The continuing professional development (CPD) of teachers has, since the 1980s, become animportant subject in teacher education reform in the world (Ding, 2001). Increasingly, it is being realizedthat teaching is a specialized work and that teachers as developing professionals should reach theirmaturity both in the context and level of their profession through lifelong learning and exploring.
This article presents findings from a case study that describes the ways that four teachers pursuing their master's degree in teacher leadership engaged in leadership activities in their schools. In order to explore this purpose, this study examines two research questions: (1) How do teachers enact leadership in their schools and (2) What complicates or enables teachers' leadership activity? Findings indicate that the norms of the teaching profession including equality and privacy affect teachers' enactment of leadership in their schools. Teacher leaders limit their work based on their knowledge of these norms, their past experiences engaging in leadership, and the culture present in their schools.
"The book shares stories of the role of school leadership in Singapore, with case studies from selected schools, that provides some insights on how Singapore delivers a high-quality education that had led to it achieving high rankings in TIMMS and PISA. This book will provide both the historical and present contexts of changes in the education system, school leadership and teacher leadership in Singapore that made it what it is today. It will distil some universal principles of educational change that school leaders and policy makers can apply in bringing about educational changes that will enhance the learning experiences of students and prepare them for future challenges."--
With the emergence of previous 'soft skills' such as empathy, emotional intelligence, compassion, and listening as important leadership qualities in the 21st century, there is an increased need to cultivate qualities that have long been suppressed. Humor is one of them. It is not just pleasant for interpersonal relations, but gets absorbed with more eagerness, and has a healthy effect. The 75 stories in Teaching Leadership and Organizational Behavior through Humor deal with issues in a broad scope of settings, making this book not just useful in higher education, but also for coaches, trainers, and students in corporate workshops. Read, smile, laugh, contemplate, and get into action!
The purpose of this presentation is to discuss how teacher's leadership can be used as a teaching method in web based language education. The environments that offer online courses provide a wide field for discussion on the contact between teacher and student. My intention is to contribute to the debate on teacher leadership in online courses. In my earlier studies on leadership, I have explored how some religious leaders affected different social movements in Brazil during the military dictatorship (1964-1985). Pruth (2004) by examining the three kinds of legitimacy described by Max Weber I aimed at seeing and analyzing how religious leaders used different teaching methods to explain their messages to ordinary citizens. Thus my research showed how educational leadership is a way to get people to reach their goals. I became interested in the subject teacher's leadership whenI participated in a survey of the teaching methods of language courses in Dalarna University which is funded by the NGL Center of Dalarna University. In this project, we have made interviews with the teachers, undertaken the course plans (in the language department at Dalarna University) and categorized the learning outcomes. A questionnaire was constructed based on the learning outcomes and then either sent out remotely to teachers or completed face to face through interviews. The answers provided to the questionnaires enabled the project to identify many differences in how language teachers interact with their students but also, the way of giving feedback, motivating and helping students, types of class activities and materials used. This made me aware of how teachers use their leadership or not in their teaching. My focus is to look at the relationship between teachers and students as an important part of the development and quality of online courses. The teacher's performance on campus is different from online courses. I want to understand how the contact between teachers and students in online courses develop and look at how students can make use of this contact and what influence the teacher's leadership has on the ability for the students to achieve the goals of their course
More than 7.5 million high school students in the United States participate in organized sport according to a survey conducted by the National Federation of State High School Associations (National Federation of State high School Associations [NFHS], 2010). Athletic participation is the single most popular school-sponsored extracurricular activity, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender (Miller, Melnick, Barnes, Farrell, & Sabo, 2005; Eccles & Barber, 1999; Eide & Ronan, 2001). With the high popularity of sport participation, the controversy over the effect of athletic participation on academic progress and success continues to linger (Ward, 2008; Marsh, 1993; Miller et al. 2005). Although many of these studies have shown positive correlations between high school athletic participation and academic performance, there still seems to be a question regarding the stigma attached to student athletes and treatment of student-athletes by faculty and non-athlete students; wherein student-athletes are faced with negative stereotypes which depict them as low achievers academically and undeservingly privileged when it comes to academic requirements (Sherman, 1988; Simons, Bosworth, Fujita and Jensen, 2007; Lawrence, Harrison, & Stone, 2009). Bowen & Levin (2005) produced convincing data in their book Reclaiming the Game that highlights certain tensions between academics and athletics. Some of the issues raised in this study relate to the difference in academic preparedness and performance for recruited athletes vs. "walk-ons" in which recruited athletes tend to have more of an advantage when it comes to being admitted despite lower qualifications, and then subsequently demonstrate lower academic performance once they are enrolled.
This paper reports results from a qualitative study that examined perceptions of administrative practiceexpressed by members of a grassroots teacher group committed to the practice of democraticeducation. The group (the Friday Roundtable) was comprised of K-12 public school teachers in ruralAppalachian Ohio who spent considerable time together trying to answer the collective question howcan we be better teachers? A key element of that dialogue involved consideration of increased stateand national pressures that often included educational expectations of their building administrators thatthe teachers perceived as undemocratic. Using case studies of eleven individual teachers situated inboth a Narrative Inquiry and Appreciative Inquiry design, the investigation examines the democraticeducational work of these teachers as they pursue educational equity in their highly-challenged schools.
Learning from ethical failures is critical for overall character development as well as an important aspect in the formation of student leaders. This chapter examines types of ethical failure that students often confront in college. The author includes a personal moral failure that occurred when he was a student leader.
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.
was a fall Saturday morning, and I was in my Auburn doctoral program monthly seminar where wetalked of various topics of interest to our group of 15. Somehow the topic came around to therelationships between teachers and principals. Consensus of the group was that the proverbial line inthe sand was an inevitable and unchangeable part of being a school principal. I, to the surprise of noone then or now, disagreed. This time I was not playing my well-honed role of Devil's Advocate, I reallybelieved that there was no good or logical reason that there should exist, a barrier between teachersand principals.
The history of western education in Nigeria was intimately bound up with the history of westerneducation in Europe. During and after the Dark Ages in Europe, the church dominated the business ofeducation and this had a tremendous impact on the intellectual life of people not only in Europe andAmerica but also in the British colonial territories of Asia and Africa. Historically, the British imperialambition and effective occupation of Nigeria dated back to the second half of the 19th century eventhough some Europeans including British traders had assumed trading activities with the people in thecoastal areas of the region since 1533 (Osokoya 2008). It is on record that the British naval forcesstarted their pre-occupation of Southern Nigeria in 1851 when they bombarded the city of Lagos topunish Kosoko the King of the city who continued with the obnoxious slave trade despite its abolitionin the British empire in 1833. Barely ten years after the bombardment, the British government annexedthe city to the British Crown (Osokoya 2008). It was only in 1900 that the British flag was flown in theNorthern Nigeria (Abubakar, 1980). Britain thereafter adopted a number of measures includingcoercion and diplomacy to remove all visible African opposition to her full central authority of theNigerian nation. In fact, with the amalgamation of the Northern protectorate with the Colony andSouthern Protectorate in 1914, Britain had succeeded in making herself the sole paramount ruler overa people of different cultures and multi-lingual communities which she unilaterally named Nigeria.Interestingly, western education in the area preceded the establishment of the British Crown as theEuropean Christian missions had free hand in the provision of western education to the people in thearea a decade before and about three decades after imperial occupation.
