Suchergebnisse

This study looks into the distributed leadership and its influence on teachers' self-efficacy in three Chinese schools in Shanghai. Against the background of the eighth national curriculum reform launched in 2002, the Chinese schools are seeking for the new way to enhance the school-based curriculum. On top of that, the trend of decentralization also encourages the school principals to involve the teachers in the school leadership practice. The relationship between distributed leadership and teachers' self-efficacy in this study is examined from the angle of principals' empowerment strategies. A mixed methods approach is applied to collect both qualitative and quantitative data from the three schools. The research data is collected through one questionnaire survey, 13 individual interviews, and 4 days' participant observation. The qualitative data is synthesized into three case studies, while the quantitative statistics were tested and analyzed by SPSS software. The findings of this study indicate that distributed leadership exists in the three research schools in various forms. School principals empower the teachers at both individual and group levels. The power is delegated through both formal and informal channels. According to the situation, school leadership can be distributed either in a long-term form or in a short-term ad hoc form. The quantitative survey data supports the qualitative findings. On average, the respondents from all the three research schools show a high level of self-efficacy in decision making, interpersonal relationships & cooperation, teaching & research, and teachers' influence on school culture. Teachers attribute their high level self-efficacy to principal's empowerment, peer recognition, a democratic culture, and a strong moral basis of the school. It is worth noting that the distributed leadership practice presented in this study carries the Chinese characteristics. There is more horizontal cooperation among teacher leaders than vertical cooperation between the school principal and the teacher leaders. The young teachers are more active in taking the leadership roles. Both teachers' initiatives and principal's empowerment play a key role in leadership distribution. Distributed leadership should be rooted in daily school practice and school culture. In the last part of the thesis, the author summarized the limitations of this research and made her recommendations for future studies.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of educational leadership, administration and management (EdLAM) research by identifying thematic strands that hallmark key publications and synthesise major research findings and limitations. Design/methodology/approach This study combines bibliometric and content analysis methods to review 2,347 publications from 15 core EdLAM journals published from 2007 to 2016. Findings The bibliometric analysis identified five EdLAM thematic strands: school leadership for enhancing students' academic achievement and teachers' effectiveness; leadership for educational change, accountability and promoting democratic values; leadership for social justice, equal education and narrowing achievement gaps; principal's instructional leadership for school improvement; and distributed leadership and its impact on organisational climate and teachers' attitudes and stress. The content analysis revealed that the EdLAM research from 2007 to 2016 further developed the following research areas: the dynamics between leaders and teachers in leadership work, the potential risks of distributed leadership and the EdLAM challenges brought by the New Public Management and neoliberalism. Originality/value This study depicts state-of-the-art EdLAM research. It confirms the combination of bibliometric and content analyses as a useful approach for large-scale review studies. Finally, this review suggests future research directions.

AbstractThis study takes listed companies that have experienced sudden crisis events as samples. The event study method and multiple regression analysis are further adopted to explore the relationship between sudden crisis events and the stock price fluctuations of listed companies from the perspective of multidimensional characteristics. Findings reveal that sudden crisis events have a significant impact on stock price fluctuations. However, the firms' response frequency and response time to crisis events can exert a buffering role in their adverse association. Further analysis shows that the stock price fluctuations also vary with different heterogeneous characteristics including crisis event types, ownership types, firm competitiveness and firm size. The multidimensional analysis targeting the impact of sudden crisis events on the stock market is conducive to helping firms grasp the rhythm of crisis events and further implement some practical and feasible crisis management measures.

AbstractThe study of the contamination patterns and characteristics of Sb and As in the soils of the legacy contaminated sites of antimony smelters is important for the redevelopment and utilization of industrial sites. In this study, 13 heavy metals were determined in the soil and plants of an antimony smelter in Gansu Province to study the biogeochemical behavior, health risk, and pollution source. The results showed that the Nemerow index of Sb (728) exceeded the value of As (43.6) by 17.6 times, and the average geoaccumulation index (Igeo) of Sb and As were 10.1 and 1.97, respectively, categorized as extremely and moderately contaminated classes. Compared to As, Sb had a larger proportion of oxidizable fraction and a smaller proportion of reducible fraction (Fe/Mn oxides), suggesting that Sb possessed a higher content of organic matter and sulfide forms. Even though the bioaccumulation factor (BAF) for As was about 10 times higher than that for Sb, the accumulation of Sb in plants was not negligible. For the USEPA model, the mean hazard quotient (HQ) values of As by oral ingestion, dermal absorption, and inhalation accounted for 99.0%, 0.97%, and 0.0002% of the total, and 54.2%, 45.3%, and 0.51% for MEEPRC model, respectively. There were significant positive correlations between Sb, As, Zn, Se, Cd, and Ba (P < 0.05). The results of the source identification analysis revealed that antimony smelting, solid waste pollution, and natural origin were identified as the main pollution sources. The principal component analysis (PCA) and positive matrix factorization (PMF) methods differed by more than 20% in the analysis of the contribution of antimony smelting activities and solid waste pollution sources, suggesting the differences in the models themselves and in the uncertainty parameters chosen during the application.

The Chinese government has implemented a medical system reform to improve the equity of healthcare resources since 2009. We selected Shenzhen as our study area and evaluated the accessibility and equity of the multi-tiered medical system in China using a novel multi-tiered two-step floating catchment area (MT2SFCA) method. We proposed the benchmark and applied the independent variables of travel time and facility attractiveness, along with a combination of the two factors, as tolerances to determine the new logistic cumulative distribution decay functions. Community health centers (CHCs) and hospitals were included while integrating their features. Results revealed that the MT2SFCA method was able to determine the particular advantages of CHCs and hospitals in the multi-tiered medical system. The CHCs offset the lower accessibility of hospitals in suburban areas and hospitals balanced the regional inequity caused by the CHC. Travel time is the main consideration of patients who have access to CHCs, whereas facility features are the main considerations of patients who have access to hospitals. Notably, both CHCs and hospitals are crucial for the whole multi-tiered medical system. Finally, we suggested modifications in different travel modes, weights of contributing factors, and the validation of decay functions to improve the MT2SFCA method.