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Intends to challenge policy makers, administrators, and academics in the field of educational leadership to reassess their traditional approaches to learning, working, and planning. This book bridges the traditional divide between the generalizations of social science theory on the one hand and the world of educational practice on the other

This volume presents the view that what matters most are learning processes in organizations and ways of enhancing the sophistication and power of these processes. Each contributor, therefore, explicitly addresses the meaning(s) of organizational learning which they have adopted themselves.

The inability of either bottom-up or top-down strategies, by themselves, to provide suitable conditions for school improvement warrants a shift to school-focused knowledge use as a way to encourage such improvement. This study examines the influence of a large array of factors, derived from a knowledge utilization framework, on educators' use of several types of information for improvement purposes. Two hundred and thirty-three elementary school principals and 155 central board office staff members completed a survey instrument inquiring about most useful sources of information for improving curriculum and instruction in grades 4 to 6. Results provided support for categories of knowledge use factors in explaining variation in use of information for school improvement—characteristics of the source of information, characteris tics of the improvement setting, and interactive processes. These results are used to illustrate how a school-focused knowledge use perspective combines many of the strengths and avoids critical weaknesses of bottom-up and top-down strategies for change.

A methodologn for evaluating program implementation is described. Requirements for such a methodology are derived from an analysis of the functions to be performed by implementation evaluation, the nature of the program being implemented, and character istics of the implementation process. Central features of the methodology involve procedures for the development of a multidimensional profile of the program as it evolves in practice from non- to full implementation. The profile then serves as the basis for instrument development, data collected through the instruments locate program user behavior in relation to the dimensions and levels of use described by the profile. Uses of resulting data to serve program management goals are outlined.

In workplace health interventions, engaging management and union decision makers is considered important for the success of the project, yet little research has described the process of making this happen. A case study of a knowledge-transfer process is presented to describe the practices and processes adopted by a knowledge broker who engaged workplace parties in discussions on research on physical and psychosocial factors important for employee health. The process included one-on-one interactions between the knowledge broker and individuals to explain the research, to build trust and credibility, and to explore the applicability of the research to their work (sense making). It also included facilitated group sessions, where the groups explored how the research could solve problems within the workplace (social construction of knowledge). The workplace context offered multiple opportunities that helped and hindered the flow of research. Nevertheless, this intense, sustained, knowledge-transfer intervention noted conceptual, structural, and political knowledge use.

This Handbook is for policy researchers, analysts, academics and graduate students interested in educational policy, educational reform, educational governance and leadership, teacher quality, literacy, and workplace learning. This Handbook is the only one of its kind. It has over fifty chapters written by nearly ninety leading researchers from a number of countries and presents contemporary and emergent trends in educational policy research. It captures many of the current dominant educational policy foci, situating current understandings historically, in terms of both how they are conceptualized and in terms of past policy practice. The chapters are empirically grounded, providing illustrations of the conceptual implications contained within them as well as allowing for comparisons across them. The self-reflexivity within chapters with respect to jurisdictional particularities and contrasts allows readers to consider not only a range of approaches to policy analysis but also the ways in which policies and policy ideas play out in different times and places. Sections cover the contemporary strategic emphasis on large-scale reform, substantive emphases at several levels – on leadership and governance, improving teacher quality and conceptualizing learning in various domains around the notion of literacies and concluding, finally, with a contrasting topic, workplace learning, which has had less policy attention and thus allows readers to consider both the advantages and disadvantages of learning and teaching under the bright gaze of policy.