to teach and how to teach it and that evaluate teachers on the basis of annual standardized test scores.…

Competency education, an educator-led reform, is taking root in schools and districts across the country. In some states, state leadership has cleared the path with policies to advance competency education. This paper seeks to map out the terrain of the district implementation strategies being used to convert traditional systems into personalized,…

The idea of collective decision making in schools has been a popular democratic educational reform model. One of its claims is that participation in school decision making empowers teachers and improves teaching. This research investigates this claim by exploring seven teachers' experiences with a unique democratic school reform in Porto Alegre,…

According to Erlandson and Bifano (1987), teacher empowerment is a vital dimension of the school's organization. Lieberman (1989) defined teacher empowerment as "empowering teachers to participate in group decisions and to have real decision-making roles in the school community" (p. 24). Furthermore, Summers (2006) addressed the need for…

This paper describes ways that administrators can empower teachers and build strong, effective teams in a school. It opens by defining power and explains that traditional organizational hierarchical structures tend to motivate people to use power in self-protective ways. It claims that for empowerment to work, leaders must help people use their…

Workforce remodeling in England has been presented as a means to empower school staff through a restructuring process which has possibilities to dramatically shift the ways in which they operate. This initiative has also included a number of legislative requirements intended to help embed the more technocratic aspects of the remodeling process.…

Teachers in "good" schools often provide considerable input into curriculum decisions and other types of school policies. They are considered to be "empowered." This paper argues that the apparent empowerment of teachers in these situations is actually the opposite: In good schools superordinates do not empower teachers; instead, teachers empower…

This paper addresses educational reform centering on teacher participation and leadership. Although schools have developed new mission statements and implemented strategic planning and site-based management in recent years, most schools are not set up to accept teachers in leadership roles. The literature suggests that our "new" schools…

Explores potential changes in the power relationships among teachers and principals. Describes and analyzes the following models of teacher decision-making: (1) Instructional Leadership Teams; (2) Principals' Advisory Councils; (3) School Improvement Teams; and (4) Lead Teacher Committees. (FMW)

Examines literature on empowerment, and participation of parents and teachers in school decision making in the context of school governance. Discusses changing roles of parents and teachers under conditions of restructuring and examines how the changing organizational context in schools influences the nature and quality of relationships between…