School Reform in a Hyper-Connected Society: The ‘Educational Connectivity’ Hypothesis and Its Policy Implications

When schools adopt shared decision making (SDM), principals' authority is limited. Nevertheless, all six principals in the SDM high schools we studied supported SDM, at least in part because they had chosen to serve in an SDM school. The three principals who were most supportive of SDM also had ambitious visions of instructional reform. After 1.5 to 2 years, the high schools in which these principals served experienced a heightened level of conflict among the faculty. In large part, the conflict was due to these principals' efforts to use SDM as a vehicle to foster large changes. Teachers resisted major change, and principals became impatient with the participatory process and tried to promote their own versions of reform. Only a modest degree of reform was achieved, but it was more than was achieved by SDM principals without a reform agenda. Reformist principals in non-SDM high schools implemented modest reforms as well, although at the expense of suspicion and antagonism after changes were introduced. We explore the dilemmas that reformist principals face and suggest policy implications.

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Work Feature Values of Today's and Tomorrow's Teachers: Work Redesign as an Incentive and School Improvement Policy

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis ◽

10.3102/01623737016004458 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 16 (4) ◽

pp. 458-473 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Ann Weaver Hart

Keyword(s):

School Improvement ◽

School Reform ◽

Systematic Investigation ◽

Policy Implications ◽

Teacher Labor Market ◽

Teacher Supply ◽

Work Redesign ◽

Teacher Work ◽

Feature Values ◽

Best Teachers

Although school reform policies often aim to recruit and retain talented and high-achieving teachers, little systematic investigation of the impacts of work redesign on teachers' turnover decisions exists. The impacts of varied teacher work and career redesign incentives, therefore, remain uncertain, particularly as they affect the best teachers. This article presents the policy implications of studies of teachers' responses to features of work redesign as they relate to future career choice decisions, teacher labor market, and teacher supply in specific target areas.

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Beyond Dualism, Splits, and Schisms: Social Justice for a Renewal of Vocational–Academic Education

Journal of School Leadership ◽

10.1177/105268460201200602 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 12 (6) ◽

pp. 640-662 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Carol A. Mullen ◽

Alan R. Kohan

Keyword(s):

Social Justice ◽

Public Schools ◽

School Reform ◽

Policy Implications ◽

Past Century ◽

Academic Education ◽

Whole School Reform ◽

Integrated Education ◽

Whole School ◽

Vocational Schooling

To fulfill the democratic dream for American schooling, educators and policymakers need to work together for the same common cause: reforming the academic-vocational dichotomy of schooling that has persisted over the past century. Academic subjects continue to be separated from vocational schooling with the effect of diluting each domain's effectiveness. The Deweyian vision of social justice provides a solution for healing this fundamental dualism that characterizes schooling. Even where integration has been attempted using academic-vocational models, tracking continues in public schools without commitment to whole-school reform design. This article discusses these issues in the context of the history of vocational education and Dewey's perspective of integrated education through the occupations. The authors also illustrate the concepts presented through promising whole-school reform designs for democratizing the public education system. Policy implications are addressed for moving toward a socially just system of schooling.

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